3 August 2024 (Saturday) - UK Geocaching Mega

As I peered into the Internet over brekkie I saw I had a friend request on Facebook. The photos of this one had a man’s head photoshopped onto a woman’s body, and the album of photos of that person had a range of photos of different people.
Quite a few people were up in arms about a trans-gender boxer winning medals at the Olympics… even though the one accused of being a man wasn’t, never was and never had been. The ability of social media to be completely wrong never fails to amaze.
 
I chivvied “er indoors TM and the dogs out of bed and we got ourselves organized. We set off to Dog Club. As we drove Steve was doing the “Guess the Lyrics” competition on the radio; I for one didn’t have a clue.
Dog Club went rather well. We had a new dog along which told Morgan off. Quite frankly he needed telling off; I wish more dogs would tell him off.
 
With Dog Club done we said our goodbyes and drove off up the motorway. Steve was doing the Mystery Year competition on the radio. When did Tommy Cooper die? I can distinctly remember it being 1983. It was 1984.
We listened to Steve as far as we could as we drove up the motorway. As we drove I Munzed like a thing possessed until we got to Ardingly and the UK’s Mega-Geo-Event.
 
I must admit I’d been a tad sceptical about this, but we had a great time. We arrived and almost immediately met an old friend. Aleta moved to Norfolk a few years ago; it was great to catch up. We then had ice creams and chatted with more friends before having a spot of shopping. I bought some badges and a geo-coin that will go into a drawer and never see the light of day again, but you need souvenirs of a day like today.
We had a rather good dinner from the burger stall which we scoffed with friends. We met more friends and chatted with them. We played the thirty ad-labs that had been set up for the day, and in between we played the fifty Adventure Lab Caches that had been set up for the Mega event. As we played, the dogs were strictly supervised by their new friend. We’d met little Lana at Wednesday’s picnic event where her mother said she was dog mad. She’d got on famously with the dogs then, and she asked if she could take Bailey’s lead. All three were quite happy to be supervised.
As the afternoon went on we heard dogs barking and yapping; there is something quite satisfying when it is someone else’s dog.
 
All too soon we were told that the event was coming to an end. We spent a little while finding friends to say goodbye; we didn’t find everyone. And then we sat in the car park for an hour finishing off all the Adventure Lab Caches.
 
The sat-nav took us a different way home to they way we’d gone there. With “er indoors TM wanting a drink and Treacle squeaking for a tiddle we pulled up in East Grinstead. As luck would have it, we were within fifty yards of a virtual geocache. So we did the secret geo-ritual before getting a tin of Fanta each and going home.
 
The plan had been to go shopping when we got home. But the plan had been to get home some time in the mid-afternoon. It was well into the evening by the time we pulled up, so we got some KFC and have got a plan to be at Asda for opening time tomorrow.
 
I took a few photos today.  And I got my highest daily geo-score today as well. Two hundred and eight-seven smiley faces… I’m worn out.

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