Gene Puddle IV: The Undiscovered Plunger

Today was another surprise inset (teacher training) day, so a random day off where nobody does any work. I like big bike rides and I'd invited Ben to join me but he had to play with Erin so I asked Pops instead, not so much a second choice as an alternative.
We picked her up at the crack of 10 something and she couldn't find her own bike helmet so promised not to crash. We got the train up to Fareham and the lift said it was out of order so we wheeled the bikes down the stairs, only to find someone else using the lift. Apparently it was only the Lift Out Of Order sign that was out of order.
 Shortly we reached the beginning of the Fareham to Gosport bus lane and rode around in circles in the middle of the road, because you can see buses coming from a mile away on the straight flat route.
Park #1 is off Cameron Close and we stayed there for 45 minutes making up gymnastics routines on the obstacle course. It may be an inset day for civilised schools, but in the gene puddle it certainly wasn't, and in the absolute silence of a child-free world, we were watched by a single crow as we went about our business.
Next was Obstacle Course Park and lunch at the Sailmakers, our traditional stop at exactly 1pm, with Park #3 in their beer garden. I had scampi and Pops had fish'n'chips so we both got half a lemon which were demonstrably halves of the same original lemon. We chanted 'Lemon it to death' as Bud squeezed them dry over the last scampi.
Continuing on the old railway line, we showed Pops the forts and the house that used to be Fort Brockhurst railway station and the acres of blackberry bushes.
Wooden Fort Park is my personal favourite. I like the extra-large pyramid of ropes and the forts and the maze for blind people, although the zipline is slow. On the way out we saw that the skate park was empty as it was still within school hours and we went in and climbed the slopes and found a huge hole! I called it the plunger and we plunged and sinkered and ran about like mad things.
Broken Park still hasn't been mended so we couldn't go across the obstacles, because too many of the supports are missing. We both had to be helped down.
Noticing a crowd gathering at the school gates, we raced on to Exercise Park where we made full use of the voluntary exercise machines set up to encourage fitness in the local population. We made routines and Pops taught me Ab crunches and that was another 40 minute park. The council were dredging the seaweed out of Cockle Pond with a boaty equivalent of a tractor, piling up the aromatic refuse at the side where some other workmen piled it into a skip. I can absolutely tell you that on any future inset days we should do park frenzy again as they're all deserted.
We nearly fell off the double-rotating roundabout and finally made it to the ferry and cycled home. Nobody was in at her place so I took her back to mine and she played me some Britain's got Talent on the tablet and we both laughed for ages. We delivered her home after a mere 7 hours and I still had to go to Cub Scouts, where we learned to tie knots. In one rescue game, they said don't tug on the ropes too much and our new kid pulled hard and totally destroyed everything, and on our second go I did it gently and we rescued the stricken teddy bear and we won!