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.