The Sentinel Steer

Farm animals make me nervous; I admit it.  Until recently, however, contact with farm animals meant passing them by at 70mph or so.  Sure, when the kids were young we had our share of experiences at the petting zoo, and I even worked at one for a month when in college.  But somehow this did not prepare me for some of the experiences that are part of geocaching in southern England.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where the path to the next cache led across a pasture containing either cattle or sheep.  Two groups of caches come to mind.  The first is a pair of caches just outside the Isle of Thanet called "The Inmate" and "H2O no".  These two caches are along the River Stour on the Old Saxon Way (approx along the blue line in picture below), which traces the shore of the ancient Wantsum Channel separating Thanet from the mainland.  To get to these caches, one can go north from Richborough Roman Fort (Green Arrow, point A), or East from the Dog and Duck pub at Plucks Gutter (point B).  Coming from Richborough, the path leads through at least three separate pastures that may contain cattle.  Coming from Plucks Gutter, you pass through both sheep and cattle pastures.  I chose to start at Richborough Roman Fort and end at Plucks Gutter - with my wife dropping me off and picking me up. 

The other group of caches is a 12.5 mile circular walk with 34 caches and a bonus that is located in Essex just outside Swindon.  The village in the lower right corner is called Aldbourne, and the large road from upper right to top center is M4.  This past weekend found me in Swindon, so I did a half circle that took me through a field of sheep and a field of cattle (and a great deal of beautiful scenery). 

Both of these caching adventures were wonderful - done during days of terrific weather.  I heartily recommend both walks - except for the farm animals.  Sheep and cows are very different beasts, as we all know from the tales of the old West, but in my opinion they are both dangerous (I can hear my wife laughing at me, but its true).

Sheep are docile most of the time, its true.  They go about in groups herded by dogs and are seemingly incapable of independent thought.  Other times they are spread out in the field grazing, and seem oblivious to anything human in their vicinity.  The guy who took the video linked to the word docile, above, was on the other side of the fence.  Its easy to feel safe on the other side of the fence.  And on either side of the fence you are safe ... until lambing time.  When they have small lambs that are not capable of running away at a reasonable speed, a grown ewe will charge you.  Let us hope that you are near a fence to jump over, or can in some way demonstrate to the ewe that you are harmless (by jumping in a river, for instance).  Otherwise you are in for some rough treatment. One post to the "H2O no" cache describes an encounter in which the sheep rushed a cacher and he had to jump a barbed wire fence, ripping his pants in the process.  Must have been during lambing time.  When I made the trek in late May, the sheep mostly left me alone.  In the one instance where the sheep, with their lambs, obstructed my approach to the pasture gate, they were easily dispersed by raising my walking stick as though I was Harry Potter and shouting "MINT SAUCE!"

Cattle, on the other hand, are always difficult to predict.  They can be docile, especially if you are on the other side of the fence.  When you cross over into their pasture, however, all bets are off.  After about six different encounters, I can safely say that the best bet is to keep at 100 yards between you and the cattle.  Better yet, make sure they don't see you.  If you must go closer, you may notice that many of them turn to look at you.  They may be expecting something from you.  Hard to say.  Look for the one I've been calling the Sentinel Steer - or the Big Moo.  He probably looks like this:

The rest of the cows seem to take their cues either from this guy or one of his close associates.  I hate to think what might happen if he thinks you are a threat.  More likely he is trying to read you and see what you want.  During the two encounters in which the cows reacted to me in unison, they seemed to think I was there to take them back to the barn.  Imagine entering their rectangular pasture through a gate by the Stour river and facing a group of 20 - 30 cattle - and about 80% of them are looking at you.  Slowly they start to move - toward you.  I did what anyone might do.  I put up my hand and said in a loud, clear voice "Stop!  I'm not here for you, I'm just passing through!.....Please?"  They slowed a bit, so I executed a smart left face and started to walk to higher ground away from the river.  They hesitated.  As I approached the corner of the pasture, I veered to the right, parallelling the long side of the pasture (and the river) as the cattle continued to look at me.  At this point, the Big Moo muttered something and they all started to walk in the same direction as me.  Apparently, the gate through which they return to the barn was in the corner of the pasture to which I was heading.  They accelerated, leaving me behind.  Greatly relieved, I cut behind them and scurried to the small gate at the far end of the pasture by the river.  Fortunately for me, the terrain had enough of a hill that I could reach my gate while they were waiting at theirs, so I slipped out unnoticed.

