S"troll" around Thringstone

Sunday April 4th 2010

Having a child is never an easy experience (just ask my parents). Josh at times can be a challenge...for example when its time for his sleepy in an afternoon what does he go and do? stay awake...so two tired parents give in and decide to take him out for some geocaching. The photo on the left is captured in desperation as Mr Shiltonpig has had enough (for any social services or concerned readers looking at this, please note that Josh was never hurt, we love him very much and is currently back in his dungeon...oops sorry cot sound asleep).

Have you ever drove through a village, thought "mmm thats a nice village" carried on driving and never thought of that place again? you have I am sure of it. However today we broke a trend, we have made a stand and said no more! We must visit a village properly...and so we did and were glad we did. Thringstone has pages upon pages on it on wikipedia if you don't believe me click on the link (can't believe you don't believe me) and so is obviously a village with a lot of history to tell. The cache in question, was a multi cache, one that requires that you go and collect info around the town before you find the cache. Mr Shiltonpig points to a sign that says "Please clean up after your Dog"...in our case we have to clean up after Josh (yes thats right he poo'ed again).

One of the interesting places that the cache took us was to a graveyard and to the final resting place of Charles Booth he helped document working class life in London and changed government policy on poverty in the early 20th century. His gravestone is one of the nicest we have ever read...I would quote it, but then some things you must see for yourself. From time to time carrying Josh on my shoulders can be a challenge, so we like to let him down and let him run on his own for a while. Problem is to a 1 year old everything is exciting...Josh has 3 things at the moment that he likes....sticks, he will chase us pretending the stick is a snake. Next up, stones...nothing exciting about them, but he will just carry them around.

Lastly he loves flowers, he could spend ages looking at them...he takes after his dad in that respect (hopefully he will take after his mom, and be actually be able to name them all). Now for regular readers of this blog you may remember the exclusive we brought you about the troll on Sinfin Moor, well it seems we have been able to capture another world exclusive...the wife of the Sinfin Moor Troll captured in photo for the 1st time. Puts the "troll" into the word stroll (Clever ah...we thought it was good too!!) The cache took us to Grace Dieu woods and we were just a little early as bluebells will blossom here any day now.

The cache should have taken about an hour to complete, but clearly this was without the Josh factor. Changing nappies stop, cake stop, juice stop, trainer falling off stop, kicking daddy stop...this all adds up to extra time and in fact it took 25 hours 42 minutes and 3 seconds. But the fact is we did find it...and by now Josh loves to open the cache and empty all the contents out...he is very helpful, and teach them while they are young thats what we say! This was a cache unlike others that we have done before, reminds you that caching is about digging that little bit deeper and finding out about the history and places that you live around. So wherever you live, take some time out to learn about you town, village or city, you may be surprised by what you uncover.

So for all you froggy fans out there as promised an update on how they all are. Within 24 hours half had hatched fully and within 48 hours all of them had. They have grown so quickly that we now have 3 pots with them all in, some of them are getting so big now and have grown so quickly that you can start to see some kind of froggy face on them. A few even have very small legs on them....its crazy we have only had them 4.5 days and yet the speed at which they are growing has even amazed us. Josh loves them, he can even say tadpole now, and makes fish noises whenever he sees them.