Today I travelled up to the Colchester area to find some Church Micros. They were quite spread out in the country side.  Some were multis which took ages to find all the answers and then the few that I found in the town centre were a nighmare because of the heavy traffic, even on a Sunday!  But despite all these obstacles I managed to find 11 Church Micros in one day.  Whilst not a great haul for a full day of caching, at least I have found most of them in that area now.  AND  I now have achieved the Ecclesiastical: An Assiduous Cacher Challenge -  GC3MN3W 

It was a beautiful sunny day, a bit chilly at just 4degrees first thing in the morning, but it soon warmed up to 16 degrees, which surprised me.  One of the country churches I visited was in Aldham wit a lovely village sign nearby.  The silhouette I think represents the WI.

After a full day of caching, I met up with some fellow cachers for a night trail.  I've only spoken to these people on facebook, but on meeting them it felt like we were good pals, all having this great hobby in common.  I was glad to note that others are just as obsessed as me!!
The cache we were after was Nightmare in the Woods - GC40VAP
It's a 4.5/3 difficulty/terrain and most certainly warranted those numbers.  It was hard going over very muddy paths which were difficult to negotiate in the dark.  I just followed the welly boots in front of me - they had sweet little white flowers and kept me distracted from having any scary thoughts about being in the middle of the woods in the dark.    Some of the muddy bits were quite deep (think Dawn French in Vicar of Dibley).
After wandering around for over an hour, and having travelled about two miles, we finally found the cache and were rewarded with a nice ammo can.  Always great fun to find one of those.  We exchanged TBs and goodies and signed the log.  I left a geocoin in the cache which wants to travel to other night caches. 
 
John (grimmerscotting) had swapped it with me at the last Essex meet last Wednesday, so I was pleased to have been able to move it along to its intended location.

There are some really scary people out in the woods at night  -