A rather restless night. Treacle
brought a bone up to bed and wanted to spend the night chomping on it. The rest
of the wolf-pack wanted some as well, and a minor scrap ensued. "er
indoors TM"
took the bone away, and Treacle whinged for hours wanting it back.
I eventually gave up and watched
an episode of “Titans” until everyone finally got up.
As I scoffed a hot cross bun I
looked at the new series of puzzle geocaches that went live last night. I
solved one or two, others eluded me. Yet again a tremendous amount of effort
has gone into creating loads of puzzles which mean very little to most people.
I expect this will go the way of pretty much every other puzzle series in that
I will swap the solutions that I have for the solutions that friends have.
Whilst it is really taboo to admit to this, this is what many people actually
do.
I don’t see why people mess
about creating geo-puzzles in the first place. The hobby is a treasure hunt. If
people want to solve puzzles then why not do a course in logic with the Open
University, or buy a book of puzzles from the corner shop? Puzzle caches boil
my piss. For the uninitiated, here’s how to solve a geo-puzzle. Call up any
puzzle geocache on the Internet. You might read a meaningless phrase and see a
picture of a tennis racquet and a bag of crisps. It means absolutely nothing,
does it? But look closer. The web page appears on a screen. The letter “c”
appears in that word. And you *see* the screen. “C”? “see”?
– sea !! That’s where the cartoon
character “Aquaman” lives. In the film “Aquaman”, “Aquaman”
was played by the actor Jason Momoa who was born in Hawaii. Hawaii !! – so the
puzzle is all about the states of America.
(You might think I’m being
facetious here, but that *really* is how the logic works in some geo-puzzles)
Finding a pair of socks I never
knew I had I got dressed. Despite "er indoors TM" feeling less
than one hundred per cent we took the dogs out. We drove up to Chislet where we
met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and we had a rather good walk despite one or two
hiccups.
We set off on out planned route. We found our first target
film pot under a rock by a telegraph pole. Our second target would seem to have
gone missing. To be fair, our second target was actually one I had found five
years ago, but I didn’t remember it. From here we followed a farm track to a
country lane where we found our next targets. We found two and was then
approached by a chap who asked if we were lost. I said we weren’t. He said we
were, and he said that we were on private land. He politely but firmly told us
to piss off, and (to be fair to the
fellow) when we got to the end of the lane, sure enough there was a sign
saying that we were on a private road. Woops!
We quickly re-planned our route,
and after getting clagged up with mud had a rather good walk along country
lanes and bridleways. There was a dodgy five minutes when we stopped to let a
horse come past. Pogo took exception to the horse, lunged at it and snapped his
lead. Fortunately the horse wasn’t bothered.
Today’s walk wasn’t a long one,
and we were soon at the Gate Inn. Last winter we’d visited the place and had
been incredibly impressed at the ale selection. We’d planned today’s walk to
end at that pub. It was something of a shame to find that the place was closed
for refurbishment.
They say disasters come in
threes…
Geocaching-wise today was
something of a mixed bag. Some of the caches were straightforward finds. Some (shall
we be polite here) weren’t where I would have put them. Pretty much all of
them had wet logs, and we logged “needs archiving” on two of them.
We got back to the cars, and
after a quick bite to eat we drove up to a pub we knew, only to find that the
Prince of Wales in Hoath was heaving. So we drove on to the Huntsman and Horn
in Herne Bay for a crafty half of weak shandy. You can see what we got up to by
clicking here.
I had four pints of rather good
ale, and slept most of the way home.
Once home I had a look-see at
the Internet (as I do). This morning I’d messaged friends about the new
cache series that went live last night. With pictures of Mario Brothers and
Space Invaders all over the place, I am reliably informed that the theme of the
caches was the French equivalent of the artist Banksy. I felt rather smug that
me earlier description of puzzle caches was clearly spot-on.
"er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner, and once it was scoffed I used my new-found
information to try to solve those geo-puzzles. I didn’t solve any so I watched
telly instead.
I quite like “Titans”
– I don’t seem to sleep through it…
