I’d been a very busy puzzle-solving Geocacher over the past few weeks and had cracked 18 puzzles around a country park in Kent. Although the puzzle locations were quite spread out they could be combined with an existing series, plus other caches to form a couple of circular walks of about 6 miles and 8 miles. It looked like a lovely area to explore with a lot of the caches showing as being in a woods. I’d noted that the walks may be a little hilly in places, however may have slightly underestimated the elevation as it was a bit higher than we anticipated!

On Saturday 14th Jan we got started in Trosley country park with mel-ray at 8am before the car park opened so it was very quiet with just the odd early morning jogger busying themselves on the footpaths. With a chill in the air and the low winter sun we soon entered the woodland area of the country park only to be nearly blinded by the sun crashing through the trees.

The winter sun breaking through

We started picking up traditionals and started to do a multi which required you to get clues from around the park. The second clue took us to the very bottom of a massive set of stairs and we ended up at the bottom of the dreaded hill! With the caches we needed at the top there was nothing we could do but ascend the hill that we had only just come down. It was a cold icy morning and the views from the top looking out into the countryside were absolutely amazing from this point.

Winter views

It was then back down the hill to collect a load of puzzles at the bottom. Very satisfying to scoop up so many puzzles all at once, however not so satisfying when we looked back at the hill that we knew we needed to climb back up very shortly!!!

It doesn't look so hard when you're standing here!

After completing the puzzle circuit it was time to go back up the hill again. This time around we had picked up a less steep route so we weren’t quite so out of breath by the time we got to the top. Once at the top we were rewarded with a big bucket-sized cache, North Downs Amble. The cache was listed as an ‘other’ so I spent some time hunting for a tiny nano before I turned around and spotted a huge container!!!

Sun-kissed cache

We entered back into the woodland of the country park gathering up some more traditionals and puzzles before heading back towards the car. On our way to the last cache, Trosley’s Track we heard a lot of rustling in the trees. We looked up and there was a squirrel running from branch to branch. There was then another squirrel… and another… and another, and we counted a dozen squirrels running in the branches above our head! One fell through a branch and landed on the ground near us. He was fine though and started to make his way back up. We were quite amazed to see that a few other squirrels had run down the tree to come and see if he was ok! It was also quite amazing to hear them communicating with each other through little squeaking noises. I’d never heard squirrels talking before and soon we realised what all of the fuss was about because right at the top of one of the trees was their nest. That was where they were all headed to.

Wait for me!

In order to collect all of the caches in the area, we then moved the car a few miles south. Before that however we collected What do you call a 60ft tall lamp?. I thought the puzzle was the hard bit, however we soon realised that the cache retrieval was! The cache was about 4 meters up a lamp post! Luckily we had brought our telescopic ladder with us and Ray, our monkey, carefully did the retrieving. According to the cache description you don’t need a ladder to get it, however it’s beyond me how else you are meant to get it!!!

We then started Trotiscliffe Trail a series of 26 caches over 5 miles, however we extended it to include our puzzles. We were also able to take a detour to grab PWU #6 Pilgrim’s Progress. Getting stage 1 of the puzzle was good fun and included me climbing up a fallen tree!

An easy tree to climb

Unfortunately the final stage wasn’t as fun and involved us climing, you’ve guessed it, that blooming hill for a third time!!! After continuing Trotiscliffe Trail we were given the task of climbing the hill for fourth and final time. This time was the hardest. Flagging a bit from the previous 3 times and with an extremely narrow path we made it to the top for the last time.

Back in the woods

We had to weave in and out of the woods to get our final caches as the path was so water logged that we couldn’t even attempt to walk along it!

Nearly a river!

It was then finally down to the bottom of the hill we’d climbed 4 times during the day. It was a brilliant day of caching and really satisfying to find all of the puzzles that I’d solved. They were really enjoyable puzzles to solve as well. We finished the day with 64 finds and some very aching legs!

Solo caching in Northamptonshire

On the Sunday I had to head up to Leicester for a course. I decided to set off early and make the journey worthwhile by picking up some caches and attempting to reach our 6000th find.

I started off by doing the Thorpe Malsor series, near Kettering. This was a series of 9 caches over just a couple of miles. Perfect for a little series to complete on my own. I started off at Thorpe Malsor church collecting a clue for a multi that I’d planned to complete by grabbing the clues on the way around.

Thorpe Malsor Church

Unfortunately Church Micro caches aren’t very popular up that way so I wasn’t able to grab any in the area. I continued on with the series which went past a huge reservoir, Cransley Reservoir. With the sun low in the sky there were some great views over the water.

Cransley Reservoir

Cransley Reservoir

There was a good variety of cache container and hiding places on the walk and despite the lack of hints I was able to find most of the caches with ease. The larger caches were well stocked and well marked too.

Thorpe Malsor #7

By the end of the Thorpe Malsor series I had all of the numbers I needed for the Thorpe Malsor Trundle multi-cache and conveniently on 5999 I made this multi our 6000th find. Not the most amazing cache for a milestone, but nice that it was a regular that required a fair bit of work to find.

I carried on the day with drive-by caches as I made my way north. One of my favourites was RAF Harrington. There was a memorial here dedicated to United States Army Air Forces Eighth Air Force. The GPS pointed me into an overgrown woody location behind the memorial. I went round in a circle without spotting the cache, however I did spot a little robin jumping from branch to branch. He was unphased by my presence and carried on his business whilst I searched…

My little robin friend

I spent a little bit longer hunting amongst the trees and going around in circles again trying to find the cache with no luck when suddenly the robin flew past my eye level and as I followed him I spotted the cache. “Thank you Mr. Robin” I said. I don’t think I would have found it without his help!!!

The RAF Harrington Memorial

I was also able to find 3 of the YOSM trig point caches whilst I was in the area. They were YSM 408 (Arthingworth), YSM 428 (Cold Ashby) and YSM 413 (Cloudesley Bush). I’d travelled quite a way out of my way to get them, however they are special caches so it’s worth it. The Cold Ashby trig point is argueably the most special of them all and has an extra plaque on it which reads: “THE FIRST OBSERVATIONS FOR THE RETRIANGULATION OF GREAT BRITAIN WERE MADE AT THIS TRIGONOMETRICAL STATION BY SERGHANT T.F.MULLINGER, ROYAL ENGINEERS ON 18TH APRIL 1936. THERE ARE 11,678 SUCH STATIONS AND THE LAST OBSERVATIONS WERE MADE AT THORNY GALE IN WESTMOR-LAND ON 4TH JUNE 1962.“

Cold Ashby Trig point

The plaque

It was an absolutely brilliant trig point to find and I was very pleased that I went to find it. I ended up at my hotel room at 4:30pm after finding 26 caches on my own including reaching or 6000th milestone. A very enjoyable day caching on my own!

