Pump up the Ham!

Thursday April 1st 2010

In 1989 a new tune graced the pop world and helped dance music along....pump up the ham , now some of you nit pickers out there might think that they are singing jam and not ham....but you would be wrong. Talking about pumps and ham, here is a photo of a pump with Josh trying to find a cache (actually he was palying with his stones, he still has a thing for them) and we were in the village of North Luffenham in Rutland. This village is worth a fortune....a house on this very street that Josh is standing is worth £620,000 and thats after 18 months of house prices slumping! Of course we bought 2, and then we woke up....

To be fair the houses are worth it, just look at the one on the right....so we were on a small weekend away to the area of Rutland and Cambridgeshire and furthering our Little Quest adventures, but lets face it, it would be rude not to take in some other caches. It didn't start well, there were three nano caches in this village, and as avid readers of this blog will know, team Shiltonpig like to refer to these as evil caches as you can never find them. There was one by the pump and even little Josh couldn't find it...drat....and double drat....curse those dreaded nano caches!!!

However our only do not find of the weekend was behind us, we were only going in one direction....upwards....well that was the direction our gps was pointing, and we must always trust our gps! The other 2 nano caches were located near a sign and a fence, both were cleverly hidden, but when you consider that the nano caches are the size of a finger nail, no wonder they are tricky. And to be fair that was all the caches we did today....so to break with tradition we shall share what we did in the evening. We went to Oakham, Oakham is the major town in the county of Rutland, and is still a lovely town by any standards.

Now granted we know that we are in the country, but at 4.45pm on the eve of a Bank Holiday weekend in a tourist town, you would think that there are places that serve food at this time, and when I mean food we don't mean a mars bar and a packet of crisps but something that Josh can go "num num" to and actually mean it. After visiting several public houses, and getting used to the huge intake of breath as the barmaid would say "food....at nearly 5pm...on a Thursday?..." we finally found a place to eat, at the appropriately named "Odd House Tavern"...we fitted in just right. A good meal was had by all....including Josh experiencing his first beermat, and then he wanted more and collected some more.

But team Shiltonpig had been thinking about the new baby in their lives, no Mrs Shiltonpig isn't pregnant, rather the tadpoles we now have. Mrs Shiltonpig couldn't even walk down the road without seeing something that reminded her of them....even a sycamore seed looks like one. Now if you can't see the likeness, don't panic, this is just the weird and wonderful imagination of team Shiltonpig. So after a gentle start, 3 caches and a mere .75 of a mile walk today it was off to bed to endure Josh snoring. Please feel sorry for Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig as we had to suffer the same bedroom as our dear son....altogether now, 1....2....3....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz