10 January

Saturday morning found us on the road to a Geocaching Event on the north shore of the Thames Estuary, near Southend-on sea. A Geocaching event involves someone posting a notice on the Geocaching website that they will be hosting a gathering for all who wish to participate, usually at a place that has some significance, be it geographic, historical, or ecological. In this case it was at Hadleigh Country Park in a reconstruction of an Iron Age Round House. What also interested us was the longest Pleasure Pier (sounds naughty) in the world located at Southend-on-sea. So we set off early in the morning in a landscape entirely covered with hoar frost; all of the trees, even the tallest were covered with frost. It made for a surreal landscape.
We were on the road for less that an hour when we pulled off on a country lane for a quick grab of a cache at St. Giles church. This church had seen a lot of reconstruction, with the east end being mortar and rock decorated with flint nodules.
I have included Leigh Smith's reply to my query about the black rocks for those who are interested. For those who are not just skip the italics..
They formed when the tiny siliceous fossils that had been deposited in the calcium carbonate "soup" (sediment) of the Late Cretaceous were dissolved and then precipitated as quartz around small quartz silt grains in the sediment. Over time , this process formed the nodules we see today. (the very small amounts of organic matter that were present also collected there and, thus, the black colour typical of most "flints". Thus , flints in the chalks!
It is always fun to see if the local church in BBC Mystery TV stories has walls of flint. This guarantees that the featured village is situated on chalk!! Those medieval characters were not
into make-work projects! They used the local materials!
And once upon a time those chalk ridges were covered in flint nodules, from the differential dissolution of the calcium carbonate portion of the chalk. Now a days the ridges are just grass
covered , as those old guys had collected all the durable building materials long since!! (And those English types think grass is the natural state of those ridges!!! ) All the flints are gone and the trees that once were there have long since been cut down - for charcoal.
The west end of the church boasted a wooden spire supported by brick walls containing very old irregular bricks supported by 'S' shaped brackets and modern bricks.
Our next stop was Norsey Woods, a 165 acre woods with a 4000 year history. The hoar frost was still with us as we set out on a well-groomed path.
Our first cache brought us to a tumulus, a Bronze age burial mound, in which the cremated remains of two humans were found.
Our second cache took us deeper into the woods to a portion of the Deer Bank, a massive ditch and bank constructed by medieval land owners to to protect their wood, timber and hunting rights. The banks kept the deer in and the cattle out.
Our next stop was The Duke's Head where we had a very filling lunch in front of a coal fire. Once again Alexander had to settle for a hamburg without the French's Mustard he so loves. I was able to sample another fine real ale, Adnam's Southwold Bitter. So far all the ales I have sampled have been excellent.
After lunch it was on to Southend-on-sea to check into the Gleneagle's B&B and then see the sights. The kid's were jumping for joy when we found that there were carnival rides and ARCADES!!!; more legalized gambling for minors. Maeghan and Alexander had money to burn and the energy to try out every arcade in town, or so it seemed. Luckily there were pubs interspersed among the may arcades.
We had tried to take the train out to the end of the pier, but was told the pier was closed because it was too cold(?).
We made it an early evening as the next day was to be a busy one. Unfortunately only Jeff and I had a decent sleep; I kept Alexander awake with my snoring and J.J. kept Maeghan awake with his licking and pacing.
Sunrise the next morning was cool, crisp and clear. I took J.J. out for his morning ablutions and newspaper reading and shocked another guest, who was bundled up in a coat, scarf and hat. I was just in jeans and a T shirt and I heard him mumble 'must think it is spring, daft colonial' or something to that effect.
After a delicious breakfast (I was tempted to try a kipper) we set off to meet some other geocachers and do a multi-cache (find three caches that would give hints to the coordinates of the final cache) in the town before heading off to the event.
After a few wrong turns we found the Hadleigh Country Park and the reproduction of an Iron Age Round House. We checked in, said our hellos, picked up directions for the event caches and struck out into the park. We decided to do only a couple of the caches as the whole route was 5 kilometres long on muddy trails.
It was a warm, sunny day so we drove back to Southend, hoping that we would find the pier open. Sure enough it was and we took the train out to the end, 1.3 miles out into the Thames Estuary. The only building we found at the end was the Lifeguard Station; there were remnants of other buildings destroyed in the fire of 2005. I think the kids were hoping for some more arcades, but they were disappointed.
Jeff and I fired up our GPS units and we started back to the mainland, looking for a cache located somewhere about halfway along the pier. We located the shelter where the cache was hidden and it almost eluded us, but as we were leaving a last quick look by Jeff showed us the cache.
We ended our day on that positive note and headed home.
After we had finished our lunch on Saturday I loaded the coordinates for the Duke's Head into my GPS unit and it took us no time at all to find it on our way home. Jeff, Alexander and I opted for the roast beef dinner, while Maeghan, on a recommendation from Alexander opted for the hamburger (without the mustard). I wanted to sample another real ale but the other tap boasted a picture of Santa Clause and as I was unsure how much Elves knew about brewing beer I was prepared to have another Southwold Bitter. The bartender (is that the proper term over here?) pointed out that they had another Adnams ale - Broadside, so I tried a pint and it went down so well I had another.
With Maeghan plugged into her iPod and Alexander watching a movie we had a quiet drive home.