Thursday 6 January 2011

getting fit with the iphone?

Smitonius:

All the lovely food intake over the holiday, such as this lovely mince pie, has taken its expected toll:


Now, in this household, we are quite adept at loosing weight when needed given previous diet experience (succesful Weightwatching and 'no fat diet' prior to gallbladder operation). So we are not worried about the extra pounds, and will lose the weight by eating tasty vegetable curries and lots of fish. But the trick is to make loosing weight through exercise interesting in winter, particularly when joining the gym does not appeal in the slightest. As I am a bit of an Iphone nerd, I found myself reading a post on TUAW which mentioned Geocaching. Now, I realise that I am ten years out of date, as this activity has been going on for years all over the world, but I was genuinely surprised by the number of caches in Britain in general and London in particular. So, we took it upon ourselves to go walking around London and saw some lovely sights over the last couple of days. It may seem odd to wander about following co-ordinates in order to locate a thing the size of a film canister and write out one's name and the date, but it did mean seeing things we simply hadn't before.

This Ram stands proud on the top of an arch hidden in a snicket in the City of London:


these shutters are part of an open air project by artist Jason Goodall in East London. So many ice age animals set loose in the city!


This Victorian building was once the 'Necropolis Railway' for transporting bodies and mourners to Brookwood:
Sometimes geocaches are hidden in places familiar, but revisiting them is always a pleasure:


So, I hope to keep geocaching - even though my knees groaned at the shock of all those extra miles - all over town in 2011.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant and I'd never heard of it before, so well done you!

rachel said...

Sometimes I see people in the Dene looking really puzzled as they fail to find their cache despite being sure they have the co-ordinates right! I haven't tried it, given my inability to map read or follow directions properly, but maybe I should!

Martha said...

Geocaching in London sounds wonderful!!!

Friko said...

I'd love to come and stroll - or even slog about - in London. All I have is muddy and soggy and nasty wet countryside.

Let me come home, please.

Mind you, i've grown so fat in the bucolic underbelly they won't let me on the tube anymore.

actually, though, what is geocaching? can you eat it?

Liz Hinds said...

The Necropolis railway? Wow!

colleen said...

Had never heard of geocaching, but what a brilliant idea... if you have a GPS, that is. Much better than the gym. Might have to find one somewhwere.

BTW - walked past those shutters myself this week! and isn't that ram near Middlesex street too?