My second close encounter was quite similar.  I entered a rectangular pen at one corner and noticed a row of 55-gallon (250 liter?) white drums in front of me.  Forty or so cattle turned to look, then came towards me rapidly.  I limited the small talk to "Stop!" and executed my abrupt left.  This did not deter the cattle, who merely pivoted a bit.  Rapidly getting to the near corner and veering right, it became apparent that I was not going to be able to circumnavigate the herd.  I stopped and put up my hand and said in a loud, clear voice (OK, I shouted at them)  "Stop! I have nothing for you, I'm just passing through!" and did an about face.  Perhaps my actions convinced them that I was going to let them out of the gate through which I had come, because they accelerated towards the gate (not toward me, thank God).  One of them even seemed to kick up his heels at the though of getting out of the hot pasture and back to the barn.  When it was clear that there were no more cattle between me and my objective - the far gate - I stopped, executed another about face and hurried along parallel to the fence, towards the far side of the pasture.  All the cattle stopped and looked at me.  Then they seemed to look at each other, and then they just looked down.   Perhaps I confused them to the point that they decided I was neither a threat nor their savior and therefore unworthy of their attention.  Once again I got past the herd intact - raising confidence in my ability to deal with cattle and confirming my assertion that they are to be avoided.  Love to eat them, not to meet them.

And when you get past the animals....

 

  

Getting Around Town - the multicache

Moving to a new place is a difficult undertaking, full of questions ranging from the general (Are these people lunatics, or is it me?) to the specific (Where do I find a good plumber?). It took us a while to figure out what every other American who came along to England apparently already knew: the answers are in the pub.

The challenging thing about coming to a town like Ramsgate is that there are so many pubs. Ramsgate is by the sea and has a long-standing tourist trade, so there seems to be a pub on almost every corner - kinda like Dunkin Donuts in Boston or Starbucks everywhere else. How is one to choose?  Is the key feature proximity to home (your “local”), or is it any pub with a crew of friendly locals who are willing to help? England has some pretty serious drunk driving (which they call “drink driving”) laws on the books, so finding a pub you can walk to has a distinct advantage. Still, without the right atmosphere and amenities, its hard to get to know people well enough to get key questions answered.

When we first arrived from Ann Arbor, MI, we moved into that a part of Ramsgate that was in the middle of a residential area, and there was only one pub within an American’s customary walking distance. We went in once for a drink, and everyone just looked at us and left us alone. It didn't seem a particularly friendly place.

Fortunately for us, when we bought our semi (as in semi-detached house) six months later, there were at least five pubs within reasonable walking distance (which, by then had become somewhat farther than our original comfort zone). Each has its own character and clientele. I think the first one we visited was the Prince Harry, often called simply “the Harry”. There were not many people there, but the pub had internet access we could use while we were moving in. It helped that a couple of our American friends had chosen to live near the Harry and had made some acquaintances there. Once again, the first time we went in there was little contact from others. After showing up three or four times, though, I guess they figured we weren’t going away, so they started talking to us.

The crowd at the Harry was pretty sparse, at least in part because the Harry does not serve real ale. We heard that several of the patrons went to the San Clu for food, so we decided to give it a try. The food at the San Clu is indeed pretty good, and it should be, since it’s the bar/restaurant for the local Comfort Inn. The menu includes typical pub food, Italian dishes and a variety of Indian food, so we continue to go there occasionally to eat. But the beer was mass-produced, and the place lacked the feel of “our local”.

Our third foray, the Honeysuckle Inn, is in a slightly different direction from our house, down a steep hill from the house. Its an older building, and they say a public house has been on that spot for more than 500 years (I doubt the current pub is older than 100 years). We’ve had a good time on Wednesday nights, since they have a good karaoke machine with a great selection of songs, and several people sing pretty well. But on other nights it seems dead. At this point we were envying Goldilocks, who only had to sample three of everything before finding one that was “just right”.

