OK, here's a yarn for you.
Last night I had a curry.
This morning I woke up to my alarm going off earlier than it should for a Sunday - this was still early even taking into account that the clocks have changed.
My day planner contained the following:
Go to Alfreds Tower, get Scout Travel Bug take to Brownsea Island.
Judging by the state of my head, I'd say alcohol was involved: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A4960
So, following some cups of tea and some toast I set off at the crack of dawn and fetched the bug, it's close to home and I havn't visited the cache before.
Alfreds Tower (GCEA92) is a sort of pointless tower thing (also called "A Folly") it is run by an organisation called The National Trust and you can give a bloke 30p and you can climb to the top and see a fantastic view, other than that it serves no purpose.
By co-incidence, Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour is also run by The National Trust.
On the door of Alfreds Tower there was a notice with the opening times. I was there at about 09:00 this morning and the tower opens at 11:00. It also said that the last day it was open for the season was Sunday 28th October, reopens April 2008.
I left Alfreds Tower to the rain and the wind and headed back home, this 28th October fact in the back of my mind.
On returning home I looked up opening times at Brownsea and discovered that 28th October is also the last day of the season.
So "best get down there today" I thought. This bug was late for it's date.
So a couple of hours later I arrived in Poole and hunted down the yellow booth to by a ferry ticket to Brownsea Island.
The booth was firmly closed, however this one was at Sandbanks. The harbour was looking decidedly choppy with the wind and rain, and indeed a Yacht passed by with a snapped off mast, a flapping pile of sailcloth and accompanied by a few life boats. Perhaps there would be another ferry at Poole Quay.
Got to Poole Quay and found another closed booth. This didn't look good. Plus there were three ferries moored up on the quay looking decidedly closed for the winter.
Pub then.
Had a dull but edible fish and chips in the Lord Nelson on the quay and started looking to see if there was an alternative cache where I could drop off the bug.
On leaving the Lord Nelson we noticed one of the ferries appeared to be just arriving from the island so maybe there were open after all! Perhaps I could just buy a ticket from the Conductor or whoever they have for crowd control on a ferry.
Wandered down the quay whilst the ferry finished arriving and discharged quite a lot of people.
The man on the ferry said that they had closed the island early today because of the weather, it had become dangerous to dock at the island so they had just been bringing everybody back.
So plan B then: the bug is now staying in a rather nice location overlooking Poole Harbour and a fine view of Brownsea Island. I have put it in an envelope with a note explaining that it wants to go to Brownsea Island, just in case anybody picks it up and takes it back to Canada or something.
Sorry I couldn't quite get the bug to it's destination in time for its date. Or even in the right year.
Maybe a local person with their own boat will be able to drop it off before the year is out...
[This entry was edited by evenwiderangle on Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 10:44:16 AM.]