Oundle and back

The forecast for today was cold but dry, so I went out to do 50-plus caches near Oundle. They got the cold bit right, but it wasn't quite dry.

I arrived at the parking place to find it occupied by several horses. Also horse boxes, and people dressed in a rather odd way. Later on, I heard the horns; I guess it was the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible. Well, none of my business; I mounted my own trusty steed and pedalled away.

After a couple of miles, I encountered a guy who might have been my own age; he wanted to know if the track we were on led to Oundle, so I got my mapping out and had a look, and was able to tell him that it didn't. Unfortunately, that encounter confused me sufficiently that I missed the next cache, and, worse, used the hint for that cache on the one after it. As a result, I spent a long time looking for the wrong sort of cache in the wrong sort of place. It was only after I eventually gave up, that I realised that the next cache along wasn't actually the next one. I went back to where that cache actually was, and found it immediately, so the end result was that I still found the caches, but wasted about 20 minutes, and that was 20 minutes I could have made good use of at the end of the day; I would have finished while it was still light. Oh well.

I started at about 10:45, and it was just as well I took a head torch, because it was about 5pm by the time I got back to the car. Most of the trail was good, or at least good enough, but early on I had to push the bike across a field that was the claggy mud that stops a bike completely. After I winkled most of the mud out ... several times ... I made it across the field. Later on there was another field that looked ten times worse; I wimped out of that and walked the 200 yards to the cache, then went around via a byway to the other end of that section, and again walked 200 yards to get another cache.

Soon after that, I was on tarmac - blessed tarmac. And that took me back to the car, and by that time, the horses had all gone home, so I could find cache number 1 in peace.

While I was out, stuff for the Raspberry Pies started arriving. I now have five 4-way USB hubs, each port has an on-off switch. And there's a hole in one end where you can put in power. But it didn't come with power lumps. Never mind, I have several 5 volt power lumps, and I'll adapt those for the purpose on some of them; on others, I'll use a PC power supply and get the 5 volts off that (the red and black wires).

I also found out how to mount a samba share without putting the username and password on the command line, which is slightly insecure. You use a "credentials" file.

So far, I've got three pies up and working for their living, and the fourth is currently being set up.