To The Manor Born!

Sunday 21st March 2010

So for all 1 of you that read this on a regular basis, you will know that yesterday we were forced to take a cache back with us due to some scramblers, so it was essential that we take the cache back with us (cough cough), it would be rude not to do some more caching while we were there wouldn't it, we don't want to offend anyone do we! So the photo on the right shows Mr Shiltonpig giving Josh a bath in a big tub of stinky and very smelly rain water, Josh really did look worried as he thought bath time had come early! Though the amount of mud on him by this stage, he could have done with a bath.

So where did this bath time escapade take place? The lovely village of Harlaston, by the equally picturesque river Mease. Harlaston has won best kept small village a whole 5 times (brings back memories of the film Hot Fuzz...again over your head if you haven't seen it) and its not hard to see why. The church to the left is very quaint and the nearby Manor House has been around for 300 odd years, very impressive. Josh had been asleep in the car (and Mrs Shiltonpig had closed her eyes as well) when he was rudely awakened by the sound of a chain saw from a nearby resident. This was enough to get us out the car as fast as we can and onto a cache. The best cache of the day took us

on a multicache tour around the village, getting us to work out the date this was built and how many miles it was to Ashby. Then jumbling around all these figures we realised that it gave us the phone number to the local kebab house...no seriously it gave us the place of the final cache hiding place. It was a micro (a very small cache, but larger than an evil nano cache) but very cleverly hidden in a hold in a post held by some plastic wire....crafty, but the on form Mrs Shiltonpig found it again. When we looked up the local neigbourhood watch was just staring at us, so Mr Shiltonpig just stared back, they continued to stare and so it would have continued until the end of time, but Mr Shiltonpig just got bored and went on to the next cache.

The whole idea of having a photo of a river bed weed, is to show you how clear the water is in this part of the world, a lovely little spot and well worth a meander away from the caching for a pleasant walk....(whats that I hear you say, a meander away from the caching...are you not feeling well?) We then drove a little way up the road and walked down a section of woodland and farmland with 4 caches down it. Josh found a pig in one of the caches and snorts his nose several times (he can't make the oink oink sound yet) and was taking a well earned break from the demands of being on Mr Shiltonpigs shoulders, pulling his hair, throttling him at times and whinging in his ear.

Love this last photo, not because it shows up Mr Shiltonpigs ever larger wrinkles on his forehead but the little cheeky face of Josh as he peeps around to join in on the photo. In the background we leave Mrs Shiltonpig to do the hard work and find and log the cache, surely thats what she is paid to do anyway? oh wait we don't pay her...oops. We must have been an hour or two behind another cacher today as they were signing logs ahead of us, closest we have come this year to bumping into some. So hand in hand we headed back to the car and watched Josh run into the puddles on the way back....it really is bath time now!