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Geocaching is basically a bit of a geeky, electronic treasure hunt where you find things that other people have hidden using a GPS receiver. I tried it for the first time just over a week ago and was immediately hooked (see link for my take on how that went!) I knew I had to spread the word, and a visit from my mum this weekend was the perfect opportunity..
Of course a family visit guarantees two things. 1. There will be laughter, laughter of the side-splitting, jaw-aching, eye-watering, small uncontrollable weeing variety. 2. Drinking.
After psyching myself up with the not drinking goal in mind, I spotted that hint of disappointment in my own mother's eyes and I couldn't do it, we had to get a bottle to share. Glorious Chardonnay Pinot Noir.. and there it was, gone. As if by some subconscious psychic miracle I then had a message from the lovely Jojo offering wonderful support for my venture into teetotalism. I am so weak of will, pangs of guilt went through me. I said no to the offer of another glass and that is definitely it, no more!
I was also extremely well-behaved with regards to food, turning down a chocolate danish and indulging in a spot (ok, large blob) of retail therapy instead.
So, now for the fun stuff! After making our packed lunch (with lots of fresh fruit and salad in our rolls, might I add) we headed off for an afternoon of geocaching. The plan was to find 23 caches on a route that would take us around 5.5 miles of countryside paths. After parking up we were only about 500m from our first cache, which proved a bit of a tricky one. A risky scramble up a steep, dirty roadside bank led us to our first location, where we quickly realised we had gone a bit wrong and saw we could have avoided that madness and reached our hidden cache from the road (though well done to mum for some hardcore clambering).
We signed the log as "Crazyhairedfish" which is my geocaching alias and "Big Chick" and with a spring in our step, excitedly set off toward our next goal. The next couple of hours we engaged in a bit of friendly competition, climbed some trees, crawled in the dirt - a lot, got more stung by stinging nettles than ever before and successfully located a lot of hidden containers. Our aliases became shorter and shorter and we amused ourselves by deciding that signing as "Big and Crazy" was sheer brilliance.
We took photo evidence of every cache we found, which was nothing to do with counting up and checking later who had found the most. A personal highlight of the day for me was mum attempting to take a photo but actually losing her balance and then taking a tumble in the mud - hilarious!
We were both completely exhausted as we came to the end and the very last cache involved another uphill scramble and a mini-tree climb to finish off.
To celebrate a great afternoon of fresh air, sunshine and exercise we headed to the pub where we guzzled pints of orange and lime sodas and then headed home for a munchy evening of cheese, crackers and crudites.
All in all a fantastic, active and healthy day. The lungs are back and tomorrow the running will commence!
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