Essex FTFs and Night caching

On Sat 21st Jan we stayed local as we had planned to meet some other cachers in the evening for a bit of a night caching session. We started off with Claire’s Walk in the company of mel-ray. Claire’s Walk was an existing smaller series, however was archived and extended to make a longer walk of 16 caches. We really enjoyed the previous series which saw us finding our 500th cache and this new extended series was even better.

The series took us through some lovely woodland areas. Other cachers had reported seeing loads of deer around whilst walking the series, however we weren’t so lucky today and all we got to see was fresh deer prints in the mud. We were also able to reminisce about the old series that we did in July 2010 (4 months after we first started caching) and were quite impressed that we remembered part of it. We especially remembered the old green caravan abandoned in the middle of the woods.

Room with a view

Through the woods

Once we’d emerged out of the woods and onto the footpaths around the fields our boots got very clogged up with mud. It was certainly quite muddy around this area and in some points so flooded it looked more like a river than a path!

River path

Cache #9 on the series was a very special find for us as it was the cache that we had found as our 500th find during the old series. It was great to find it again more than 5500 caches later! The photo we took back then is the photo I use on the far-right of my blog page!

Our 500th find and our 6023rd find on the same cache

Nearer the end of the series we re-entered the woodland and had some easy finds and a lovely stroll through the woods.

Wot? No cache?

We had a really lovely stroll on Claire’s Walk and on our way back to the car my iPhone pinged to say that a new series of 17 caches had been published, Rio’s Ramble. I checked the caches and they were actually only 4 miles from where we were! We stopped and took a break so that we could have a cup of tea and a few nibbles whilst I multi-tasked by scribbling down hints and coords from my iPhone. Eventually we had enough information to input into our GPS and go to start the new series and even try for some FTFs…

We parked up at the parking location, but unfortunately had been beaten to it. We spotted McWomble’s car. We headed to the first cache all the same and bumped into him whilst he was coming back to the car to change his boots. After a quick chat we set off. He had already found #1 and cache #2 was an existing one that had been renamed to fit with the series, however we were delighted when we got an FTF at cache #3. At cache #4 we met up with McWomble again for a joint FTF and had him join us for some of the series. We then got FTFs on cache #5 to #13.

There were some lovely views on the walk and although quite muddy in areas the paths were easy to walk. At one point we even passed through a turkey farm. The turkeys looked a bit cramped though, so it was a bit sad to see. I’d never seen a white turkey before.

The turkeys in their pen

Views of Chelmsford

Our luck ran out nearer the end when some other local cachers had done some quick FTF drive-by’s on the last few caches, however we were able to get a joint FTF with McWomble at the end on the bonus and Wow! What a bonus!!!

A very big bonus stash!

Our unexpected afternoon of caching had given us 12 FTFs. It was a very convenient publication time too as we were a bit stuck as to which caches we were going to attempt in the afternoon anyway. We ended the afternoon after walking 11.5 miles.

The fun wasn’t over yet though and we headed to Romford for a spot of night caching with mel-ray, grizzly bear, jacord, Andy K!, The Flower of Life, and LittleMan333. Snapper333 had placed a short series of 4 night caches around Bower Wood in Romford and with all our head torches lit we headed off into the night. Some of us were also equipped with glow in the dark spiders which we attached to our hats to make it a little bit spooky!

Ready for night caching!

The fire tacks were really bright and obvious to see so they were easy to follow (there were no excuses as we had so many torches!) and thankfully we had brought our monkey (Ray) with us again as one of the caches which was a 5/5 required quite a climb!

He's up there somewhere

Following the tacks

Snapper333, the CO, had accompanied us on our night caching adventure. It was mainly so he could laugh at us all struggling I think! We had a brilliant laugh though and he had even brought tomato soup and french bread for us all for the end of the evening. We all huddled up with our soup and had a good chat. The perfect way to end a lovely day of caching!

Our first caching day of 2012 was 2nd January. We have a selection of stickers that we place in logbooks when we find caches and I had designed a new selection for 2012 so I was very eager to go and put them in some logbooks!

2012 cassandy stickers

We headed north east towards Mildenhall, for a series placed in the Forestry Commission owned Mildenhall Woods. There were 3 short series plus a night cache in there and the plan was to get the timings right so that we finished the 3rd series just as it got dark so that we could do the night cache…

On the way to the series we stopped off for 3 quick caches along the river. The sun was shining and as soon as we joined the river 2 swans came and swam past. They ignored us though. Although the first cache was just a little one contained in a glass spice jar, the second two caches were in very decent sized containers and I was very pleased that I could use my new stickers to sign the logbook (It’s the little things in life…)

The swans passing by

It was then straight on to Mildenhall where we started with the Warren Lodge series. We didn’t expect anything too special from it, but it was actually a brilliant choice of series to start the new year with as the series was placed along an “official” 2 mile circular trail with well maintained paths, many plaques with information, and the ruins of Warren Lodge. The sun was shining and the sky very blue, so the scenery of the wood looked very pleasant for our trip around.

A very nice day for caching

On our way to the 2nd cache and the lodge we passed by a pit with a sign which told us that the pit was home to a rare British plant, the Breckland Mugwort (or “Artemisia Campestris”). We had a snoop inside, but couldn’t see any!

The pit and the Breckland Mogwart that lives there

All of a sudden I got a glipse of a stone building in the distance, and I was very excited! I skipped off to have a look in a big well that was outside the lodge, and then in the lodge, leaving poor Andy looking for the cache!!! We read on a plaque outside the lodge that inside the Warreners used to hang the carcasses of rabbits that they caught in the woods ready for transporting to London. The inside of the lodge had been preserved (or perhaps made to look like it had been preserved) with a bed frame and stove. There were bars up just in the entrance so that you couldn’t venture too far in.

