Gardening, walnut cracking and geocaching (again)

On Monday last we came down to the village via Tesco's and also put out my latest cache en route. At home everything looked OK after we've been away for 2 weeks and we settled back into our usual routine.  The weather being quite mild and not too rainy, Roy carried on mowing the grass and collecting/burning the walnut leaves, I was cracking walnuts, pruning the roses and tidying the herb patch. Midweek we decided to dig out the raspberry plants invading the rhubarb patch and replanted them at the other end of the raspberry beds. As we were not here over All Saints Day we lit the candles by my parents' grave and the lights were flickering beautifully in the night.  Candle light is ever so visible for such a long way and powerful too.

Glorious winter foliage on the apricot tree

Getting ready for winter

While reading through the internet page of my latest cache prior to it being published it dawned on me that I didn't recall writing the password anywhere.  This was rather worrying, because this might have meant that I didn't include it on the logbook as I was supposed to. So I decided to postpone publishing it until I could check it next time I was passing. To facilitate this and in order to pick up a few caches that have been in the pipeline for a while, but got postponed a few times, I told my old friend Andor into coming with me to a nearby town, where I put my own cache, to pick up a few others the following Monday.  He, much to my surprise, agreed, but more about this later.

Roy is hard at work

The replanted raspberries

On Thursday I went to see the practice nurse for my prescriptions and amazingly managed to talk her into giving me enough for 3 months. Nice girl, not overly bright, but very friendly and helpful.  You can't ask for more, can you? Needless to say the local pharmacy didn't stock half of them, so I had to arrange with Ursula who works there to take the prescriptions and the money off me in the evening, order them on Friday and then let me know when I could fetch them.  As it happens, it worked out well, as she told me that they would arrive early on Monday morning, so I could fetch them en route to meet Andor for our caching day.

The Cuffs crew

Ben Whishaw in London Spy

I watched quite a lot of TV as well this week, as it seems that I can't stay awake at night, but wake up rather early in the morning, which is now my main TV watching time. Homeland on Ch4, London Spy on BBC2 and Cuffs on BBC1, as well as the last one of Great Canal Journeys on Ch4 come to mind as the best of them. Shame that Prunella Scales's condition is deteriorating and we might never see another one of these lovely boating programs. The last Homeland one was fascinating, and I must admit, while I had my doubts about this series forever reinventing itself, I am enjoying it very much again. London Spy was weird, but brilliant. I absolutely adore Ben Wishaw, he's that good. As for Cuffs, the Brighton setting is fun, but I think the writing and the scripts are bordering on crap. It might grow on me in the fullness of time, but it hasn't done so yet.

Red 44 at Interlagos 2015

As I managed to totally forget to watch the Mexican Grand Prix two weeks ago, I was really awaiting the Brazilian one this last weekend.  Well, poor old Hamilton seemed to have put the breaks on after winning his third world championship title and let Rosberg get on top of him twice in a row.  The Brazilian GP is one of very few, if not the only one that he has never won. Frustrating, I know Lewis, but you'll have to qualify better next time, that should solve the problem!

Old Railway Station building from 19th century

And then on Monday we went geocaching.  Andor is famous for making an order for the caches which bears no relation to practicality whatsoever.  He even admitted that he never considered the fact that we will be driving round, rather than walking all the way. His GPS said this and where the roads went had nothing to do with it!! I managed to talk him round though, as deep down I am sure he knew that I was right.  And anyway, we were in my car and I was behind the wheel, so I had somewhat of a dominant position when it came to which way we went.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Andor up the lookout tower, perusing the route on the map

The plan for me was to fetch my pills at the pharmacy, which went with amazingly little hassle, then I got there so quickly that I had the time to check my own cache before Andor's arrival.  And guess what? I was right, not only the password was missing, but apparently I totally forgot to write anything in and/or on the logbook. Phew, I thought, that would have been a bit of a disaster had I not realised that something was amiss and stopped publication at the beginning of last week.  This time I managed to write in everything that I had to  and got to the station about 3 minutes before Andor arrived.  We got one cache right in front of the station, then decided to start with a 7 parter multi, which was all over town. We did parts 4, 5 and 6 on foot, then drove to another cache on the outskirts by the little airstrip, on the way back into town we did parts 1, 2 and 3 on foot, and finally drove to within 300 yards of part 7 which was the box in the woods in one of the rather overgrown parks behind the University. After that we started leaving town  in a SW direction, first picking up a cache by the Arboretum, then on a wooded hill by some nice lakes, followed by a really exciting one across a deep wooded ravine a bit further South. The final one was about 10km from there, on the other end of town, by another lake in the woods, so the tally was 7 and we even had our sandwiches up a lookout tower between cache 5 and 6.

The Royal Palace at Gödöllő

A pretty fishing lake next to our last cache

After I took Andor back to the station I visited Tesco for a quick food shop and drove home via a half hour traffic jam on the slip road off the motorway due to a railway bridge renovation just off the other side of the motorway.  It was contraflow, which in these parts can get totally gridlocked when two vehicles meet nose to nose in the middle arguing the toss for ages about who should reverse back. Never mind, I had my radio on and listened to a guy who I haven't heard in years and whom I didn't know was back on radio.  I suppose I only listen to it in the car and only when I am on my own as Roy is not particularly fond of music while driving.

The rest of the week will be spent covering up the roses with grass cuttings, as, if one can believe the meteorologists, cold weather is coming by the weekend.  We are off to town again on Friday, as I have a concert on Saturday and because Ian and Ros are back next Thursday.