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.