Menombling; And Tuesday Came...

If I thought I had been having a good time up till now, Tuesday proved to be, perhaps, my favourite day of all on this geocaching marathon with Aitch. She was going well beyond her own target of ten a day and Tuesday of the week brought the bumper crop... by the end of it, if I recall correctly, she announced 26 located (may have been 27). The day dawned perfectly - warm, light breeze, sunshiny.

Search start was delayed somewhat in the morning, however, due to an issue that had not made itself entirely clear when I attempted that van charge at Drumlanrig Castle. I had simply thought it was a faulty unit, but the event of Tuesday morning caused a rethink.

Briefly, the ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) system had, until May 1st, been charged to users' accounts on a monthly basis - but quite often a couple of months behind actual usage, which was really imprecise for budgeting. They were upgrading to a pay-as-you-go system, which is much preferable. However, it turns out that things had not gone swimmingly. I drove us into Moffat carpark, from whence our cache search would commence, in order to leave The Grey sucking juice whilst we played. The power tower said "access denied"... say what?! I tried the next door tower, but the same. As there was a car charging on the other side, I knew there was power there. So onto the helpline it was. A very nearly 40 minute wait for the operator to come through already told me there was something major going on, because CPS, on previous calls, have been very prompt to respond. Poor Marty sounded very haggard for mid-morning. He explained that the changeover had presented some major technical issues, in that a lot of customers - most, in fact - had been marked as non-payers of the first bills produced by the new system and thus had their accounts blocked! For some, it repeated. Most, though, it only happened once and as he talked to me he was working the keys to get my account reinstated. Finally, pretty much an hour after arriving there, Grey was hooked up and happy.

The first find of the day was right beside the carpark. I had brought along my 'helping hand', which proved its worth on several of the finds. We proceeded along the Annan Water riverside walk and round to the main road back into town, all down the central street, and eventually back round to the car park.

Along the way, caches were located (or one DNF - did not find, at that church), among bricks, beside fences, in trees, down steep banking, up high in vennels, on walls... they can be very sneaky, these cache setters! Several of the caches I managed to reach where Aitch couldn't quite manage - and vice versa. We also had the aid of a couple from Fife who were part of the group and they managed two that were beyond us both. Teamwork, dreamwork! When hunting for the 'secret code' in the vennel (called Syme Street - little more than a side alley), a German couple turned up as I tried to puzzle out what we were seeing - and it was thanks to the husband twisting around the clue that we realised we were looking at entirely the wrong part of the passageway. It's a friendly occupation, this treasure-hunting lark.

In addition to all the finds, of course, came the little bits of learning about the history and the neighbourhood. The Old Well Theatre had us wondering if it had been a converted church, but the limited info I could find suggests it has always been a theatre... and "was fully refurbished in 1997", as stated proudly on the Visit Moffat site... which, is nearly thirty years ago! Due for another?

Around at the Station Park (opposite the carpark), we sat and enjoyed the early evening for a while, beside a monument to one of the big names from WW2:

Shame about 'the sandballing', which appears to have happened over the weekend, as Aitch managed a photo from Friday where it was free of this abuse.

As we had stopped earlier in the afternoon to have a full sit-down lunch (at The Star Hotel... where we had a slightly Fawlty Towers experience with the lady on duty! The food was a bit ordinary too, but filling enough), neither of us particularly wanted to stop for tea at this point, so we got back to Grey (by now full and satisfied), and drove into the hills in search of more... That will be shared for tomorrow's Nature Friday post, but here are more Moffat shots to end this part of the full Tuesday.