27 December 2015 (Sunday) - Ashes Wood

I was again up and watching telly at 3am before going back to bed for a bit. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing really. I got up properly just after 8am and had a quick look-see on line. A new geocache had gone live only a mile down the road. I *could* have gone chasing after it but I didn't. It will come in handy for filling up this calendar challenge thingy.

We had a spot of brekkie and put the leads on the dogs. Fudge was leaping about only too ready to go out; Sid actually went and hid; he did *not* want to go. But he had no choice, and soon we were driving down to Battle in Sussex.
Today's geo-walk was all a little bit last minute. We had pondered on where to go; even pondering on not going out at all. We had vaguely planned on going to the geo-event in Imber some one hundred and thirty miles away, but didn't fancy going on our own. It was rather late last night that we decided to have a mooch round Ashes Wood in Netherfield. We put out an invite but most people had made other plans (as you would expect). And overnight half of those who were coming dropped out. But we went ahead anyway, and had a really good stomp around the mud with our friends Gordon, Stuart and Beth and pups Norton and Gilly. We found all of the dozen geocaches in the woods, and saw some rather beautiful scenery as we walked. Although we didn't see any deer we found deer tracks. It was odd that the dogs were all doing their own thing until such time as we found the deer tracks. It was then that the dogs wanted to tank through the tracks and destroy them.

The walk was billed as one of three kilometres; I guessed that would take us about an hour and a half; what with all the mud it took us two hours. Once back at the cars we said our goodbyes. I had formulated a plan to spend the afternoon walking round Battle itself hunting down elusive sandwich boxes but instead we decided to drive home picking up a cache or two as we went.
We took a rather circuitous route (i.e. went the wrong way) home via Heathfield picking up ten extra caches as we went including one I've suggested should be archived. I didn't really want to post a "Needs Archiving" log.... it wason a good hide near a rather odd obelisk. If not for geocaching I've never have known this object was there.
But...
According to his profile the chap who hid the thing lives a hundred miles away and hasn't logged into geocaching dot com for two and a half years. When I found it today the cache itself was running with water. The contents were mouldy and stank. There are already thirteen "Needs Maintenance" logs on that cache.
This *really* doesn't give a good impression for the hobby. Perhaps with it gone someone closer might be able to replace it?

As I usually do I took a few photos whilst we were out. Once we got home (and got the mud hosed off of the dogs) I put them on-line, and as the dogs snored we slobbed in front of the telly for a while. "er indoors TM" went off to the bowling Chrimbo do, and (for want of a better offer) I sat with the dogs and watched more telly.


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