I went to a Reef gig a few months back.
(Yes they did sing place your hands.)
It was in a pub, in a beach, in Cornwall.
Happy days.
While I was taking everything in, I noticed a quote on the wall.
“At the beach life is different.
Time doesn’t move from hour to hour but mood to moment.
We live by the tides and follow the sun.”
It just struck a chord.
Ah well, back to work in the concrete jungle.
Bank holidays.
You’ve got to love ’em.
That little bonus day off.
And so, August found me down in Cornwall seeing family.
Tehidy Country Park, which you may remember from an earlier blog, was hosting an event by the Rogue Theatre called the Wild Woodland Summer Ball.
Armed with the kids on a sunny Saturday, off we went.
On arrival, we queued up outside an entrance to the woods to begin our magical journey.
As we walked through the eerie woods, the actors put on little performances that were part of the stories to be told.
They ushered us through the woods to various performances before we eventually reached a clearing where the main event was to take place.
There was a stage, a woodland stew bubbling away, a sheltered area for the musicians and a little stall selling food and drink.
We took a seat on some hay bales and took in five stories from ‘The Book of Fae.’
A brief interlude saw some wand and sword making as well as some face painting.
(Do you think JJ could sit still for a full face painting? See the photo below for the result.)
It was all good fun if not a little hard to concentrate on with JJ deciding to explore the woods rather than find out what happened to the last of the dragons, wife to the new king.
After a song and a dance with the actors, it was time to leave and head back to the land of normality.
While I had my two months off, we spent a week in Cornwall with Wifey’s family.
A nice little break to relax.
Unfortunately Cornwall has a habit of raining every time I visit.
I try not to take it personally, but then again I’m not very good at taking a hint.
Fortunately we got away with a couple of sunny days.
We tried to squeeze in as many activities as possible.
Fishing – we caught about 60 fish in a couple of hours!
A trip to St. Ives.
A date night with Wifey.
Another trip to Dairyland – you buy one trip and get another free.
And our niece’s sports day.
Too much to talk about so here’s a bunch of photos to sum it all up.
So at long last, an explanation.
In simple terms it’s a global treasure hunt.
You have to look for a ‘cache’ that could be the size of a broad bean up to much bigger boxes.
At a minimum they contain a log that you sign once you have found them.
The larger ones could contain anything.
You can take what you want from the contents as long as you replace it with something of equal or greater value.
There might be something inside called a ‘trackable’.
In most cases this is a piece of metal with a code that allows its owner to track it wherever it is in the world.
The original owner will put it in a cache and the next person to find it can take it and drop it off in another cache once they have recorded the find online.
These trackables often have a mission like “I want to go to Spain,” or “I want to go to Lapland to meet Santa.”
The idea is that slowly but surely they make their way there by people picking up a cache when on holiday, business and so on.
So where are these caches and how do you find them?
They are literally all over the world.
You may pass one every day on the way to work, or in a park, or driving about without realising it.
First off you download the free app (on Windows Phones – I think you pay for android / apple).
It will track where you are through GPS then show the location of the nearest caches.
Then you follow the GPS and the clues to the location and then hunt it down.
It could be up a tree.
Disguised as a rock.
Magnetically stuck behind a road sign.
Behind a loose brick in a wall.
On a keyring attached to ivy climbing up a tree.
You get the idea.
I introduced my in-laws to it, who live down in Cornwall.
Lo and behold there were loads of caches nearby.
So we set off on one of the local walks and found a few.
Wifey is yet to be hooked.
I’m sure she’ll want to join in soon even if she does think it’s a bit geeky.
She’ll put up a fight to begin.
Then she will give in become addicted to geocaching too.
I don’t normally do two blogs in one day.
But the weekly photo challenge is done every Friday so thought I’d best be quick.
Been a bit busy.
The theme was sea.
This shot was taken when I was down in Cornwall for a week.
We had a day of glorious sunshine.
Taking full advantage we went to St. Ives.
JJ hadn’t dipped his toes in the sea that much.
When it’s happened he’s not enjoyed it at all.
So it was with great surprise when the reverse happened.
He walked about with Wifey and Nanny, and loved it.
We tried to take him out of the sea and he kicked off.
Can’t win.
I drove down to Cornwall on Friday night.
JJ asleep in the back.
Wifey asleep in the front.
Four hour journey ahead.
It’s good to have intelligent conversation en route to keep me awake.
…
It’s a pig of a journey as all the nice scenery to enjoy is blanketed by night by the time you get there.
But the journey is always worthwhile.
I introduced the in-laws to Geocaching (explanatory blog to eventually follow).
We went to Carn Marth, which is on their doorstep, had a few geocaches and supplies stunning views of the local area.
I forgot to take photos as I was caught up in the geocaching.
Next time.
We found four so it was a good introduction and further fueled my addiction.
We also celebrated my in-laws Ruby wedding anniversary – no mean feat by today’s standards.
A really nice meal with friends and family to celebrate an awesome achievement at the Treleigh Arms near Redruth.
I found out that there was a geocache where we were eating so the boys snuck off after the meal to locate it with success.
But, we didn’t take my mother-in-law.
A mistake not to be repeated.
We also went to Tehidy Woods for a walk as mentioned in a previous blog.
A beautiful place that links up to the North coast of Cornwall.
There were some geocaches in the local area but we didn’t find any unfortunately.
We also took the kids to a really nice local park called Heartlands which I recommend.
It has a park and an old mining complex.
And a geocache.
You beginning to get the idea?
Anyway, a selection of photos from our trip.
If you haven’t been to the area, why not?
This week’s theme was focus.
I was in Tehidy Woods at the weekend, down in Cornwall.
It’s a beautiful place with lots of wildlife and even a walk down to the North coast.
En route there was a squirrel who allowed me to get quite close.
But he didn’t like me taking photos of his nuts.
Boom boom.
The opportunity lent itself to play with depth of field and aperture to meet the challenge.
