Indiana Jones - Eat Your Heart Out

After this morning's 4th July shennanigans at Washington Old Hall, which your faithful correspondent found rather heady, and Dr Squirrel found rather dull, we had a spot of lunch and then set off on a little trek in the area surrounding Blanchland, a charming medieval village not far from us.

Like slightly chubbier versions of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, we were on the hunt for buried treasure.

And this time, we found it. Twice.



On the way, we met some chickens. I don't know why I'm telling you this, I guess I just thought it's something you might want to know. The chickens made it clear they didn't like us by making a lot of unpleasant noise until we had passed.

This is me, having just found our FIRST EVER GEOCACHE!! Back of the net! Or in this case, back of the grotty tree stump. I suspect for Dr Squirrel, the best part of all this is in the fiddling around with complicated techno-gidgets, closely followed by being out "in nature". For me, it is undoubtedly the opportunity to scrabble about in an undignified manner getting dirty. It's like a return to something more free and honest. As the website says, you don't stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.

Here is a close-up of the treasure itself. In both cases today, we took nothing and left nothing in the caches. We merely indicated our presence in the enclosed logbook.

Here I am with our second find of the day. Next time, gold doubloons? Arrrr, me hearties.

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident....

....that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yes people, today is the 4th July.




This morning, Dr Squirrel and I arrived at Washington Old Hall, the ancestral home of George Washington, founding father and first ever President of the United States of America. The place was already humming, and we had to park quite a bit further down the road.

In the background, under the marquee, you can see children from two local primary schools ready to to put on their little performances, including a reading from Martin Luther King's famous I Have A Dream speech. The boy in the foreground, with his back to us, is a local school student, dressed in the uniform of George Washington's personal bodyguards. At the appropriate time, he will take the flag to two representatives of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who will raise it on there yonder flagpole. The City of Sunderland has a friendship pact with the City of Washington, DC because of these historic links, and one of the local primary schools is actually named after John F Kennedy.

The Daughters of the American Revolution raise the flag. Then the band strikes up, and the stately garden rings to the sounds of the Star-Spangled Banner.

The United States is unique. A work in progress, a noble experiment. Let us all do whatever we can to make sure that soon, this flag stands once again for freedom.

Noob Cachers Muggled

Dr Squirrel and I have stumbled upon a geeky new hobby to share.

It's called geocaching, and it mostly involves wandering around with a handheld gidget looking like complete pricks, if not terrorists, until you find a hidden waterproof box left by another sad-arse trekkie and tamper with it.

Seriously, it's that sad. If you don't believe me, google it.

Well, the two chubby cache virgins set out this evening for local beauty spot Watergate Park. We are pretty sure that we found the location (it was not too challenging), but despite some extensive scrabbling about, no tupperware container. It was very disappointing, although on the upside, we were good global citizens and removed some beer cans that were lying about (thus following the responsible geocacher's creed of Cache In Trash Out). Either we're such outrageous amateurs that we somehow managed to miss the goodies, or this cache has been discovered and then misplaced by someone who has no idea about geocaching, alternatively known as a muggle.

Given the beer cans in the vicinity, this does not seem an unlikely scenario.

So, a small disappointment there (particularly after scrabbling over rocks and grazing my elbow), but the good news is that Dr Squirrel and I are no longer Geocaching Virgins.

Also, you feel like an away team from Star Trek when you're on the hunt in the vicinity of a cache. Although it would also fit with various Indiana Jones fantasies. Excellent material for the inveterate Walter Mitties amongst us.