Super Saturday
I took a walk around the Geolympix Marathon series either side of a business trip. I had an appointment with a big shiny metal tube at Heathrow on the Saturday evening. Being the summer holidays, Kas had decided to take the kids up to her mum’s for a few days while I was away. I was making a business trip to India to spend a few days feeling hot and bothered. And generally out of my depth, but not in a completely bad way. Let’s just say that I was “expanding my comfort zone”, to use a phrase my previous employer was keen on.
Back at the plot, my flight wasn’t until the evening. I elected to go spend a bit of time caching on the way to the airport. A bit of time as in “all day” and “slightly out of the way”. Kas was still packing up to travel when I left. There didn’t seem to be many benefits for either of us if I sat around at home wishing I was somewhere else.
I chose to go and have a pop at the Geolympix Marathon Rings series near Turville – a series of five interlocking rings containing over a hundred caches. Turville is also the place where they filmed the outdoor scenes for The Vicar of Dibley, not that I’m a massive fan. It’s a quiet kind of a village that has few amenities and where it is also quite difficult to find a sensible parking spot. I found something eventually that was right inside the village, and conveniently close to the first cache.
On the Way Out
I wasn’t quite sure how many of the caches I’d get done. In the event I managed two of the five loops, finding 44 caches in the process. There were some steep hills, as I remember. I also remember getting annoyed because there was absolutely no phone signal whatsoever in the village. This meant I had to do a lot of climbing and find a few caches blind before I was able to begin operating at normal speed.
I finished walking at around 5pm and made the half hour drive down to Heathrow to go and meet my plane. It was a direct overnight BA flight to Bangalore. I was mooching around the airport with an hour or two to spare, so I called Kas and found out that I was missing an evening of spectacular Olympic action in London, on what later became known as Super Saturday, the day when Jessica Ennis Hill, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all won gold medals within a few minutes of each other. I was sitting in Starbucks at Heathrow Terminal 5 while all that was going on. I missed it. It wasn’t quite the same when I watched it on the telly once I got back home.
Even more depressing was that once I arrived at my swanky hotel in Bangalore, I had a quick shower and was down in the hotel bar just in time to watch Andy Murray win the tennis and Ben Ainslie bringing home the proverbial water-borne bacon. It was sad to have missed all that and to not be with my family. I’ve become accustomed to being away with work, but that trip hurt. At least the beer was cold and wet.
Tired Out Friday
I remember that towards the end of my week in Bangalore I started suffering a major sense of humour crisis. It had been a busy week of working hard whilst jet lagged. It was punctuated by being continually annoyed by the hotel staff barging into my room. I’d left the light on by the door to indicate I didn’t want to be disturbed, but that didn’t matter. I’m not sure what they were actually willing to avoid disturbing you from. Apparently the sign didn’t indicate my unwillingness to be disturbed from my relaxation or my work. On the day I left they were in and out of the room every half hour. It was irritating given that I’d arranged late check-out so I could finish off some work (and because my flight wasn’t until the evening).
The flight home was as exciting as these things ever are. It involved sitting still in a slightly cramped seat on an aluminium tube racing through the upper atmosphere at 500 miles an hour for 10 hours. One highlight was that it was Thursday evening when I flew in over central London, and I could very clearly see that the beach volleyball venue on Horse Guards Parade was in use.
It was quite late when I got home but I had the Friday off in lieu of all the extra hours so decided to drive back down to Turville to do the remaining 3 loops of the Geolympix Marathon series.
It was another warm day but this time I’d planned better and took some food and drinks with me. The day was a bit longer, but I pretty much finished the series. I’d made a further 66 finds before going home for some sleep.
The caches I found over the two days were :