We have since discovered that the Monefiore Arms (aka “The Monty”) is the best place for a good pint of ale, and it has a crew of locals who are friendly enough to give good pointers to a pressing question. Its small; it has a dart board and a pool table, and always has two or three good beers/ales on tap. The owner/operator knows us by name now, even though we don’t stop by more than once a week. We’re still getting to know some of the local characters. There may seldom be very many people there, but we’ve never walked into an empty pub.

So how does all this relate to geocaching? Early in the development of the pastime, someone decided it would be a great idea to expand the hunt. Instead of looking directly for the cache, you could have people go from place to place, picking up hints to the true cache’s location at each ”waypoint” until they had enough clues to converge on the cache. This variation is called the “multicache” and in many towns and villages of this corner of England, this has taken the form of a stroll around town. Introducing waypoints at historic places or well-known landmarks helps you get the lay of the town. Maybe next time you won’t get hopelessly lost. Ramsgate is large enough to have had two multicaches.  The one on the left is “Ramsgate – a Grand Ville”.  It is a relatively short walk along the clifftop on the east cliff of Ramsgate.

The other, depicted at the right, is “Westcliff Wanderer”, which goes along the west cliff of Ramsgate.  Neither alone gives a picture of the whole seafront, and even both together don’t begin to cover the entire town, but doing both caches gives one a picture of the key areas of town and establishes landmarks for further investigation.

This type of cache has many variations.  I've done caches with eight different waypoints on the path to the final cache.  They work really well in smaller towns and villages (go from historical marker to historical marker), in cemeteries (from grave of notable citizen to grave of notable citizen), or to give a tour of a large park.  If the area covered requires that one spend more than about an hour and a half to get all the clues, the cache is probably better served as a series of separate caches.

Regardless of the venue, multicaches are a good way to get out for a walk and investigate you local surroundings.  You even pass by a number of pubs.

The First Steps

Our first steps are always the same. Slow, halting steps taken at home - or in this case, near home - that end with a bump to the backside. But before we get to that story, a goal, like any military campaign, must have a plan. Being a former Army man, I used the "Backwards Planning Procedure". This may sound goofy (perfect for Planet Thanet), but all it means is that before you can achieve success you must visualize it, take it apart into the required pieces, and put them in some sort of order.

Visualizing this success is easy, because Geocaching.com is linked into Google maps, allowing people to get a map that displays up to 500 geocaches. There were, at that time, only about 45 geocaches in Thanet, so it was relatively easy to get into Google maps through Geocaching.com and get a visual representation of Thanet with all the geocaches depicted. This is the picture today:

Geocaching.com does a neat thing: after you have logged a geocache as "found", it turns the icon on the map from the symbols you see above, to a smiley face. So visualize all the symbols on the map above (at least those north of the Stour and east of Reculver) as a smiley face and you are visualizing success.
The next part of the Backwards Planning Procedure is to figure out how to get to success from here. You don't need to be a genius, you just need a spreadsheet. So I looked up the names of all the caches and put together a spreadsheet with each cache's name, a "count" column and a "found" column and I was ready to go! Of course, I should have put a time boundary on the goal (OK, how about before we leave the UK?) and a road map of which caches to do in which order (I'm not that anal!), but what the heck - why not just get started ?
We had moved into our "new" house (N 51 deg 20.478min E 001deg 25.769min), which is reasonably near Ramsgate town center, the beach, and King George VI Park, a short time before. The King's Cache, a small traditional cache that is now archived, was supposed to be at N51 20.564 E001 26.040, just inside King George VI Park. The hint said "under the bench by the ivy covered stump". So I convinced my wife to come along for a walk and we set out to find it. Unfortunately, there was a significant amount of tree cover in the area, so the GPS receiver was having issues seeing the satellites. We got reasonably close, and started looking around. We found benches, but no cache. It is a beautiful park, with a nice children's play area and large grassy open areas and a refreshment stand that is open in the summer, but we just did not see which bench was the right one (there are many benches, quite a few stumps, and ivy all over). So we went home and I gave the spreadsheet a new column: "not found".
Faced with this first failure, I considered ... Do I (1) change the goal to a number of caches and ignore this cache (2) contact the cache owner and ask him for more clues or (3) go back by myself and figure out what I did wrong? Changing the goal is by far the easiest thing to do, since there are huge numbers of caches out there and SOME of them have to be easy. But persistence won the argument, so before e-mailing the owner I went back for a second look. Albert Einstein would probably tell you (if he were alive today) that in taking a second look, you should probably do something different. Approaching the cache from a different direction, I noticed a small bit of wood that may at one time have been a small bench attached to a wooden fence that was now overgrown with ivy. Nearby was a large (3 feet tall) stump, also covered with ivy. Sitting on the "bench" I reached down into the ivy and found the cache. The first step had not been pretty, but the journey had begun. Luckily the bench held while I filled out the log:
"Finally, four months since buying a semi-detached only a third of a mile away, I found time to visit this cache. Nice spot. Took nothing, added a generic US quarter. TFTC"
TFTC = Thanks For The Cache

