caching in Sheffield

I went up for the weekend to visit Sarah to go caching. As she finished her last exam on the Saturday I arrived soon after. We got ourselves packed and set off straight away as we had already planned where we would go on our first day. We had planned to walk around Dam Flask Reservoir which turned out to be a really lovely place to spend a Saturday afternoon. It was a bit unfortunate that we could not cycle round the excellent path, but it was a bit narrow and uneven and I think cyclists would probably be at risk of running over little children.

So we walked all the way around. The caches were all easy to find.

We managed to get a few photos taken whilst walking. It was a gorgeous sunny day, we were so very lucky with the weather, being so high up in the Peaks - about 1000 feet.

We came across this cute little frog whilst walking.

And these beautiful foxgloves.

It wasn't meant to be

On 1 May I had great plans to go to Langdon Hills country park and watch the sun rise. There were supposed to be morris dancers "dancing the sun up" and then I planned to go to the Rivers Tey and Chelmer to cycle appox 5 miles to pick up 20 caches before getting back home at about 11am, after a nice early start. This meant that I could spend the rest of the day with Andy.
Well it really wasn't meant to be. For starters, I couldn't remember where the morris dancers were going to be, whether it was at the rangers office on One Tree Hill or at the main Westleigh Heights car park. So I drove past One Tree Hill, saw just two cars at 5am and thought they must be dog walkers, expecting there to be more cars if there were going to be morris dancers and all. So thinking I was running a little late I raced the two or three miles to Westleigh Heights to find the gate down and a note indicating that the morris dancers were at One Tree Hill. So I raced back, thinking perhaps they had already wandered away from the Rangers Office and I was going to miss out on all the fun.

I arrived at the Rangers office at 5.10am to find just the ranger and two members of the public and NO morris dancers. They had let the ranger down without even the decency of a phone call. Very disappointing. So we stood for a while waiting for the sun to come up. I didn't have my GPS on me (it was in the car) so didn't know exactly where West was, but we all had a good idea. So we stood there for a good half hour, thinking where is that sun? Then by chance I spotted a red glow behind a tree, and on taking a few steps to my right saw that the sun had already risen! DRATS. I missed what I got up at 4am to see! We wandered over the road to see better and watched the sun rise further up the sky. I took some photos, but was a bit disappointed with them as they really didn't do the sunrise any justice at all. After half hour of watching the sun rise further in the sky the Ranger kindly took four of us (two more had turned up) for a bird walk in the woods. He pointed out birds and helped us to identify the birdsong. It was quite interesting.

So after this I headed off to Hatfield Peverel to do my caching. I got there at about 7.20am. Got my GPS, bike and backpack out. It was a beautiful morning, this is going to be a great trip, I thought. Darn I had forgotten to load the co-ords into my GPS. Never mind, I had the co-ords printed out, along with the clues. So I spent twenty minutes loading them up and set off. But I just could not make head nor tail of it at all. Nothing seemed to tally up with the map. So I thought, okay, I'll go along the River Chelmer, literally just 500 feet from where I had parked up. I struggled lifting my brand new bike over the difficult bridge. It had a concrete slab on it with 1951 on. I knew there was a cache nearby but I couldn't find the co-ordinates for it. So I cycled up and down the River Chelmer trying to work out what was wrong. Then I gave up on that and just as I was about to lift the bike over the bridge to head back to the car, I realised I had a flat tyre. Bloody hell. I've not even cycled a mile yet. I was so disappointed. Oh well, I can walk the River Tey series, it's only three miles. So I put the bike away in the car and set off trying to work out what was wrong with the GPS co-ordinates. I suddenly then realised that the co-ordinates on my piece of paper were slightly off due to my messing around with the programme on the computer. I had completely the wrong co-ordinates. They were close, but just slightly off. There are several different types of co-ordinates that you can get and I had the wrong ones. So not to be thwarted. I am a determined bugger as you can see, I worked out from the clues and the map that I had printed out where four of the caches, along the road, might be and managed to pick three of them up easily. Thank goodness my trip out had not been a complete waste of time and petrol!!!! On trying to pick up the fourth cache, I had parked on the side of the road and was just about to get out of the car, when two horseriders came along and just stopped behind me. I thought that they might move on soon, but after waiting ten minutes they showed no signs of moving. Perhaps they wanted me to move. So I took that as a sign that I really was not destined to do this series today.