The remains of the lodge

The stove and bed inside

We continued our little journey through the woods. It was quite a busy muggle location, but luckily we were able to grab all of the caches without too many problems.

Some of the interestingly shaped trees in the wood

Got it!

Don't walk towards the light!

There were some interesting mushrooms growing around the woods, including one that looked very much like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors (My favourite film ever!) I found out later that these were “Puffball” mushrooms which have a hole in the top of the cap which is called an ostiole. Spores are released from the hole when the puffball ruptures.

A burst puff ball!

Feed me Seymour!

Nearer the end of the series we learned that the Forestry Commission bought the woods in 1934 and that up until the 1950′s they employed 30 Warreners to help keep the rabbit population down to try and prevent rabbits from eating the young shoots and seedlings of trees. That was until myxomatosis decimated the rabbit population.

The Warren Lodge series was our favourite in the Mildenhall Woods and also had some custom caches thrown in. After this one we did the Rambler’s Delight series which was a linear route for 4 caches. The ground in this area of the woods all seemed very mossy, unlike the previous section we had been exploring and it had a very different character to it with the paths being unmaintained and taking us ducking and diving through the trees. The highlight of this series was definitely the 3rd cache, which was a nice ammo box, complete with an army-style bag around it.

An interesting tree in the woods

The perfect woodland cache!

The mossy path that covered a lot of the ground

Our final series, WoodPecker Trail was the largest of all and in the woodland where our final destination (the nightcache) was. This series was very close to Mildenhall airbase and we saw a couple of planes fly right over us. They seemed dangerously close! As soon as we started the series we realised that it wouldn’t be your standard cache series, as we found a great custom cache at the beginning. The custom caches followed thick and fast and it was very enjoyable (but sometimes frustrating, as some were quite tricky) finding them. We were very impressed when we came across a Kid’s playground in the middle of the woods where we saw some great wood carvings. It was quite cloudy by this time and some of them looked quite dark and spooky! There was a climbing wall and loads of fun aparatus in the play area. I know if I would have loved to play there when I was younger.

Old man wood carving

The spooky owl

By the time we reached cache #11 it was pitch black and we had our little head torches on. I’ll be the first to admit that we are AWFUL at finding caches in the dark. #11 had to be a DNF. We continued on to #12 which promised to be a Regular ammo can. You can’t DNF one of those even in the dark… can you? Well, yes! However it turned out that the CO had been and visited earlier on in the day and removed the cache to take home for maintenance. We didn’t feel too bad about that DNF, however until we got to #13 and had to DNF that! Oh dear…

So on to the nightcache, Demon Eyes. Surely no problems with that one because it’s meant to be found in the dark, right? Well, the idea was that you stood at the coords and shone your light into the trees to catch the white eyes. Once you’d found them, you walked to them and shone your light to find the red eyes. Once you found them and walked to them you shone your light to find eyes where one was white and one was red and then would find the cache. That was the theory, anyway. In reality, we spent 15 minutes shining light into the trees until I shouted “I can see them, I can see them” only for the bliking eyes to run away!!! 5 minutes later and I squealed another “I can see them” [wait for eyes to run... no they're still there...must be them] “I can see them, it’s definitely…” And they ran away!!! We tried to skip the white eyes and just find red eyes, but we had no luck and concluded that we needed brighter torches. I emailed the CO who went to investigate the cache and said that someone/something had been messing with the reflectors (squirrels?). The cache is back up and running now so we will go and try again armed with a brighter torch and to clear up our other DNF’s.

There must be some eyes around here somewhere...

Even though we ended our first caching day of the new year with 4 DNFs it didn’t spoil the rest of the day as we’d had such fun exploring the woods in the daylight.

Saturday 7th January

On the Saturday we headed down towards Crawley, Sussex to try a couple of Geocaching series with mel-ray. We started with a rather interesting series, NCiS. The cache descriptions told us we needed to take some tools with us:
Telescopic magnetic retriever
Multi-tool
Tweezers
Fishing wire/string

We had most of this in our caching bag anyway so headed off all prepared. None of the caches had hints on them so we were prepared for a slightly more tricky series. The first cache was found after a few moments, however we then got blocked in by two inquisitive horses! They wanted fuss and weren’t prepared to move until they had got it. Eventually they got startled and galloped off, but decided to follow us to the stile and watch us.

I'm watching you...

There was one cache after this that required us to use our tools, however that was all so it was a little bit disappointing as we had hoped for something a bit more like Devil’s Dyke. We carried on the series and picked up Church Micro 44…Burstow en route.

Burstow Church

Another additional cache on the series was X Marks the Spot XII: Pioneer and Designator which required us to get clues from inside a church. We were quite surprised at the place we found the final cache as it was within a few hundred feet of another, but even though the proximity was questionable the cache was there and it was a big one too!

A nice big stash

At cache #11 we were greeted by some very friendly doggies. They ran up to the fence and barked at us, but at the same time tried to get over the fence for fuss. They followed us up the side of the fence and one jumped on some rolled up wire fencing and started bouncing to try and get over to get stroked!!!

Woof, woof, bounce, bounce!

We continued along the series and were able to find all apart from #19 which was rated a difficulty 5 and had a string of DNFs. We gave it a respectible amount of time, but decided to head off to the next series…

We headed off to the Crawley Down Crawl, a series of 24 caches over 6.5 miles by Flatcoatwalker. There were some really nice features on this series which we didn’t realise we would be seeing. The first was a gushing weir between caches #5 and #6. We thought at first that we were the only ones on the bridge, but when we looked down by the stream we saw a girl in a camoflagued hide with a camera who must have been taking photos of the birds. The weir was amazing and we spent a while admiring it from the bridge.

The weir

Hiding!

There were some nice woodland sections along the series and some interesting mushrooms growing around them.

Mushrooms near cache #1

Mushrooms growing near the 'Gulledge' cache

Our absolute favourite cache along the series was #17. We were all walking down a hill and Ray rushed ahead to a tree and put his head in the tree hole to grab the cache, however the rest of Ray disappeared as well like the tree had swallowed him! It was definitely the most awesome tree to hide a cache that we had ever found and after Ray had been in and brought the cache out I volunteered to go back in and hide it. It was great fun!

A great hiding place!