The Isle of Thanet

The first thing a modern explorer notices about Thanet is that it is not, in fact, an island. It sits on the northeast corner of the very southeast of England, sticking out as though a toe on a giant foot. This was not always the case. When the Romans made their first encampments in England, in about 43AD, there was a body of water later called the Wantsum Channel that separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of what is now called Kent. It was quite wide at that time (a mile or more in some places), and ships sailed through the channel on the way to Canterbury, or around to London.

The Wantsum channel filled in slowly, such that the lsle of Thanet has the river Stour (about 30 yards wide in most places) to its south, but no significant water border to its east. The river Wantsum is just a collection of ditches at this point, and one can walk from Birchington-on-sea to Reculver. (Map taken from Google Maps). Thanet has a reputation that is not entirely enviable. Many of its residents are on the older side of the curve. In addition, many of the residents have, shall we say, a unique view of reality? Whatever the case, the area is occasionally (affectionately) referred to as "Planet Thanet". It took a while for the area to catch my fancy, but now it seems like the perfect place to set a geocaching goal: Find all the Geocaches in Thanet!

All the geocaches in Thanet

Geocaching is a great pastime. I've given a bit of description of the idea behind geocaching and some of the mechanics on the page "geocaching", which you can access at the link just below this blog's header. You can also get a great deal of information of this type from the official website or the official blog.

The greatness of geocaching lies in the fact that it combines some of the essential elements of life in a way that removes much of the clutter.

Nature - while there are many caches paced in urban settings, the most memorable are often in less traveled places. I've found many after a long walk through the forest or fields (or both). Some you will want to visit again, perhaps with friends and a picnic, while others are just points of passing interest, but many are in places of natural beauty.

Curiosity - many of the geocaches out there have been placed in order to point out a particular relic of history, freak of geology, or curiosity of nature. In my current neck of the woods (SE England) many describe the history of the local area, frequently focusing on a church, or a monument, or an artifact.

The Hunt - Someone has put out a challenge and given you the key to finding the cache - some coordinates and hints. Can you find it? If you don't find it right away, is it because it is no longer there, because you were not quite clever enough to decipher the clues, or because the person who hid it made some sort of error ? After a few dozen caches, you begin to get a sense of whether or not you are on the right track, but there still will be those caches that are frustrating - until you find them. Then they're ingenious!

The Gadgets - Geocaching requires at least one gadget: the GPS receiver. When the pastime began (with Dave Ulmer on May 3d, 2000) personal GPS receivers were a rarity because until this time the satellite signal had been intentionally degraded by the US Government. Current GPS receivers can estimate your position to within 10 feet or so, although the accuracy of any given reading is likely to be poorer, particularly in poor weather, or when under trees or near buildings. Most handheld GPS units can average several readings, so standing still for a minute or so can increase accuracy dramatically. Of course, then there are the cache containers themselves - they can be ingenious too.

The Camaraderie - While solitary geocaching is common (I often "hunt" alone), most people geocache in family groups or with friends. Geocaching is quite popular with older couples whose children have left the house. It gives them a great excuse to get out together, get some exercise and share an experience.

The Competition - While not intrinsically a competitive sport, there are more than a million caches out there; how many have you found? How many different countries have you geocached in? Are you a well-rounded geocacher (i.e. have you found caches that have varying degrees of difficulty and terrain ratings?) How many times were you the first to find a new cache? All these things (and more) can be used as items of competition or pride.

Most of the time, however, its not about the numbers, or keeping up with the Joneses, but rather about setting and achieving personal goals, which can be quite satisfying. This is how I came to the goal of Finding all the Geocaches in Thanet.