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.