9 November 2021 (Tuesday) - Lydd (in the rain)

With no need to be up early, why did Royal Mail send me a text message to say they would be delivering a COVID testing kit this morning? Bearing in mind the thing goes through the letterbox there was no need to bother me, was there?

 

I found myself thinking for much of the day having read a post on a “Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” Facebook page I follow. An American follower of that page had posted “My sister and I are planning a trip to England and Scotland next year and we are looking for authentic not traditional touristy stuff to do”. England *and* Scotland in a week? I was reminded of the biography of a policeman I once read who said that most American tourists seemed to think that the UK was the size of a small provincial town. He went on to say that he’d lost count of the amount of American tourists he’d found over the years in Borough High Street (in Southwark) who were distraught. Having arranged to meet their friends in “London High Street” it came as a shock to all of them to realise London has over six hundred “High Street”s.

Where would you want to see in England and Scotland though? The Tower of London for sure. Bath with its Roman history would be a must (and Stonehenge as it is only thirty miles from Bath). Hampton Court really should be on the list. We found a guided tour round Oxford was a cracking day out. There’s loads to see and do in Canterbury. Dover Castle and the White Cliffs are always good. Cornwall is spectacular…

There’s a week… most of it would be spent travelling and you’d not be getting out of the south of England…

 

“er indoors ^TM” was off work today as well, so we got the dogs organised and drove down to Lydd. We’d had a really good walk round there doing a Wherigo a few weeks ago and went back today for a combined multicache – Adventure Lab – Munzee mission. We hadn’t expected the drizzle, but as always we had two choices. We could make the most of it, or we could sulk. So we made the most of it. As luck would have it we had parked almost on top of the first stage of the Adventure Lab GPS game, and we followed the stages from the old courthouse on a rather good little guided tour through the churchyard up the High Street, past the Garden of Remembrance to the fire station. We paused at the Garden of Remembrance to have a look, and to answer some questions which led us to a geocache. And with multi-geocache and Adventure Lab games done, we followed a trail of twenty or so Munzees back to the car. If nothing else, GPS-based games stop you getting lost on a dog walk. Even if we did get a little wet from the rain. Rain which had only a two per cent chance of happening as we drove home through it.

 

My plan for the afternoon had been to get busy in the garden, but the rain put paid to that idea. So instead I cleaned out the fish tank. So easy to type, not so easy to do. But after a couple of hours the thing was clean.

“er indoors ^TM” then set off to visit “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM”. I stayed home and nursed a backache whilst watching episodes of “Good Girls” until she returned. Once back she boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching this week’s episode of “Bake Off”.

Today wasn’t quite as busy as yesterday… but my back aches now…