28 May 2015 (Thursday) - Otford Hills

I slept well again. I have another theory about my sleep patterns... I sleep better and longer when I am not on the month of permanent day shifts.
Right now I think I'm still catching up on sleep from the two night shifts last weekend. Yet another reason why I like the night work. As well as actually preferring the work format at night, I get time off mid-week to do my own thing, longer shifts mean fewer and so I save on petrol, I get a little extra money, and now I realise that when on nights I seem to sleep better.

Over brekkie I watched Billie Piper in "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" in which she was discussing (and demonstrating) the merits of a boob job. Needless to say this was one of the better things that I've seen on telly recently.
"Furry Face TM" had the crusts of of my toast and then we set off for our walk.

Earlier in the week I'd been told (by the chap who'd put it out) that the Otford Hills geo-series had run its course, and he'd said that if I was going to walk the route would I please fetch in the caches for him. He would then archive them all and replace them with a new series. I'm only too willing to help out with something like this, and being on another rostered day off today I'd put out the word to see if anyone fancied coming on a geo-dog-stroll with me.
There had been some interest, and six of us (and three dogs) met up in the hills outside Otford for a stroll. Beautiful scenery made all the better by the wonderful weather. The only fly in the ointment was... I blame myself. The clue was in the name of the cache series. "Otford *Hills*" There was some serious ups and a couple of rather iffy downs.
Clear instructions for the route were given in the cache descriptions. There was only one point where we didn't actually read them and we did go just a little off-course. My excuse is a lack of familiarity with my new GPS toy. Talking of which...

I had a trial run with the thing on Tuesday. Today was it's first *serious* outing. Setting the thing up before leaving home is still a bit of a faff. But once in the field... I think it's fair to say that out of everyone on today's walk I got the most out of the day. My five fellow geo-comrades had far more experience of the Garmin technology than me and I learned an awful lot. Next stages and hints are no longer mysteries to me.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I prefer using it to my phone, but I'm not as against the GPS brigade as once I was.

After four hours we were back at the cars. Some of us had other things to do; four of us carried on into Otford where we did that oh-so-obscure geo-phenomenon; a Wherigo cache. It was a fun little guided tour round Otford. It only took half an hour, and it brought my total of found Wherigos up to thirteen.
It's my long term plan to have found more of those than I've hidden. Five more to go.

We said our goodbyes. As I drove home there was drivel on the radio so I put on a CD instead and squalled along to a Sparks tribute album.
Once home I uploaded the photo or two I'd taken as we walked, and then struggled with the geo-admin program. It's still not doing what I want but I think I now know where I've been going wrong. I then fell asleep and was out for the count until Steve popped round to collect some bits and bobs for tomorrow's astro club as I'm not going to be there.

"er indoors TM" then boiled up a rather good bit of scoff which was only let down by a rather grim bottle of wine. We've no idea where a bottle of Morada Real white wine came from; but it's one I won't be buying again...

Yesterday I had a dull day; today was far better.

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