Yesterday
was Hastings Day; the nine hundred and fifty-sixth anniversary of the Battle of
Hastings. My Facebook feed was alive with that yesterday and today… purely
because I come from Hastings and have a lot of friends who live there. Schools
in Hastings drum “1066 and all that” into you. One of the most amazing
things I learned when I moved (less than) thirty miles away to Ashford
was that apart from the people of Hastings, no one knows anything at all about
the battle, and no one really cares.
The
dogs weren’t keen to go out this morning as it was raining, but they had no
choice. My heart sank on seeing the rain, but the forecast was good, so we
hoped for the best and carried on with our plans.
We
set off up the motorway listening to Steve on the radio. The signal gave out
just as the new recently rediscovered Queen song was being played. Have
you heard it? I predict it will soon be number one in the charts, but there’s a
reason why the song never appeared on any of the albums…
It
didn’t take *that* long to get to Cooling where Karl, Tracey and
Charlotte were waiting for us. The sky
had become a beautiful blue; we put on wellies and set off on a little stroll.
It has been ages sine we last went out for a walk; I’ve rather missed them.
As
always our walk was guided by a series of geocaches. We set off down a quiet
lane and across some pretty fields. We found a rather knacked bit of what was
once farm machinery on which to sit and have lunch; I sat on my new collapsible
stool; fully expecting it to collapse. But it held up well. It was a shame that
the puppies had to go onto their leads as we scoffed lunch; but several hundred
yards away on the other side of the field was a road along which vans and
lorries were driving, and both Morgan and Bailey had taken offence at them.
As
we scoffed we admired the rather pretty herringbone clouds which (according to Wikipedia) portend “a
continuation of good weather”. Five minutes after we finished lunch, so the
sky turned black and the rain started. Weather forecasts, eh?
The
rain didn’t amount to much; it soon stopped. We walked back to the cars,
changed our boots and walked down the road to the Horseshoe and Castle. It was as well that it was a bright afternoon;
the puppies had spent much of their off-lead time rolling in something foul and
they stank. We sat outside and had a pint (or two) and some of their
nuts. Have you ever had smoked peanuts? Imagine a smoky bacon flavoured peanut.
I was impressed.
We
said our goodbyes and headed home, Munzing as we went. We stopped off for
petrol on Bluebell Hill, and got some chocolate too. Cadbury’s have been
running a competition recently (which I had completely missed) – they
had two chocolate bars imaginatively named “Mystery Bar One” and “Mystery
Bar Two”. The idea was that you scoffed them, then went onto the website and said what you
thought the flavours were.
I
honestly thought “Mystery Bar One” was what Bailey had been rolling in,
and that “Mystery Bar Two” was something far more foul. But it
transpired that the competition was over. The first was actually Rhubarb and
Custard, and the second Blue Raspberry Slushie.
One
lives and learns.
I took a few photos as we walked. Once the
dogs had been bathed I put them on-line and three snoring dogs cuddled up to
me. They can’t have walked much further than we have been walking round Kings
Wood recently, but they were all absolutely shattered. Going for a walk
mob-handed is clearly far more fun and tiring for a dog than just going with
boring old me.
It would have been good
to have gone to the Hastings bonfire this evening but I don’t like leaving the
dogs (even though they were fast asleep). And we got the message that the fireworks might have been cancelled
because of the high winds anyway.
“er
indoors TM” boiled up sausages and chips and we scoffed them whilst
watching last week’s episode of “Bake Off”.
I must admit I feel
rather tired…
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