Thursday 9 April 2015

Trigs South African Style

It wouldn't be a proper away-from-home unless there was some trig hunting.  And on my recent trip to South Africa my fellow surveyors humoured me with not one but two trigs.

We had thought they'd be really hard to find and access and were delighted to find what I call a 'drive by trig' near Pofadder, Northern Cape.  Now I'm not adverse to a walk to find my prey, but it was around 35 deg celsius and none of us fancied traipsing around in that heat for long - especially not just to humour Ruth.

So this one was a mere 500m across a 'field'.  "Look out for for the land owner and his gun," Martin helpfully let drop as we entered the enclosure.

"Oh, and snakes," he thoughtfully added.
15 03 27_3 trig hunting (13)
Anyway, what a reward we had.  My first ever trig with not only a top mark but barbed wire!
15 03 27_3 trig hunting (1)
And the top mark did indeed come out.
15 03 27_3 trig hunting (5)
But Ken and I were disappointed to find no spider on top nor flush bracket on one of the sides.  We are so spoilt by the British Ordnance Survey.
15 03 27_3 trig hunting (4)
Ken and I: one for the trigs-we-have-bagged album.
15 03 27_3 trig hunting (8)
After this we spotted trigs absolutely everywhere.  Including just around the corner from where we were staying.  So the next day we just had to swing by to say 'hi'.
15 03 28 Trig School (1)
This trig was called School 80.   [See?  No spider].
15 03 28_3 Trig (1)
And without barbed wire this made it eminently huggable.
15 03 28 Trig School (2)
I could have seen more but I knew my trig hunting fancies were competing with other tourist attractions including cold beer.  I know defeat when I see it.

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