Geocaching

We did a new thing today: geocaching. Who knew? The whole world is studded with hidden Tupperware containers, film canisters, and suchlike, which anyone with an Internet connection and a GPS can locate and discover. The four of us, plus J's friend and Mum, spent a happy day on Box Hill, locating the first four of what may turn out to be many geocaches. It was remarkable, really, how what would otherwise have been a mundane walk became an interesting treasure hunt, as we searched under logs and behind bushes for the caches, and wrote our names in the log books. The best was a tiny "nanocache", no bigger than a bolt head, which was stuck magnetically onto a rusty window frame on a ruined fort near the car park: we got a real kick out of finding something so tiny just from a set of co-ordinates. It's amazing to think that there is this whole parallel world of people depositing and finding these things, and we never knew. It was a lot of fun.
Mum enjoyed herself too, although at 81 her outing was confined to the area around the car rather than sliding down vertical mud banks or rolling down the grassy slope of Box Hill. She particularly enjoyed watching the Lycra clad cyclists congregating at the food booth, especially when one apparently lurked behind the hedge and groomed himself with a comb before rendevousing with whoever his eye had fallen upon (presumably another Lycra clad cyclist); she also enjoyed watching the large gathering of motorcyclists examining each other's lined-up vehicles in the huge car park at the bottom of the hill. I think it's wonderful that she gets so much out of peoplewatching still: I hope I'm around and that interested at the same age.
So: it was a good day. At home, this evening, we wished we had a real fire to relax in front of, ate roast chicken and chocolate chip pudding, and monitored a rather nasty nail bed infection on J's finger. Monday tomorrow: but with a whole day with no rain, much of it spent outside, I think we are all feeling a bit more able to face it than we would have been.