There was some really nice scenery on the walk and on a couple of occasions we could see the downs in the distance.

The views from cache #17

Views of the Downs

The final highlight of this lovely little walk was Mill Micro 2. It was placed by a lovely water mill which had been converted into a house and was surrounded by massive fishing lakes. It was very picturesque.

Fen Place Mill

One of the fishing places near the mill

We were really glad that we chose to do this series in the end. There were so many in the area that we could have chosen, but this was an amazing choice due to the scenery along the way and the tree hide was a firm favourite.

We finished off by grabbing a few cache and dashes as the light faded and grabbed what I think must be my most favourite Church Micro ever, Church Micro 1840… New Chapel. This CM has the “Recommended at night” attribute selected, and I couldn’t agree more. The church looked truely magnificent all illuminated.

New Chapel Church

Sunday 8th January

On the Sunday we stayed close to home and did the “Return Of Sophie’s Rainbow” series. The original series placed nearby was one of the very first series that we ever attempted. We were real caching newbies and used my iPhone to find the caches. We weren’t very well equipped and didn’t take a pen so signed the caches that didn’t have one in with a stick dipped in mud! There was also a bonus on the series and we jotted down the numbers and letters, but had no idea what to do with them at the end and were puzzled as to why there was no cache where the ? on the map was! We had to work it out at home and then return another day. More experienced, this time we returned with a proper GPS, a pen/stickers, and the knowledge of what to do when you have bonus numbers!

We started the series by parking up by the church and bagging Church Micro 1773 – Brent Pelham which was at the parking location.

Brent Pelham Church

The GPS was being very stubborn and wouldn’t budge so we had to guess where the paths were. We guessed right and came out by a sty with two pigs. The started oinking when they saw us and one was particularly interested in Teddy and there was a bit of a confrontation where the pig and Teddy just stared at each other.

The pigs

The caches were all small or regular containers and mostly easy to find, but in nice hiding places.

Tedyy posing with the cache

There were also some very nice views on the series.

Views from the footpaths

Along the series was another cache which had been hidden in 2006, but we hadn’t retrieved it due to having issues finding a parking spot to get to it. We hadn’t returned until today when we walked straight past it. It was The Meeting Place, hidden in 2006. It was placed where there was a footpath sign with 9 arrows on it showing all of the different paths. It was a nice sized container and great to see the original logbook with the CO’s welcome message in it.

The Meeting Place cache

There was a soft snowman ball in the cache and we swapped so that Teddy could have something from the cache. He proudly carried his new toy along the path for a few caches before getting distracted by the smell of rabbits and dropped it for us to pick up and take home!

A happy Teddy!

We completed the series without a problem and even managed to get the bonus on the same day! It was a really lovely Sunday stroll and Teddy really enjoyed himself and got covered in mud! On the way home we passed by a footpath sign with an owl sitting on top. It was quite unexpected to see one out in the daylight and the first time we had seen an owl out in the wild, so we were really glad that we came to the area on that day.

We’ve had a great couple of days Geocaching to start the new year and awarded quite a few favourite points. A very promising start to 2012!

10. Shipbourne Stroll pt2, Kent

A Q&A cache

When we headed to do the Shipbourne Stroll series we were under the impression that it was your usual geocaching series, but we were totally blown away by the creativity of the caches that we came across.

It was very clear from the quality of the caches that the cache owners had gone to a lot of effort (and spent what would have been a fair bit of money) creating the caches that they placed. Amongst the custom containers, there were Q&A caches where you had to work out the numerical answer to open the padlock and there were also two outstanding caches which required special tools, hidden nearby, to retrieve them. These were the highlights of the series which when put with the other hides help this series sit comfortably at position 10 on our list.

9. Dunwich Forest, Suffolk

The light at the end of the tree tunnel!

At just 10 caches this series in Dunwich forest isn’t particularly large, nor are the hides particularly exciting and I don’t think this series would feature this high on many other people’s favourite list, however from the moment we parked up in the forest there was definitely something magical about it, like we were in Narnia! It was simply a lovely place to explore and we picked a lovely sunny day to explore it. Also, whilst emerging from the trees after finding the 2nd cache we gained some company for some of the walk as we bumped into our caching friends Grimmerscotting! Both of us were about 80 miles from home and had no idea the other would be there. We couldn’t have planned it if we tried! We finished the trip to Dunwich with a picnic on Dunwich Heath, which has also had caches placed in it since we visited so we have a great excuse to go back!

8. Goldhanger West Event, Essex

Part of the circuit went past the sea wall

“Pretend you’re a young horse and do no wrongs.
Gallop the path for 1.1 furlongs.
Down the steps to a rusty pole.
Find the cache my little foal.”

We all had emergency envelopes with clues on how to get to the next cache if we got stuck along the way and to add the competitive edge, we were scored on how long it took us to complete the series and had points deducted for opening the emergency envelopes with winners chosen at the end of the day. We had an absolutely brilliant time, and mainly completed the circuit as a group because everyone got stuck on a particular cache and joined up. So for the time, thought, and effort that went into it this event easily deserves a spot in the top 10! We will be looking out for the Goldhanger East event coming this year for even more fun!

7. Climate Chaos puzzles, Hertfordshire

One of the caches under the bridge

Climate Chaos was a set of 5 puzzle caches hidden around Hertfordshire. Sadly it’s recently been archived by qichina, the owner. To reach the final puzzle, The Solution, all of the other puzzles had to be solved.

It wasn’t simple and they required a lot of brain power, a fair bit of walking, paddling in a river, and a great deal of time to solve which made getting the final cache feel so rewarding. We also had a massive disaster on a trip to one of the caches which involved a DNF, Andy locking his keys in the car, and me getting completely lost in the dark!!!

The CO had spent so much time planning the series, setting up the puzzles, and setting up the caches that the theme of the puzzle (Saving the world from the evil Mobbex corporation) feel so real and like a true geocaching adventure. In the final cache we got a little crystal as a souveneir to keep. This is a series of caches that I know everyone who has completed them will have on their top 10 list of caches, it’s just such a shame that no more cachers can enjoy them as much as we did.