Went home very disappointed. It looks to be a lovely walk/cycle and I will come back and finish it off one day.

Team S-o-S go to Kent

Team S-o-S on 29 April 2011 - from left to right - Barbara, Alan, me, Bob and Andrew.

There are about seven of us that make up Team S-o-S (Southend on Sea); we don't all always go and today there were just five of us. Jill and Ralph had other plans for this auspicious day. Prince William was marrying Kate Middleton today. But Bob had other plans! So he invited whoever wanted to join him on a caching trip around the Sunday Stomp series which is East of Swanley. Alan, Barbara and Andrew and I decided we wanted to avoid the day long news story of the wedding. I was quite happy to view the pictures and highlights when I got home.

I knew they would all walk quicker than I could, so I took my bike. I am so glad I did, because despite having some problems with the bike and obstacles we came across, I would never have managed the 10.5 mile walk at their speed.

Anyway we all met at Bob's house. Alan came in my car to keep me company; I had the bike in the back seat, so could only take one person. Andrew and Barbara went in Bob's car. We set off just after 8am; there was a slight hint of drizzling rain, but it disappeared after five minutes. We had no rain all day, despite the threat of some showers, just south of where we were walking, so were very fortunate in that respect.

The 30mile drive, which inlcuded going across the Dartford crossing was uneventful, the crosssing itself being very quiet at that time in the morning. We parked up at the suggested parking spot, literally within a few feet of the #30 Sunday Stomp cache (GC2RFTC). There were 30 caches in this series; we hoped to pick up some more along the way, so this was a good start. The log was signed and we got ourselves ready for the rest of the series.

Some of the paths were very overgrown with nettles, which made riding through them interesting! There were a few stiles to begin with, but nothing too onerous. We found the caches easily and all was going well. Most of the caches were double pots, to ensure the logs stayed dry. This idea seems to be spreading from its origins in Sussex. Then we came to #8 of the Sunday Stomp series. We crossed over two stiles and realised we were in a very small field with no visible sign of the way out. We walked towards the corner of the field where there was a hedge and found hidden right in the corner a stile with barbed wire all over it. The hedge was growing over it as well, so this made it quite tricky for everone to get across; heaving the bike over was also more difficult. There was a cache under this stile; we signed the log and moved on to the next tricky obstacle. We crossed this next field and could easily see the stile. However when we got there, we were all absolutely gobsmacked at the nightmarishness of this obstacle. There was the stile, a bit rickety, with the barbed wire that we had seen on the previous three stiles. The "obstacle" was on a steep slope of about four foot going down. Immediately after the rickety barbed wire covered stile there was a gate, which had to be held open. Then immediately after that there was a two foot wide footpath with an electric fence on one side!!! I wish I had taken a photo of it so i could post it somewhere warning other ramblers of the worst stile ever!! I don't think the farmer wanted anyone crossing his field!

After that, all went pretty smoothly. I was able to keep up with everyone as I cycled along and they walked.I did have to walk some parts, up a steep hill for instance, but it wasn't a problem at all and they were all very kind and helpful.

We got to Sunday Stomp #13 and in between this one and Sunday Stomp #15 there were 10 caches from JazzyJessups' puzzle caches. These puzzles were all solved before we set out. I had managed 8 of them, and Bob had done them all. We detoured from the Sunday Stomp series to picke up these 10 puzzle caches. There were very well thought out. The two that were train related were near the train line, there was one driving related and that was hidden in a tyre. I was very impressed with all of the puzzle caches and gave some of them a favourite point. One of them however was "under concrete" and at this time of year, it was also heavily guarded by knee high nettles. I couldn't believe Bob and Barbara as they both dove in on their knees on top of the nettles to search out this cache. Bob had looked for a time in the most likely spot and we all tried to find where else it might be, when Barbara looked in the same place and found it. Hooray. We were so glad to get this one; many before us hadn't been brave enough to battle the nettles.

