With rain forecast for the early afternoon we wanted to
crack on today. We had a prompt brekkie and soon set off to an obscure lay-by. We
were walking a series of geocaches today, and the designated parking certainly
didn’t seem up to the job when we’d looked on Google Street View so we found
somewhere better.
We set off and followed lanes and tracks and swamps. I’d
like to say that we’ve found muddier and swampier ground before, but the simple
fact is that we haven’t. Half way round the route we had to retreat; the path
was utterly impassable; it was a swamp wider than the path and was deeper than
our boots. We went back fifty yards and planned to walk along a field that ran
parallel to the swamp in the hope there was a fence at the end of the field.
There wasn’t.
We did find a narrowing in the hedgerow though… so we got
enough rocks form the field to ford the ditch om the hedgerow, and in a total
triumph of idiot enthusiasm over common sense I launched myself across the
ditch and demolished the hedgerow on the other side of the ditch to get back to
the path on which we were supposed to be. It was still a swamp, but a passable
one.
A little later we found another impassable path. We again
walked a field that ran parallel to the swamp, but this time there was a way
from the field we were in to the track where we were supposed to be.
Geocache-wise the route was… I think the best way to describe
it was sadly as not one that I could recommend. The series was twelve years
old; the given hints may well have been spot-on when the series was created,
but (for example) the dead sampling and stump referred to have long
since gone. Many of the caches hadn’t been found by the people before us, and
seven “Did Not Find” out of twenty-three caches is a rather bad result,
to say the least.
Needing supplies we came home via the Spar we’d found the
other day. I asked if I could buy a case of beer. The woman behind the counter
stared at me blankly; she had no idea what a case of beer was. I suggested that
when the shop had a delivery of beer it didn’t come in one bottle at a time. She
went out the back and fetched me a cardboard box.
Ho hum.
Sadly they had no port, so we went down the road to what
Google would have us believe was an off-licence. I asked the bloke behind the counter for port.
He stared at me and asked what port was. I explained it was a fortified wine;
he suggested I might like Stella or Budweiser.
Ho hum.
We came home where the dogs had a serious scrub; all having
been out of their depths in the mud and swamps today. Just as we finished
scrubbing them so the heavens opened. The plan had been to sit in the garden
drinking the beer I’d got from the Spar; we sat inside and drank it until tea time
when we had a particularly good tea of quiche and garlic bread and chips and
salad and profiteroles.
I took
a few photos today. Today had been rather good. But we all had an earlier
night tonight than we’ve had all week.
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