6. MEGA Wales, South Wales

MEGA Wales fits comfortably into our top 10 favourites, not for the MEGA event itself, but for whole experience. The highlights of our trip probably deserve their own places in the list, however I’m counting them all as part of our trip to Wales. For us it wasn’t the MEGA event that was the good bit, it was the great experiences and caches we found whilst we were in South Wales. The reason MEGA Wales is on this list is for the following caching moments:

Ruins at Margam Country Park

a) Margam Country Park – There aren’t a huge number of caches in the Country park, and we didn’t manage to get all of them as they are very spaced out, but it is a fine example of quality over quantity. The containers themselves aren’t particularly noteable, however the park is easily the prettiest we have ever been to and there are the most amazing features to explore once there.

b) Side Points series- The side points series is the one that EVERYBODY who went to the MEGA did. Everybody else had done it before us and we kept hearing stories left, right and centre about how fabulous it was. We went to see for ourselves and it was truely fabulous due to the custom containers that the CO had created.

c) The night caches – On a wet, windy night we joined up with hollyncharlie, helennbrian, mel-ray and heffalump to do a couple of night caches. These were the first that we had ever done and they were absolutely brilliant. It was such a muddy route which ran next to the stream, so was quite dangerous in the weather we did it in, but that all added to the fun of it and even though we were all mucky and wet by the time we had finished, we had brilliant fun. The night caches themselves were brilliant ones that had clearly had a lot of thought put into them.

5. Wombling Free, Northamptonshire

In the quarry

We stopped off for Wombling Free on route to the Peak District because its difficulty/terrain rating was a rare one to find and nicely filled the d4.5/t5 rating that was missing on our matrix.

Unfortunately the cache has been archived, but I wouldn’t rule out this one perhaps returning (in which case we’d happily do it again!) To retrieve the cache you had to visit an abandoned quarry so armed with hard hats and head torches we ventured into the deep dark maze. It was quite scary, but quite exciting at the same time which is the reason why this single cache deserves a spot in the top 5!

4. The Chelmer Blackwater Navigation series, Essex

Views towards the tea rooms

Running for 14 miles from Heybridge Basin to Chelmsford and boasting over 100 caches this massive powertrail was certainly one of the highlights of the year. Despite the containers being just film cannisters and placed as close as possible as the guidelines allow, the series was hugely enjoyable because of the scenery and walk along the canal. We passed by many locks along the river and learnt about the history of the canal from the information boards on the route.

Although we did the series in December, we had brilliant weather and brilliant company as we were joined by other Essex cachers. We completed the series in about 8 hours and finished in the dark after finding all of the caches in the series.

3. The Chiltern 100, Buckinghamshire

The Ostrich farm on the first loop

Completing The Chiltern Hundred had been something we spoke about to mel-ray every time we went caching with them! We waited until May when we had plenty of daylight and started at 5am in the morning. Although the series could be completed in 3 loops, our ambitious mission was to complete the series in one day and we did it, all 110 caches and all 23 miles. Boy did our feet hurt afterwards! We saw some brilliant scenery along the way and there were some very interesting hiding places too.

We also did maintenance for drsolly whilst completing it so were able to replace missing caches and damaged logbooks to revive the series for future visitors. It’s an achivement we are all very proud of.

2. Fort Grain, Kent

Fort Grain

This single cache is Kent definitely deserves a place so high in the top 10. Hidden in Fort Grain Tower Battery, which you can only reach when the tides are right, retrieving this cache is a real adventure. The first part of the mission is to choose a time of day when the tide is low enough for you to reach the fort. The second part is to get across about a quarter mile of wet, muddy, and slippery causeway.

Once at the base of the fort you’re not off the hook just yet as you have to ascend an old ladder that looks like it’s held on with a bit of cotton (perhaps an exaggeration, but it certainly doesn’t look safe!), finally you need to go all the way to the very top (don’t look down) and locate one of those tiny plastic vials and your mission is complete (oh, apart from getting back down the scary ladder which is even worse than going up) It was quite an adventure, but so very exciting!!!

1. Jaggers Cough/Crookstone Knoll, Peak District, Derbyshire

Jaggers Cough

We headed to the Peak District for a week to grab caches to fill our difficulty/terrain matrix. By visiting this area we were able to fill in 14 high terrain squares that we needed. I’d heard that the Peak District was very picturesque however I didn’t expect it to be quite so amazing. The Jaggers Cough/Crookstone Knoll combination was the first series that we attempted there, attracted by the high terrain rating of the caches. We ascended via Crookstone Knoll which was pretty knackering, but not too bad and at least we were over the worst… right? Wrong!

To get down we had to scramble the rocks of Jaggers Cough which I’m sure isn’t that big a deal for seasoned peak visitors, but this was the first time we had done anything like this and it seemed like quite an easy way to die!!! Eventually we passed some other people venturing up and down the cough and we at least realised we weren’t the only ones doing it. The rock scrambling was amazing! And a route we would never have taken if caches hadn’t been placed there. It was such an adventure, and although it was pretty scary at first we eventually got into the swing of it.

It’s probably unfair of me to mention just the Jaggers Cough and Crookstone Knoll caches, as there were some other amazing caches there too: Fairbrook Naze, Grindsbrook Golden Secret, Grindsbrook Silver Secret, and Monsal View. Many of these also involved scrambling and climbing which was great fun!

It’s quite hard to find those really special caches that are out there within the 100,000 UK caches other than from hearing from others, so I’d love to hear if any of my blog readers have favourite caches from last year which we could visit.

Happy Caching and a very Happy New Year!

The series runs along the river from Heybridge Basin right up into Chelmsford town center over a distance of 14 miles. There are other caches along this stretch as well, some of which we had previously found meaning that we were able to find 95 caches in a day! Those who haven’t visited the area would be able to pick up 110 caches across this distance. It took us 8 hours, 15 minutes to walk the stretch. I’ll add that because it’s a linear series you do have to get back to the start! You could walk and make it 28 miles, or you could catch the bus right back to where you started. There are details on the cache page. In our case, we got a lift back. The thought of walking all that way back in the dark really didn’t appeal to us. You could however break up the series into little chunks to cut down the amount of walking you would need to do at once.

I aim here to give a bit of a “review” of the series and share our experiences on it… I have also created an EveryTrail trip here. We started at 8:36am at Heybridge Basin at “Duck End Mill, Finchingfield“. This may slightly confuse some as Finchingfield is miles away! Let me explain: The caches are named after attractions in Essex. Each cache page has a write-up and in some caches photos of that attraction, meaning that you can also learn about some of the great places that our county has for visitors.

