Kelso has been hit by a plague of 2CVs, five thousand of them – the world 2CV festival has landed rather like the canisters in HG Wells ‘War Of The Worlds’ – first you see a few of them and are intrigued by the different looking beings and then when they are everywhere the danger is apparent and it is too late – travelling in convoys on ‘raids’ and ignoring most of the driving laws (apart from speeding for obvious reasons).

They are supposed to be contributing 1.4 million to the Kelso economy – which I think breaks down to mainly petrol and oil – speaking to traders in general who have spent more on advertising and preparing for a deluge of ex-hippies (and not so ex hippies) and teachers on all sides of the roads, with very little return. Wetherspoons had a beer and food tent and they had their own currency ‘The Kelso’ which was traded in large volumes for beer (also in large volumes).

They certainly chose the week with the worst rainfall in the whole year and I don’t envy their position camping in this cold and wet weather – although it can be argued that people do not visit Scotland for the sunshine. Kelso residnets kindly offered shelter to those with young families and in all the 2CVers seemed to have a whale of a time.

Still one of them visited our geocache at Lempitlaw and left a pink model 2CV (shortly exchanged for a white stress cat toy by ramblers from Galashiels).

A fine summer night and with Kelso full of drunks for the Civic Week it was time to test out geocaching.com – geocaching is the sport where someone puts a set of goodies and a notebook and pen into a tupperware container with the latitude and longitude stored on a web site for others to find it – and swap out a gift for something you bring.

GPS is not pinpoint accurate otherwise intercontinental missiles constructed by schoolchildren from googling ‘ICBM for the DIY enthusiast’ would be a danger – so they are accurate to within a few metres…

We decided to play it difficult by going by the latitude/longitude details of the geocache and not by making a waypoint and seeing the map, which would have been too easy. As a result we ended up driving over the Catcleugh dam, parking in a layby with a very smelly toilet and navigating to what we thought was a deserted wood. We found a hole with a spade and started to dig – thinking that this was an especially difficult geocache – whilst Stuart was digging and excitedly reporting that he had hit something, I checked the GPS to find that we were at least 2 minutes east of the reported location and several seconds north. It then turned out on closer examination that we were actually in someones back garden – so sheepishly made our escape along the A68 back to the smelly toilet and the car and drove to the next likely spot.

After finding ourselves at the side of the reservoir with no clues we then turned on mapping to find out that it was actually on the other side of the reservoir and raced around as we were losing the chance to both find the geocache and dine. A forestry track and a short walk led to the exact GPS reading – success – well sort of, remember GPS is not pinpoint accurate to foil those pesky missile building kids. Fifteen minutes of scurrying around fairy dells, falling into ditches and wondering if this was really a serial killers web that we had fallen into, whilst rereading an unhelpful encrypted clue with a ‘click here to decrypt’ tantalisingly unavailable on the printout – Stuart braved the slug infested logs and rocks to find the magical black bag and the geocache treasures.

We swapped a nice yellow duck, which we attached to our GPS, with an ‘Only Fools and Horses’ DVD and added our names to the guest list and congratulated ourselves on our quest. No holy grail but a yellow duck was an acceptable compromise.

We raced back to find all the restaurants enroute closed (in the height of tourist season they cater for anorexics in the Scottish Borders). We made it back to Kelso and the Waggon Inn for a welcome drink and fodder and drove back avoiding the Civic week drunks.

We then planted our own Lempitlaw geocache, and then headed off to a geocache with a ‘Travel Bug’ in it – an item that wanted to move around and had a goal.

The nearest geocache to us with this was at Harbottle Castle, near Rothbury, in a castle moat inbetween various military danger areas (we almost got knocked off the orad by a racing military ambulance). Alasdair and Stuart vied to be the first geofinder whilst we examined the poetry on a standing stone. Ali ran up the steep grass walls of the moat with a geocache treasure – we went through the goodies and selected the one eyed Mike (Monsters Inc) with a ‘Travel Bug’ dogtag on him – he wanted to be in Paris – didn’t we all.

We dined in the Cross Keys pub in Thrupton, which was very busy for a Wednesday evening, but attractively served and delicious fare including the two eyed Mike’s Nile Perch which was superb – watched over by a fairy in the terraced garden.