When we had collected all the puzzle caches we decided to stop for lunch as we were all started to get a bit tired. I had an energy drink - just the thing to keep me going. Just as well as the next nasty obstacle faced us. Very steep steps to cross over the railway line. I would have struggled with just the steps, but there were loads of nettles too and of course I had to try and carry the bike as well. This really did take all my strength. Fortunately on the other side there was a nice tarmac path to go along for a few of the next caches. We picked up the next three no problems, but cycling back over a particularly stony part of the path, I managed to get a puncture. Oh no. Worst nightmare. I carried on carrying the bike for the next two caches, then dumped it in the long grass at the edge of a field, near a road, to pick up when we had finished the series. Luckily it was still there when I did come and collect it a few hours later!

So the next part was on foot. Luckily we were on the home straight. We had just picked up Sunday Stomp #21 and had just 8 more of the series to go, with a few extra caches along the way. Just appox three miles to go. They were all still walking faster than me, but I just about managed to keep up. We walked along a river for a little while. We came to a viaduct with a pub underneath and found someone who could take our photograph. We were very tempted to stop in the pub, but with only five or six caches to go and the promise of returning to the pub once we had finished, we continued on.

In this photo - Team S-o-S consists of (from left to right) Alan, me, Bob, Barbara and Andrew

We picked up two extra caches and then did the final one in the Sunday Stomp series. We all jumped into one car and nipped down the road to pick up one last cache before picking up my bike and going to the pub. This last cache proved to be very tricky indeed. I hadn't realised that it was actually a 4* difficulty. Not sure if anyone else had given that much thought either. We thought with five of us looking we could get this one easily. Well we searched and searched. A couple called Jan and Keith, who Barbara and Andrew had introduced to caching appeared. They had been following behind us, being very fast walkers they had caught up with us, despite having started three hours later. They hadn't had the detour of the puzzle caches though. So there were five of us in an alleyway/footpath looking everwhere. The traditional cache was called Hawk Eye. So we wracked our brains, drawing on our the experience of our collective 6000+ cache finds between us. After a good 30 minutes we gave up and started to walk towards the car. As usual we all gave the place one last look as we disappointedly walked away, when Bob suddenly spotted it!! HOORAY. Found it. We were so chuffed to end the day on a high note.

We went back to the car, pleased to have finished an excellent day's caching, picked up my bike and went straight for the pub for a nice cold pint.

Cycling round Essex

Wow cycling round Essex is a totally different ball game to cycling round Kent! It was much flatter, with the few hills being very gentle. I did a nice little series - Round the Teys. It's near Colchester and around the villages of Little Tey and Marks Tey. I had a great time cycling round, the caches were, apart from 2, very easy to find. I started at number 3o at 8.45am. The highlight of my day was number 11. The cache was nicely placed in the branches of a tree at shoulder height - a nice easy find. What happened just after that was the best bit. I accidently went the wrong side of the hedge, so ended up in the farmer's back garden. The farmer and his wife were really lovely about it, I apologised profusely!! As I was walking along the field next to his garden there was a sheep who had literally just given birth to two lambs. She was licking the gooey stuff of them as I walked past. It was truly amazing - laming live in real life. What a great memory to treasure. The farmer's wife knew all about geocaching and even said that she knew where there was one a few hundred yards from her house, and if I couldn't find it, she would show me where it was. After checking I had enough water for the rest of my trip, we said goodbye. Shortly after, I stopped for something to eat and drink as I was about half way round now. Cycling really is working out for me, as I would never have been able to walk the 10 miles round this lovely little series. I finished at 1.30pm and was still feeling energetic enough to pick up a few drive by caches on the country route to the main road home. I managed to pick up 11 more caches making my total 1234 - ha ha, what a great number. Most of the drive-bys were pretty straight forward and I managed to park within a few feet of them. One of the caches was the other side of a river, not sure if there was a bridge to cross this river as I couldn't reach the cache due to the footpath being totally waterlogged. I only had lightweight shoes and didn't fancy wading through the mud. I was only about 350 feet away - how frustrating. The next tricky one, before I reached the main road, was about 8 foot high at the back of a sign. Fortunately I had my trusty walking stick to hand which I used to pull the cache out and after signing the log, I used the handle end to very carefully place it back. Luckily the cache was magnetic so that made the job a bit easier. A bit of a tricky one for shorties like me! So all in all a really good day, with the iphone battery about to run out, I headed home.