Heybridge Basin

Mel had ensured that we were well equipped with a couple of loafs of bread to feed the ducks and swans along the river. We had huge flocks heckling us for bread from the river and at one point it was a duck feeding frenzy!!!

Mine, mine, mine, mine...

We were also greeted by a very friendly family of swans who swam right up to us. They didn’t hiss, but calmly waited for their bread. They even gently took slices from Andy’s hand.

Please kind cachers. Could we have some of your bread?

Nom, nom, nom!

After we had passed through the wild bird hangout, we carried on to Beeleigh lock passing under several bridges. We were plesantly surprised when we saw some amazing graffiti under one of these bridges. It was a shame, however, to see that other Graffiti “Artists” had just sprayed random squirts over the lovely artwork.

Argh!

So sad to see the decent graffiti ruined.

After about 2.5 miles we had reached Beeleigh Lock, one of the 12 locks along the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation route that we were walking. This is the point at which Chelmer and Blackwater meet where fresh water above the weir and tidal salt water below create a special wildlife environment. Here we saw the floodgates that protect Heybridge from High Spring Tides.

Beeleigh Lock

A sun-kissed view from the bridge

Other than swans and ducks, we spotted some cows paddling the river along the route to Hoe Mill Lock. I’m always happy when there’s a barrier between us and cattle. A river is as good a barrier as you can get!

Cows at a safe distance

Having a paddle!

3.5 miles into the walk and we were at Ricketts Lock. The loud gushing noises of water drew me down to the jetty for a closer inspection of what was going on under the hunchback bridge. Sadly not many boats along the river today so we were unable to see it in action.

Ricketts Lock

A controversial aspect of this cache series is that the COs state that you can bring your own film cannisters and help maintain the series. If you find a cache or logbook is missing then you are welcome to replace it rather than log a DNF. Although this is a common thing with US power trails, I know this doesn’t gel well with some cachers and there is the fear that GZ could be littered with multiple containers. The COs have been clever with this series however and the chances of that happening are very slim because the vast majority of GZs look like this:

Cache security!

The hint for this cache is “Base of tree” and you can see here that the container fits snuggly into a little plastic pipe in the ground and is then covered in sticks and leaves. If the pipe is there and the container is not, then after confirming it hasn’t got lost under any nearby natural debris you can replace it without fearing that will be littering GZ.

4.5 miles into the journey and we were at Hoe Mill Lock. The perfect place to stop on one of the benches for a quick refreshment break whilst enjoying the scenery. Hoe mill lock was built at the end of an artificial canal cut which detoured around Hoe Mill, which was demolished in 1914. Larger lock chambers here allowed broader barges to pass through. At this point you see the largest lock gates on the whole navigation series, giving a 8ft 3ins fall. Across the lock you can see the 1797 Lock Keeper’s house.

Hoe Mill Lock

Views from Hoe Mill Lock

After Hoe Mill Lock we headed past the 700 year old All Saints, Ulting Church. We had found the cache that was here previously, which was just as well as it’s the other side of the river! The church looked lovely from this angle though.

All Saints Church!

This was a very muddy stretch along the river. The slipping and sliding really tested the old leg muscles and we had to be very careful where we stepped. Whilst walking along this section Mel had a few phone calls from other cachers and we learnt that we would have some extra company once we were at Papermill Lock. We were really amused by a sign that we spotted outside one of the houses along the opposite side of the river. Good job we didn’t fall in!

Yikes!

After 7 miles we were half way along the series and at Papermill Lock. Here we were joined by chunkyBMW, Cookie Cook, and Stephie4. This was a lovely spot for half way along the series as there is a lovely cafe with homemade cakes, and toilets. Here in 1792 were two mills; one grinding mica as part of the paper making process and the other grinding corn. Here you can see the former stables for horses, and the Old Stable Tea Rooms. These lock gates were also built to a larger size to allow broader barges to pass through.

Papermill Lock

Views towards the tea rooms

We took a muddy walk along the river for 7 caches over then next mile until we reached the Church Road Bridge where we stopped to admire the views from the bridge.

Views of the river

The next stretch is the longest of the series without anywhere to park or join the series, so we trundled on with our power caching mission enjoying the views, bridges, and locks that we passed. We also passed by Little Baddow Mill.

Swans gathering near Little Baddow Mill

Little Baddow Mill

After passing under the A12 we started to join up with cache’s from fr8y’s 500 Trail. As we grew ever closer to Chelmsford we saw plenty of Pill Boxes that were used to defend the area.

A pillbox on the other side of the river

Another of the pillboxes

By the time we reached Barnes Mill Lock it was quite dark out. Barnes Mill was a former weather boarded corn mill. There was also a fulling mill at this location in the 15th century which was used by the Coggeshall Abbey nuns for cloth making. The present corn mill at this spot dates from around 1800 and at its peak worked up to 6 millstones. The Marriage Family, well known Essex millers used to run this mill for many years. In 1918 the Fleming family took over the running of the Mill. In 1957 the millwheel’s shaft broke and the mill fell into disuse, before being converted into a house.

We got to the last cache at about 4:50pm. It was dark, but we were still smiling just long enough for a victory photo to be taken!

We did it!!!

My oh my did we enjoy our first Power Trail! A film can every 500-ish feet wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be because you have the wonderful views of the river and information boards along the stretch to learn about the canal.

A few tips for future visitors

• A couple of miles from the start at Heybridge Basin is a Tesco Extra which is on the other side of the river, but accessible by crossing a bridge. Here you will find toilets and a place to stock up if you need food for the series
• You can easily walk the series in one go even with the shorter daylight hours if you start early enough. Simply park at Heybridge Basin (For free), catch a bus to Chelmsford, and then walk back.
• In some sections the paths are REALLY MUDDY. Wear decent walking boots and be prepared to slip and slide.
• You can bike the series, you’ll need a mountain bike though.
• Try to spot the information boards along the series which are at a lot of the bridges and locks and will tell you more about the canal.
• Take a spare film can and logbook or two with you. You will know if a cache is missing and the CO is happy for you to replace it and log it
• Papermill lock is a good half way point to aim for. There are toilets and a tea room with tempting cakes for your break in the middle. The toilets are only open when the tea room is open though

I hope this blog entry comes in useful for anyone hoping to visit the series. It was absolutely brilliant and I can’t express how much we enjoyed the walk, the views, the caches, and the company. Happy Caching!!!

