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Monday 30 January 2012

St Leonard's tower

It was night time. I started the search, and spent some time looking in various places. Then Mr Muggle turned up, and wanted to know what I was doing. "I'm looking at the tower", I explained. "At night?" he asked, sceptically. "I've got a torch," I explained.

He seemed to think that this was an inadequate explanation, and said so, quite strongly. And he told me that I was acting suspiciously. "We get a lot of suspicious characters along here," he opined. So I pointed out that it was a public footpath, and it's always possible that it could be used by bad people. I decided that there wasn't much point in continuing the search, and started back to the car, parked in the road.

And then Mrs Muggle came out.

She wasn't nearly as understanding as Mr Muggle (who, it has to be said, hadn't fully accepted that I was looking at the tower). She started shouting at me, accusing me of being a criminal (she was of the opinion that I'd trespassed on her land, based on that she'd seen my torch), and informing me that the police had been called. Which I didn't believe, but I kept that opinion to myself. And I continued to walk calmly back to my car.

Then she kicked off, shouting and screaming at me (but she only seeemed to know one emphasis-word), and threatening to get a gun to deal with me. I ignored all this, and just got in the car and drove away.

Some people. Still, it makes it all more exciting.


I went all round London today, I always like doing that. In the morning, I went round the M25 northabout (because traffic is heavier going the other way, and this way is only slightly longer), over the QE2 bridge (always a treat) and on to Tonbridge. Going home, I continued clockwise and went home via Heathrow. So I circumnavigated London, this proving that London isn't flat.

Another thing - earlier in the day, I was about a kilometer from completing the route, when my GPS unit started showing a red light, meaning "my battery is nearly dead". Gulp. Without that it'll be a *lot* harder to find caches. So I switched it off, which makes sense; I counted paces until I was closish to the cache, switched it on, found the cache, checked the distance to the next one, and switched it off. And so on. That got me through the last couple of caches, but it isn't how I like to operate. I've checked this GPS, a fully charged battery lasts 13 hours, which is why I con't carry a spare (I don't have a spare). This died after six hours. So it couldn't have been fully charged. I'll carry a spare for the next few outings, until my confidence in this unit is restored.

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