Laying a cache

I've laid 19 caches so far, and Sarah, being a newbie wanted to lay her first cache with my input. So when I went up there a few weeks ago we set about laying her first cache. She wanted it nearby for easy maintenance and quite sensibly wanted to just do one first to see how things were with having to maintain a cache before considering doing any more. She'd already picked the area, so one afternoon we went over and had a good look around. We found a likely spot and proceeded to lay the cache and cover it up with the usual cacher's stick'o'flage. Then we preceded to have great fun 'marking' the co-ordinates of the cache. I had my simple garmin e-trex and Sarah had a Garmin Oregon 450. Hers seemed to have been closer in the co-ordinates when we were out caching yesterday and it was interesting to note that most of her co-ords for this cache were always one or two points fewer than mine. We both wandered in and out of the bushes with our garmins - it was great fun! :) A nice start with a nice traditional. Just need to go home and set it up on the website. But first I thought I might plant a multi-stage Church Micro. There aren't too many Church Micros 'up North' so I thought it would be good to spread the word, as it were. We walked up to the church and made sure we found a spot that was more than the obligatory 520 feet from Sarah's new cache and another one nearby. All was good, we found a great spot the magnetic nano after having found some gravestones for the clues. As it started to rain we headed home with all our figures. We started with Sarah's cache and set about filling in the straight forward online form. It is pretty easy to complete, as long as you have done your homework and gotten all the required details. When we completed the form, we pinged it off for the local volunteer reviewer to check it met all the geocaching criteria before being published. What we didn't know as we set about loading my one up, chatting and then getting ready to come back home, is that the reviewer had already published her cache and two cachers had found it!! All within an hour. I couldn't believe it!! Our local cacher can take several days before reviewing and commenting if there were any issues. Thankfully Sarah's cache had gone ahead with no problems at all. Now I wish I had signed the log and been a FTF.! Never mind. It was quite cold and getting dark plus it was raining, so despite getting lost trying to get out of the city and ending up going past Sarah's house and the cache twice, we didn't stop so I could sign the log. She was very excited and watched eagerly as another cacher came by later. It is always very exciting to lay your first cache. The online form and advice given on the website is very straight forward, making it easy for everyone to lay their first cache.

Rother Valley

I went up to Sheffield to spend the weekend with Sarah. We planned to meet near M1 Junction 31 where I got a quick cache and dash Motorway Madness cache. We met at the south entrance to Rother Valley Country Park with the plan to do a big 7 mile circle. It cost £3 to go to the middle of the CP to park the car, but we decided to start one end rather than in the middle.

We said goodbye to the boys who went home for a game on the PS3 and a nap! Sarah and I set off with our backpacks on, feeling fresh and eager for a fun day of caching.

At the start it was spitting a bit with rain, but thankfully that soon cleared up and we stripped off our cardiagans and rain coats as the weather warmed up throughout the day.

We were attempting the 17 caches in the RVCP Rother Valley Country Park series (GC2E4H8). Most of the caches were at the base of posts and the pots were very similar, so it was quite an easy run to be honest. We walked along the edge of a golf course and then started to walk uphill. In the middle of the series was a stand alone cache called Rother Ramble (GC2CGAZ). This was the higheste elevation of the day. It was quite a climb, but the views were amazing. Sarah spent some time looking for this one. It was a little confusing, but did have good idea attached to it. There is a sculpture with a hole at the top that, if you are 7feet tall, you could look through and about 50 feet away would see the smiley face of the cache. Unfortunately Sarah and I are a little vertically challenged so didn't get this one straight away. After following the cachers trail though, we got there in the end.

We carried on, more posts. Then we attempted the Waleswood Wander (GC2B77Y) which to be honest wasn't as good, despite being set by the same cache owner. In fact one cache was laid in the open, quite easily muggable. Sarah wasn't too impressed!! Near one of the caches was some orange water - Yuk!