EDIT: Thank you to all who voted for me. I’m now a GAGB Committee Member.

Just a little nudge to any of my blog readers who are GAGB (Geocaching Association of Great Britain) members that the Committee Elections are on until Saturday and I am standing for election. There are 8 places available and 13 candidates so I would really appreciate your vote.

The Geocaching Association of Great Britain (GAGB) is the leading UK Geocaching body, recognised by and acting on behalf of cachers. The association was established in 2004 to provide a voice for its members in the United Kingdom with the aim of establishing good Geocaching practices, providing a focal point for public liaison and supporting the growth and enjoyment of Geocaching within the UK. If you’re a GAGB member (You can check by clicking here ) you’re eligible to vote.

Full details on the voting process and candidates is here. CV’s/Manifestos are here and discussions related to nominations are here.

(If anyone is a member and has problems accessing those links, add a comment here and I’ll ask a moderator to upgrade your forum access)

If elected, I’m hoping to completely revamp the GAGB’s website and develop it into a very useful resource for UK cachers as it would benefit from a little spruce-up! If you’re not a member then you can sign up for free here. There are some great membership benefits for discount off of online and high street retailers, and a lovely little bi-monthly magazine on UK caching called Seeker (Latest issue is here) that members get early access to.

Thanks for reading… VOTE CASS!

We headed off into Lewes on Saturday 5th to see their firework celebrations, which are arguably the best in the country. We had planned to grab a few sneaky caches whilst everyone was distracted by the entertainment. That didn’t happen however, as we had underestimated just how many people would be there and there were many police officers standing at the spots that we needed to search. Just far too many muggles to risk it. The fireworks celebrations were really something amazing though. We arrived in the town around 5:30pm to see flames disappearing past the crowds in the distance.

Ooo-er!

We lined up and watched as the whole of the town paraded through the streets in various costumes holding flaming torches. In Lewes there are 7 different rival bonfire societies and all of them have special costumes and traditions. We were quite shocked to see that some of the societies had bangers that they threw into the crowds. They made the most explosive bangs and really hurt our ears. They were very dramatic however, and were followed by flares and various fireworks exploding in the streets!

One of the societies marches past

Unsurprisingly, these were the noisy ones!

After the parades seemed to end the fireworks started around 8-ish, so we headed through the crowds to one of the 7 sites. The firework display was ok, not as amazing as the parade, but with an exploding giant Gaddafi it certainly was different! After that there were more parades. It really was the most brilliant evening of fireworks that we would highly recommend, as long as you don’t mind huge crowds.

I know exactly what you're all thinking "Cass looks so cool in that hat!" Haha!

The following day we headed off to actually find some caches. We were staying just a couple of miles down the road from the HNY (Happy New Year) 2011 series. This took us through Barcombe Mills and Barcombe reservoir which were actually also local walks recommended by the owners of the cottage that we were staying at. We could see why as there was some really lovely scenery as we passed through the mills.

Barcombe Mills

Barcombe Mills

Near the beginning of the series we were also able to grab an extra cache, WW2 Pillbox (Barcombe). Finding a cache near a pillbox is obviously nothing new, however this was a great little pillbox which was litter-free so we were able to go for a little explore before finding the cache.

Exploring

After the pillbox, the series carried on along a disused railway line. The cache hiding places were quite varied and the hints generally very useful when needed.

The old railway line

The series then passed into a nice little woodland which we were able to explore whilst finding the caches. There were some particularly interesting mushrooms scattered through the woodland.

Mushrooms with skirts!

As we passed through the woods there were a few muggles that we walked past. We knew we were following another cacher, however their name disappeared from the logbooks in a strange place. We wondered where they had disappeared off to! The series then took a strange route where we had a short linear route for 4 caches before heading back and joining the rest of the loop. It seemed strange, however once we got to the end of the stretch things started to make sense. We were stood next to a loud, gushing weir. It was brilliant!

Well worth the walk

Slightly less brilliant was what we realised we had to do to retrieve the cache. It was up a tree… somewhere. The hint told us that if we looked hard enough we would see the cache. We looked, and looked. 10 minutes later and we still hadn’t seen it. There were a few trees that it could be up, but a spoiler photo of the correct tree was available on the cache page so I loaded it up on my iPhone. Whilst we waited for the photo to load we sat and had lunch (It was, after all a great spot for it!). 15 minutes later and the photo confirmed which tree we needed to climb. Andy shot up the tree, despite not being able to see where the cache would be. 10 minutes later he was still up there scratching around, and we were then joined by a couple of “muggles” that we had walked past earlier. They stood and looked up at Andy up the tree so I thought it best to explain ourselves. “We’re geocaching” I said, ready to launch into my massive explanation. “So are we!” they said. BRILLIANT! They were Ridleys17, the cachers that we were following. Their name had disappeared from the logbooks because they headed back to look again for one they couldn’t find. We all stood around the tree trying to spot the cache. It was no good and eventually Andy headed back down. At the EXACT minute that Andy’s feet hit the floor, Mr. Ridleys17 said “There it is!” and spotted the cache!!!!! He shot up the tree in about a third of the time that it had taken Andy and threw the cache down for us to sign. Hooray! What an adventure!

Andy up the tree... somewhere...

We spent the rest of the series with Ridleys17. They told us that they had only been caching for a month, but you really couldn’t tell as they were quick to find the caches, and Mr. Ridleys17 was extremely brave climbing up a big bridge structure to grab a D3/T4 cache. It was lovely to share caching experiences and have some company for the rest of the series. One of my most favourite things about Geocaching is the social side of it, bumping into a random stranger with a common interest and spending the day with them!

I’ll admit we were quite lazy cachers during our week away. The problem was that we stayed in the most cosy, beautiful cottage with an open log fire and it was hard to tear ourselves away from it. We did however take a trip into Brighton and Eastbourne to pick up a few odd caches here and there. The dark weather meant that there weren’t many muggles out, meaning we could grab a tricky cache on Eastbourne Pier.

