Mingling at the Essex Meet

Every other month we have a meet in a pub somewhere in Essex.  Last night some of the Essex cachers met up at the Thomas Kemble Toby Carvery in Runwell.  It was a really old pub and despite the heat of so many bodies you could smell the dampness of old age as you walked up the stairs.
I met up with some of my fellow TeamSOS caching pals a bit earlier than the official meet starting time and enjoyed a lovely carvery meal.  It seemed that a lot of others had had the same idea too as the pub was heaving when I arrived at 6.30pm.    We had printed vouchers so the meal only cost £5 each.  Not too bad at all.  Just as we were finishing Andy came in from work.  Whilst we all wandered upstairs to join the throng, Andy stayed downstairs to enjoy the relative peace and quiet.

Helen had had a spot of wrangling with the manager as he originally asked for £140 for the hire of the upstairs meeting room.  She had to guarantee that at least 30 people would turn up before the manager let her have the rooms for free.  I think there were a few more than 30 people there last night!  71 caching teams logged their intention to attend.  Here's me looking very hot and bothered from a previous Essex cachers meet.

As always you never get a chance to speak to everyone, but I did get a chance to speak to lots of people.  We all joined together to wish Helen and Brian the best of luck as they jet off to New Zealand in two weeks to go and get married. 
                            
Then it was time for Bob to issue the certificates.  We all love our certificates.   I'm at 3456 caches at the moment, so have to wait a bit for my next certificate, but Jill, my caching partner, received her certificate for her 2000 finds.  I'd also given her a badge for 2000 finds so she was proudly wearing that on her polo shirt.  Oh I forgot to mention the shirts.  There are about 9 of us in TeamSOS and we have a cute little logo, so we bought ourselves some Team polo shirts with the TeamSOS logo on the front and with a tracking number and our caching names on the back.  They look really great when there is a group of us, but we are yet to all be together at the same time wearing our shirts.