We carried on, down into the valley and stopped for a nice ice cream, which was made difficult to eat by the number of midges flying around. I took this crazy view whilst having a little lie down. Throughout the series of 16 caches you had to collect six numbers, three black coloured ones for the northings and three blue coloured ones for the westings. Sarah and I very carefully checked each one, and seemed to have been the only ones to have successfully collected all of these numbers and found the right co-ordinates this weekend, which was just as well, as we didn't have a "phone a friend" up here! There was a group of 5 people and two pairs of cachers doing this circuit this weekend. So I was pretty chuffed with our prowess! hee hee. It did take a while to find the actual cache though!! The grass is quite long and tufty and the cache was lying just under the grass at the side of the path, with no obvious stone or post or anything to give away its location, so we fortunately had gotten lucky with this one. We ambled on to find two more. One of which we couldn't get because there were about 8 lads hanging around nearby with no intention of moving. So I staggered back to the car with Sarah slowly ambling beside me! I was knackered and could barely walk.

Whe we got Sarah made a rather lovely dinner of jacket potato skins with some yummy filling and a gorgeous butternut squash risotto. After a bottle of red wine I was practically falling asleep by 9pm so clambered into bed and slept in till late. It was brilliant not having to get up early to let the dogs out!! After a very nice cooked breakfast we drove up to Meadowhall and got Andy's birthday present. A North Face puffer vest. It actually makes him look slimmer!

Then Sarah and I got a few drive by caches on the way home, with Andy being a wonderful chauffeur.

When we got home we sorted out Sarah's first cache and went and laid it. We both had great fun walking backwards and forwards checking out the co-ordinates using our Garmin GPS'. Then we set off to lay a Church Micro one. When we got back Sarah sent off her cache for review and before Andy I had even set off to go home an hour later, Sarah's first cache had been published and found by two cachers!!! I couldn't believe how quick that was! Typically it was raining when we left, but I managed to get one last quick cache before we joined the motorway. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disappointing one as it did not have the promised trackable in it and indeed it was only a 35mm case so a lot smaller than I expected. I couldn't leave my last trackable behind. I had spotted the cache and was standing in the rain, when along came a friendly rottweiller who wanted to say hello. I was trying to shoo it off and her owner was trying to get her to come with him whislt I stood there like an idiot in the rain!! LOL We drove the long 4hour journey home, with me sleeping most of the way. What a great end to a fabulous weekend.

The good and the bad

What a day I had last night trying to do some caching. I took the dogs with me looking for a new series of 4 caches nearby. The dogs managed to get covered in mud whilst playing in the only bloomin' mucky puddle for miles! I was so cross that I really wasn't thinking properly so didn't read the hint properly and couldn't find one of the four. Two had co-ordinates that were spot on and the caches were brilliantly well hidden. A great start for a newbie cacher. The last one was right near some houses and the road. Unfortunately with the dogs we were pretty conspicuous and my caching pal, Jill, had said that she thought the co-ords were 100feet out. So I gave it a miss today. Went back home in a bad mood because I could not find two of them. However today, I went caching again straight from work - no dogs this time. It was a much better experience. I've never been to this area before and the woods were very lovely. The three caches I went to look for were very easy to find. One was under a bridge. As I cant't kneel I ended up sitting on the bridge which went over a little ditch. I did get some strange looks! So all in all I went home happy. It's going to rain tomorrow, apparently, so no caching I guess.

River Stort cycle ... part one

My caching pal, Jill, and I decided to cycle along the River Stort on Saturday. We drove to Harlow and parked up near the train station as we planned to cycle as far as we could and get the train back. I wanted to park as close as possible to the train station as I knew we would be pretty tired by the end of the day. As it turned out we were closer than I had thought, which was very welcome.

We parked up, got the bikes off the back of the car and

cycled up to our start point of the river. Last year I had already gotten the first two caches, so Jill quickly notched the first one; unfortunately the second one has gone missing. In the first five or six caches we found a collection of Brussel sprouts with different coloured crowns. When we got home we found out that these Brussel "scouts" are owned by a local scout troop and are in a bit of a race against each other. Jill and I both took one each. I am going to Sheffield next weekend so hope to find a nice little spot for my one when I get there.

