Laughter is the best medicine

"Laughter really  is the best medicine" A new "night-time" geocache had been published some weeks ago located in a wood not far from home.  We'd never had a convenient dry and mild(ish) evening until recently so plans were made to finally tackle it as the weather forecast was good. The cache involved following a trail of fire tacks; small luminous pins on the tree trunks that gleam when lights are shone on them.  It was so much fun, we never stopped laughing all night as we wildly waved torches around,crashing and stumbling our way through the trees to the prize

Feeding Romans

The weekend was fairly hectic as we were involved with the AGM of the VIIIth Legion, a Roman re-enactment group organised by friends of ours.  Saturday and Sunday saw us preparing lunch for over 20, with homemade leek and potato soup to warm the wind battered soldiers fresh in from the parade ground on the windswept shores of the Solway Firth. Others attending the event has also brought some edible contributions including cake so everyone sat down to a veritable feast. The company was agreeable and the crack was good with much sharing of ideas and increasingly unlikely tall tales

Reivers Riddle

I had so much fun solving the Werewolf and Whitespace puzzles that I've decided to set one up of my own. Living in Carlisle I'd like to capture the history of the notorious Border Reivers and locate the final geocache in a place that has historical associations with them. That shouldn't be too difficult to find as the area is littered with buildings and place names that give clues to the region's turbulent past. Fortified farmhouses, earth works and the division of land into Marches that are still ceremoniously recognised today are all worthy legacies of earlier centuries of lawlessness

More on the werewolf.........

We've finally cracked the Werewolf!!  It's actually taken us less time than we envisaged as we'd had a head start with some of the puzzle solving techniques deployed in The Beast of Bowness and Whitespace.  Solving the werewolf was a brilliant experience, requiring us to research information, interpret cryptic clues and eventually locate a remote mountain location using cartographic techniques before the final co-ordinates were revealed.  Now we're busy planning a trip south to Blackstone Edge on the Pennine Way to find the physical container. It'll be over 20 years since we last visited so it's about time we returned!

Japan

The news of apocalyptic events in Japan has brought the important things in life into sharp focus. It's truly hard to comprehend the extent of the horror that residents of Japanese seaboard communities must have felt as they experienced the catastrophe. And for those who lost their lives, as a result of the tsunami. it's to be hoped they had little awareness of what was actually happening as destruction overwhelmed them. The power of nature is truly terrifying and on occasions such as this, we are reminded of the relative impotence of mankind and the delicate, fragility of life

International Women's Day

I had a wonderful evening yesterday in celebration of International Women's Day. Judith, who lives in West Cumbria, had invited a number of girlfriends to share a meal and favourite readings or poetry written by or for women. I drove over after work clutching my contributions of a Victoria sandwich cake and "800 years of Women's letters" to my chest. The food contributions were delicious and the poetry and prose readings had been chosen with great care.We moved from laughter to tears, from quiet reflection to exuberant celebration and revelled in the joy that the evening had brought us

Shrove Tuesday

Lemon and sugar, anyone?  Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday (Easter really is late this year)so there was the inevitable clamour for pancakes from Andy and Nerea. As I don't like the hot, greasy miasma that pervades the whole house after cooking them, they're a luxury food in our family, reserved for high days and holidays.  Andy has a fairly good wrist action (accrued no doubt, through years of bowling in the cricket team) so he adopted his traditional role of tossing them part way through cooking. His dexterity with the frying pan resulted in just one landing on the floor.