The next couple of caches were near Tweed Horizons at the Temple of the Muses – deep in a nettle field – my legs are still stinging as I type. The cache even had a bottle of sparkly wine in it – since Ali’s watch had been trashed in the washing machine he seized the Simpsons watch as if fate had led him there! We also caught a lovely light over the Eildons from Scott’s View and from the Wallace Statue. Secondly the lovely Greenknowe Tower outside Gordon with the cache hidden inside.

Our first virtual cache was at Sodden Flodden with a side trip to the wonderfully bizarre “Cement Menagerie” and the default and totally delicious luncheon in the Blue Bell Inn at Cornhill.

I signed up to the naked art installation – a seminal event at the Baltic Gallery by Spencer Tunick.

The first attempt failed – no reply from the web site and telephone answering machines – eventually I got a human on Sunday morning at 7:30am – the installation had already taken place at 3am. Groan. I thought that I was to remain fully clothed all day.

However, I received an email when I returned from swimming – there was going to be a special 2nd installation recorded live on BBC3 – that evening. We raced up to Edinburgh, yes in the opposite direction – to see a souterrain and then rattled down the A1 to Newcastle with Stuart at the wheel and his L-plates leaving us loads of room as cars avoided us.

Everyone met in the glass walled ‘Pitcher and Piano’ bar opposite the Millenium bridge. I met Adrian, an architect, who had been at the 3am installaiton which lasted about 4 hours longer than they were told and included stepping into vomit and chips after a Saturday night in Newcastle, and then rained on for good measure. A couple of girls in the bar showed me their bruises from earlier this morning – what had I signed up to?

It was a sociable evening in the bar and I met the lovely Tilly who knew one of our vacation students, Ross Horne, at Oxford Uni. Spencer kept giving briefings in the bar and then as the sunset went, it was time to get outside and get naked. There was around 250 people.

We had a clothed rehearsal and met the people sharing our bridge space. With a burst of applause as we all dropped our trousers at the side of the river and packed our clothes into our red carrier bags then we moved swiftly onto the Milennium bridge past the groin height BBC3 cameras. I ended up in the centre of the bridge jammed between a blue haired busty beauty and a gal with a star tattoo at the base of her spine.

We had to stand arms length from each other, we had to close our eyes as Spencer screamed at us on his megaphone – we then had to lie down on the gravel path which was sore and then stand up and wave like some demented Jane Fonda workout. At one point we all slapped our own buttocks to release the gravel from our backsides.

And it was over – time to get dressed, say farewell to naked companions and head to the bar to celebrate. There was a naked busker on the Quayside “I’m busking in the nude, busking in the nude” who got quickly moved on by the constabulary.

Stuart got a friend to tape the BBC3 programme and received the text message back – I can’t believe what I am taping – are you in Newcastle? We borrowed the tape (which she didn’t want back…) and it was an interesting programme with one naked shot of me but dangly bits hidden by the blue haired gal in front.

All in all a fantastic experience and a jolly nice set of people to spend an evening with. And we get a signed print and get to see the exhibition at the Baltic in January…

Mow and Mowhaugh are places up the Bowmont Valley, outside Yetholm, and places that used to exist as towns and no longer do – leaving in Mowhaugh a set of ramshackle farm buildings at the side of Mow Law and at Mow some tombstones lying in nettles.

It has taken us three attempts to find the place – the first time we ended up along ‘The Street’ near Hownam, the second up Mow Law and dislodging a stone which rolled down through the roulette wheel like iron age ring to fly out and hit one of the buildings. It certainly didn’t gather any moss but a lot of momentum.

A flight over the Borders later that day saw us attempt to see Mow from the air – but rotor from the complex Cheviot hills made us turn back.

We finally made it by Stuart driving the All Road over a ford and Mike in shorts being attacked by nettles and thistles to see the tombstones. I ended up walking over a Ford to see if I could see remains of a church in the river but ended up with a fine stick to help me back over the ford from a lovely tree at the side of the river.

Tim Tam Slamming is not an olympic sport yet – it consists of biting the diagonal ends off a TimTam biscuit (an Australian version of our Penguin biscuits) and sucking up tea, coffee, milk and honey, ovaltine or whatever happens to be in the cup or mug at the time. The biscuit gets soggy (reverse dunking) and has to be shovelled into the mouth within seconds before there is a catastrophic structural failure of the biscuit – and a mess over the desk. Your hands end up covered in milk chocolate in any event – which is not necessarily a bad thing.