We set off on our journey to get the rest. I was pleasantly surprised with the new fantastic footpath that has recently been laid. This made it much easier to cycle along than the expected rut in the grass.

We had a good journey along the river. The weather was not too cold, but unfortunately we didn't have the glorious sunshine that had been around all week whilst I was stuck in my office at work! As we cycled along we easily picked up all the caches which were about a third of a mile apart. We noticed that all the ducks were paired up, along the whole route. Clearly it must be mating season.

There were also some pretty cool statues along the river. Our favourite spot was at Mill. There was lots going on here. The bridge here is an amazing structure with lots of metal and glass artwork. It was all we could do to distract all the 'muggles' around so that Jill could quickly sign the cache. There was a group of people mucking around with canoes and a couple with two gorgeous black labradors who were setting cray fish traps. Once the cache was signed and put back without anyone noticing! we walked on a few feet and Jill exclaimed "Pigs" and there they were. Two very large pigs enjoying the little bit of warmth from the sun that was struggling to shine through the cloud. One pig was lying in ash. Another lovely statue was nearby. We were directed by the footpath signs through a mill where apparently some artists live and work. Their work was all around and it was lovely to see. Also, amazingly enough, there was a boat named after me!! Annie's launch. How exciting. We went on to get a quick church micro nearby and then re-joined the river path to continue our journey.

With excellent paths and fantastic pieces of art dotted about, we were having a wonderful time picking up caches and cycling along a lovely part of the River Stort.

odds and ends and then the BIG EVENT

I've been doing a few odds and ends of caching since the London trip. We went to see my niece and her new baby on Saturday and picked up a few caches in the area. But I wasn't feeling well, so had to head home and leave the dozen or so that I had planned to do. Next time....

A picture of baby Zack with his proud mum and a picture of the little 'un with his very proud great grandparents. Just need to wait for Richard (Zack's grandad) to come back from Australia next month and we can try for a five generation photo shoot with Zack's great great grandparents!!














On Sunday, I was still feeling a bit weak so stuck to some easy quick cache and dash's in the 'fairly' local area of Grays. What a nightmare it is driving around the place and Chafford Hundred nearby. The place is like a maze. I seriously was beginning to doubt I would ever find the way out of Chafford Hundred.... and I was getting very hungry.

The first two caches I went for were pretty easy to find, although i had struggled to find somewhere to access the park last time I was in the area. Lucky Dipping was the first one of the day for me, once I had finally found my way to it; somewhere to park and a way to access the park. A nice pot to start with. Then on to a micro across the road - Brian's magic roundabout. I hadn't been able to find this one last time, but today I was on the ball and went straight to it. A cuite little micro hidden in a snail shell - very clever. Then it was on to a nice woodland pot - Woodview. {One day I will work out how to do the links to these caches.} I left a trackable in there as the cache was well hidden away and unlikely to be muggled.

Then I had to get sidetracked - Grays and Church Micro Grays in order to find the numbers for the Harry Hill cache. Interesting concept = which is best, CM or Sidetracked? Personally I prefer CMs as you generally get to find nice little corners of the English countryside and very picturesque churches. Whereas Sidetracked caches tend to be grimy train stations in urban areas. I was fortunatel with the Sidetracked Grays cache as I parked feet away from it. Would not have been able to do that if it had been any other day than a nice quiet Sunday with both football and rugby on the telly! hee hee.

Unfortunately I managed to make a right mess of the actual Harry Hill cache. It is up a pipe and I managed to push it further up, without realising that there is actually some string attached. All I had had to do was pull the string. DOH. So that meant the CO - cache owner - had to pop out and sort out my little error. At least I got to say sorry in person at the BIG EVENT a few days later.

