indyank - 3:35 am on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Additionally, looking at the pages that Googlebot comes to visit, I see them trying to read pages that do not exist since 2008 and have since been 301-ed to new URLs (on the same site)

This is exactly what i too notice.Googlebot is looking for some URLs that have been 301ed long time back.They seem to be playing around with too many datasets, some of which are too older.