I KNOW YOU

if, like me, you spend your life running scared, the words up there are not words you want to hear. they mean trouble. they mean that you have been rumbled. they mean that whatever it is you have been doing is about to come crashing down around your ears.

last night i was camouflaging a tupperware box so that i could plant it as a cache. the paint went a bit runny but i didn’t really mind. i had the spot all planned out - one of my favouritest places in the land opposite john donne’s summerhouse and close by the side of my beloved wey navigation.

here are the details:
park up by the anchor at pyrford, surrey at N51.19.377 and W000.29.392 and walk half a mile, or…
park up at the ruins of newark priory at N51.18.254 and W000.30.581 and have a much nicer walk of just under a mile.
the cache is at: N51.18.830 and W000.29.487
just opposite the beautiful summerhouse there is an anglers’ track and the cache is under a tree, just to the left, about 12 foot away from the towpath.

i planted my cache but i could see a national trust nazi boat just a little further upstream and i could smell the burning wood. the national trust own the whole navigation and i don’t trust them at all. apart from spoiling my plans for a narrowboat way of life they have also made claremont lake too expensive for me to get into. i wondered if them national trust fellers would spoil my nice new cache, or burn it, so when i walked past on the way to get co-ords for the carpark at newark priory i asked them if they were just tidying up or something. and then i heard the dreaded words.

i know you.

i nearly shit myself. there were three blokes and a couple of dogs doing a bit of land work and setting things on fire and looking generally how i actually want to look. and one of them, not the one i had asked, said ‘i know you’.

it was lex. a man i hadn’t seen for at least six years since we worked together at american express. for fu(’scuse me, doorbell) sake! how does that work? there i am trying to mind my own business and then i bump into a bloke i used to work with years and years ago and he’s doing the very job i want. he’s a lengthsman on the wey navigation now and we spoke of this and that and swapped e-mail addresses. i told him about geocaching and showed him the cache that i had just set. he said that they would not burn it. not this year anyway.

i was gobsmacked - in fact i still am. i sent him links to simonG.org and to my blogsite when i got in. if my dreams come true he might become a regular and maybe a geocacher.

a nice bloke at newark bridge let trouty use his loo because the seven stars wasn’t open. we walked back and saw lex’s boat moored up at walsham gates, the only turf-sided lock on the wey. i could smell the weir. when river water gets aerated it has a special smell that takes me back so many years.

on the way home we called in at the anchor and at the plough in byfleet village. we must have walked at least eleven miles, probably more.

i’m still stunned by happenstance.

grub stats: cold salmon off the cheap shelf with cous cous and red-wine mushrooms
booze stats: erm, i’ll take the fifth on that one
happiness stats: extremely high

when my cache gets approved i’ll be even happier.

goodnight, dear reader, wherever you are. but wherever you are, make sure you get down the wey navigation a.s.a.p. - before lex sets my cache (weyside wander) on fire.