Jill and I had been collared to organise one of the Essex events. These occur every other month on a Wednesday. It was over the Christmas period that we had to decide on a suitable location/pub and Jill was away in Australia. So it was down to me and Andy to look for somewhere in the vicinity that didn't mind having 40+ people descend for a drink and a chat. Not as easy as you would think to do that. Most of the lovely country pubs were either too small or could not afford to risk losing some of their restaurant customers. So we ended up at the Cricketers in Southend. As it happens Andy and I used to come to this pub a lot as we used to work opposite. We actually celebrated our getting engaged in this pub so it has fond memories.


LOADS of people attended the meet - it was a great success. Trackables were swapped and Bob did the honours with the certificates again. Here is me with my certificate for finding 1000 caches. I'm very proud of it and the smiley magnet that came with it. And of course the great DrSolly came to our event. Everyone was very excited. He is the number 1 cacher in the UK with over 18700 finds. Not to mention that he designed and very successfuly sold the Dr Solomon anti-virus package. You can find out more about him on his website -
http://www.drsolly.com/

London Flash Mob Event

I went into London on Sunday with three other cachers. Our aim was to find as many caches as we could on way from the train station to the London Eye, where there was a Flash Mob Event at 6pm. We also decided to try for a six icon challenge as well. This meant trying to find six different types of caches, each with a different icon.

It was a very long day, but we had a great time and achieved both our challenges - to attend the Flash Mob event and to obtain the six different cache types in one day.

The first cache we attempted was a simple traditional one - a micro hidden behind a metal gate to a small garden. The garden was a very tiny oasis amidst the tall city buildings. Fortunately on a Sunday there weren't many people about, good job really as we did make ourselves a bit obvious! Finally the cache was found and the log signed. We moved on to a simple multi. I think this is one of my favourites of the day. The clues were on the ground; we had to search interesting dates and figures in history and do a simple maths sum to find the co-ordinates to the cache around the corner.

We then moved on to an Earthcache which involved looking for fossils in the limestone walls of a building. Fascinating stuff. Here are the three fossils I was travelling with today!

From there we walked down to the river, but on the way we had a little mishap. One of the cachers, Alan tripped over this nasty hole in the pavement. Photos and details of the location were taken so it can be reported. We don't want anyone else having a nasty accident. Fortunately Alan landed on Bob, so no harm done - this time. What a relief he was able to continue the day's walk.

Our next adventure meant climbing under the boardwalk, down by the river. Ralph was the hero of the day, being able to reach up and fetch the cache for it to be signed. This had a high difficulty and terrain rating so we were pleased to find something exciting in the city, other than the usual expected micros. After a few more caches were found, the lads walked another 2miles, whilst I cheated and took the underground train as I was beginning to tire by now. As I was walking to the train station I came across this. I've seen Dr Who's Police box before, but never a police post. I wonder how many more there are around?

Whilst I was waiting for the lads to turn up I sat in a park and picked up a couple more caches nearby. In the park was this lovely memorial to the Camel Corps in World War I. Many of the corps came from New Zealand, Australia, India and Canada as well as Britain. It's an amazing statue. We totted up some more caches and also managed a puzzle cache. This meant a bit of a detour to the west, but this was easily reached by the underground. The AtoZ had to come out to work out which way to head towards the cache as none of us had ever been to that particular spot before. The puzzle cache required some German translation, so well done to Bob and Ralph for working that one out. I found the cache, as Alan's GPS was 100ft out - so a good team effort.

Then after another nice little multi in a Royal Park next to the river we went on to the main event. It was great to see some other cachers from Essex and we said hello to many more from all over the world. An American woman took some trackables that wanted to head that way, as did some some Belgiums with a trackable that wanted to get to Disnleyland Paris! We all proudly displayed our flags, signed the logbook and swapped more trackables, before heading off to our various corners of the world. Two ladies were actually going straight from the even to the airport. How's that for cosmopolitan.
Have you noticed that the large England flag that I am holding up is upside down? Apparently this signifies distress. I declare that I was sincerely distressed and utterly exhausted after a hard day's caching. But I went home very happy and finished the day off with a nice cold cider on the train home.

Plotlanders

Today I did a series of 4 caches near where I work. I've been itching to do them for ages, but they looked quite tricky as you have to find the first one to get the co-ordinates for the second cache and so on. I did search the other after work, but it was raining and getting dark so I had to give up after half an hour of searching. Today, being much brighter and having more time on my hands I set off in hope of not only finding the first one, but the other three as well.

