Busy long weekend

It's been a busy weekend.

Saturday was off to Skegness for the first day of the Skeg to Ness geocaching run. We set off very early and made it to Skegness reasonably uneventfully except for the satnav having a moment and taking us on a random route through Spilsby. This wasn't so bad though as it was a very pretty little place.

Skegness was OK. We didn't see much of it but it reminded me of Rhyl or Blackpool done right, but it was relatively quiet, and bright sunshine and a big ice cream helps make anywhere look nice. After that it was on the road for the geocaching. Not much to say about it really except it was a lot of driving through country roads in the sunshine, stopping pretty often to find a cache. We did really well the first day. There was a distinct point though when suddenly everyone had had enough, and we headed to the Travelodge in Lincoln. We had a pretty good meal at a Fayre and Square place, where Steve and I had a cookie dough pizza, which is basically a gigantic cookie with chocolate sauce, marshmallows and chunks of chocolate brownie all over it. Absolutely delicious.

Sunday didn't start well, at least not for me. I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, unfortunately while it was occupied, so it had to go in the bin. Then I had a massive nosebleed while I was showering but didn't notice until I smeared a massive load of blood across the towel. Also it was raining and I hadn't brought a coat, and had to borrow Andrea's Mum's coat, which is a sort of salmon pink colour.

That day didn't go so well. The weather was a definite hindrance and we were all pretty soaked through for most of the day but fortunately it wasn't all that cold. The rain did ease up every now and again but on the whole it was foggy, grey and grim. Morale was low, and a fair few unfound caches didn't help. However, we had a debate and decided to stay in the Holiday Inn at Nottingham so we could carry on the next day. We got massively lost on the way there, and somehow ended up in Derby, but we made it and after the day of being soggy, the rooms were like paradise. There's a Hungry Horse next to the canal, so we had another decent meal there, made slightly odd by them playing retro 90's chart music the whole time, accompanied by a mute TV with Gary Barlow. Odd.

The next day was much better weatherwise, so we made good progress. We started out by visiting the Games Workshop main office where they have Warhammer World and giant space marines, which was pretty cool. After that I drove us until the insurance ran out at midday, and we covered a lot of good ground until one of the GPSs lost a load of caches, causing a delay while we reprogrammed the other one. There were a few DNFs but not enough to break our spirit, but while we were on the Peak District, morale began to flag slightly. We knew we had a long way to get home and the car was low on diesel, but we had come far enough to make the remainder doable in another single day trip. We headed down to Buxton, filled up, and headed home.

We might not have done all the caches, but it was a great experience. There was plenty of beautiful English countryside to be seen and it was really good fun. Despite the horrible weather on Sunday we remained largely in good spirits.

Today I met up with my Dad and sister to go and see my brother who is over from Berlin for an international retreat in Whitchurch. It was a bit of a trek as we got lost, but we picked him up and we headed into Ellesmere because it was close. We sat around in a cafe having coffee and cake and then ended up having fish and chips because he hadn't had some in a while. It was a good day and it's always great to see him.

Work tomorrow. I wonder how the backup system held up over the long weekend.