On the map to the left, I work on the far right in the pink area and the 4 caches are on the top left.



This is a pond at the entrance to the Nature Reserve where the four plotlanders caches are. It seems that a housing estate has been built around it. I noticed one of the neighbours feeding some ducks there. Millie was most interested in the ducks! Fortunately I had put her on her lead at this point.





I walked through the woods and came across an open space and this magnificent view. The sun was shing and I was hopeful of finding of my caches. The cache is hidden half way down this hill, on the left amongst the small trees.









Well the first one I certainly made a meal out of it. I searched for ages in the wrong place. Then stopped to have a little think and looked in the right place and found it within seconds. DOH. The hint had been high and the word associated was high wire! The cache was under a wire fence.
The hint for the next one was Peter. As I walked towards the given co-ordinates I wracked my brains trying to think of a word associated with Peter. My GPS was working well and the co-ordinates were spot on, so thankfully I found this one easily. It also helped having a cache in exactly the same style myself. Peter = rock! Easy when you know how.

The next hint was Job. Now was there going to be a biblical theme running through this. Did the cache owner mean Job as in the man in the Bible or job as in gissa job? Fortunately the co-ords were spot on again and the cache site was pretty obvious. I couldn't work out what the word association was, but the answer was inside the cache. "inside job" I would never have gotten that one. Thankfully it didn't matter in the end. The cache itself was on a hook and I managed to pull it off the hook and drop it. Disaster. I thought I wouldn't be able to retrieve it, but thankfully I was able to reach it. So on to the final one, which was very handily back the way I had just come. This final one was a nice sized pot, but still took me a few minutes to find - searching in the wrong place again! DOH.

Sprite's first

Just one cache today, after work in the glorious sunshine. I had a little walk along a very muddy footpath to pick up this fairly new cache. The very uneven and pot hole ridden road was supposedly closed as there is some roadworks going on, but I ignored the sign and drove down it anyway, parking up right outside this quaint little church. An easy to find cache which was in desperate need for some 'stickoflage'.

London Eye - prep

On Sunday I am joining three other cachers for a caching trip in London. The main event is a Flash Mob event at 6pm in the evening, so in order to make the most of the day, we thought we would see if we could get a whole load of other caches whilst in London. Urban caches are so much tricker to get, on the whole, as they are often overlooked by houses or "muggles".
We have got a cheap deal on the train - £26.60 for the four of us to travel to London by train and use the underground trains too. So that's £6.65 each - bargain. A quick check on the London Transport website before we go will be imperative, but so far there are no disruptions that should hinder our trip. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modalpages/2625.aspx

I'm hoping to claim six different icon types over the course of the day. This is for the Surrey icon challenge (GC1K9PZ ). There is quite a varity of types of caches in London, so I should be able to do this one easily, despite the D5/T1.5 rating. Between the four of us, we've decided on a route from Fenchurch Street to the London Eye; we just need to work out where to stop for lunch!

Introduction

I've been caching since 25 June 2009 and currently have over 1000 caches. I usually have a great time when I am out and about and often have little adventrues. So I thought it was about time i started writing up about my caching adventures. Oh and my caching name is A1nnie - hence the blog title!

My most recent successful challenge was quite a tricky one. The caches are each given a difficulty/terrain grade from 1-5, with 5/5 being the hardest and 1/1 being the easiest. This one I got yesterday is D4.5/T2. Quercus Robus #2 (GC2HT4H) is a puzzle cache and it took me a little while towork out, fortunately my caching pal, happileigh, was able to provide some guidance which helped me work out the co-ordinates night before last. Then I had to wait all day until I finishedwork before I could go traipsing through the very muddy footpath to find the cache. It was in a tree and took me at least 20 minutes to find. It was a tiny disguised nano cache. An excellent cache. I gave this one a favourite point. You earn a point for every 10 caches you find and can issue them to caches that you particularly like. There is some inconsistency about what people do with their favourite points as they are quite a new addition to the website.