An empty Eastbourne pier

Bob the Seagull

Brighton Marina

On the Thursday we headed off to do a massive series over 14 miles. We packed up the car and headed off to start at Fletching to Newick #1.

The start of the series

We parked up, looked in the back of the car and our caching bag was nowhere to be seen! Oh no! We had left it on the chair at the cottage meaning pens, stickers, TB’s, swag, everything was there! It was too late to go back, but at least we had the bag with the food and drink in and we had our GPSr too. We had a couple of spare pens in the car as well, so were able to head off with the bare essentials. We got off to a good start, however after signing the first couple of caches we realised that the reason those spare pens were left in the car was because they didn’t actually work! We were left having to etch our names in logbooks in available spaces. I was annoyed at first, but we did see the funny side in the end! To top things off, my phone hadn’t charged over night and I was operating with 34% battery! The series was all micros, however they were mostly film cans inside slightly larger pots so were slightly easier to find. It was a nice series, with some nice views and sounds of trains from the Bluebell railway all of the way around. By the end of the series, however, we felt like we never wanted to see another film can again, which I seem to remember was the feeling we had after doing the similar series near by!

The highlight for us was bumping into a very friendly swan about half way around. She thought we had something for her, and despite me being scared at first I soon warmed to her and realised she just wanted attention. We’re used to having swans hiss at us along the river, so having one that wandered up to us was very different!

Our new friend

We finished our week in Sussex on Friday with a visit to the East Chilington series. A series of 13 caches over 4 miles. We’d been very lucky for the week and the weather was very mild for the time of year, however the Friday felt very cold and misty. The ground was wet and muddy. We started to remember what autumn caching was really like!

There were some great stiles along the series, which were specially made from oak. If only all stiles were this easy to climb over and didn’t require crazy balancing acts to conquer!

Conquering the stile

Near the end of the series we passed through a farm and passed through a field of alpacas. Nice to see something other than horses and cows! We then walked past a big plastic cylinder in a pen and were surprised when 2 piggies came out to say hello. They were both very friendly and I spent a little while standing there saying “Awww! Aren’t they cute!”

Alpacas

Piggies!

Our last day in Sussex made us remember last year’s autumn and winter caching experiences: Soaked shoes, wet feet, wet trousers, and mud everywhere. Oh well! Looks like it’s time to do it all again!!!

Happy autumn caching!

Yesterday it got updated to version 1.3 so is even more fabulous, the updates are:
* cache limit increased from 3000 to 5000 caches
* option to add new caches to the existing ones during import; choosing this option when importing your caches results in adding all new caches to your map and updating all caches which were imported earlier
* populate Todo-List when exporting from GSAK

The new import options

The first two new additions on the list are really handy, and means you can view 5000 caches in the maps at once. Brilliant for planning a trip away. It also means you don’t have to rely on GSAK to grab 5000 caches, you can just import 5 pocket queries of 1000 caches at a time to get all 5000 displayed.

Happy Cach’eye-ing!

Our trip to the River Nene also had us filling in the final two boxes on our difficulty/terrain matrix. That’s it now. All 81 combinations complete (And surprisingly I’m still alive to tell the tale!)

24th September

We had completed the caches along the River Lea during a couple of trips the year before. We had done it on bike and I remember a big section where there were no caches. This section was then filled with 12 caches so we returned to get them, this time on foot. It wasn’t a chore though, it wasn’t like “We cycled this section last year and now we’ve got to do it AGAIN”, but a real pleasure to return. It’s not often that we visit a beautiful place a few times when caching as once is usually enough to clear the area and last time we were cycling so weren’t able to absorb the area. This time we took a very slow stroll down the river in the sunshine. We started early to avoid muggles, and the majority of muggles at that time of the morning were just rowing up and down the river.

The River Lea

Fellow Essex cachers, Team SOS (a big group consisting of many of our caching friends) had done the caches on a canal boat a few weeks before our visit and had kindly replaced all of the missing caches and logbooks so we were able to stroll down the river and find all of them. A big thank you to all of Team SOS!

Despite it being quite a busy area, the only muggles we had to avoid whilst trying to retrieve a cache were the swans who hissed at us!

Fierce cache guardians

After grabbing the 12 remaining River lea caches we were able to loop back through Lea Valley country park to grab a few more caches. We had attempted some of them on our previous trips, however found the park a bit hard to navigate as our GPSr didn’t have any maps on it. We were a lot better prepared this time around.

The country park was really quite beautiful with lovely lakes and plenty of birds. Information boards told us about the otters that lived there, but I think they were sleeping!

Cygnets on the river

A pretty marker in Lea Valley Park

Sunbathing by the side of the river

We stopped for lunch along the river and watched families hire boats to go up and down the river. I did quite fancy a go (More on this later!) however after a little while we felt ourselves heading off for some much needed shade to do the HPW series. This took us on a lovely stroll around ‘Hoddesdon Park Wood’ for 9 caches. The cache containers were mostly a decent size with swaps and it was really enjoyable weaving in and out of the trees. We noticed that a previous visitor had left something even more annoying than a calling card in the caches, corks with their names scribbled on! It seemed quite a pointless thing to do as it wasn’t as if anyone would swap something for a crappy old cork. They even put one in a film can so the logbook was all squashed at the bottom! We did some removals, as everything was getting crammed in the containers because of these.

Into the woods we go

Hoddesdon park woods

We’d definitely recommend the series around the Hoddesdon woods. Plenty of shade, birds, and mushrooms to spot!

Mushrooms growing in the wood

2nd October

The following weekend we were also tempted towards the river, this time it was the River Nene and we weren’t going to walk it. We weren’t going to cycle it, we were going to paddle it. (YIKES!) I’m sure for most people this isn’t a big deal, but poor little Cass can’t swim and is terrified of water so the Cache By Kayak series sounded quite terrifying!. It also didn’t help that it was a last minute decision so I hadn’t been able to mentally prepare. We had asked a friend with all the boating necessaries a long while ago if we could borrow them. We never heard anything again until out of the blue he offered to bring us the gear this weekend! We couldn’t say no, two of the caches that required a boat were sitting as empty squares on our difficulty/terrain matrix and this may be the last chance we would get. So, a quick check on YouTube trained me (ahem!) on how to paddle a Kayak and the preparation was done.

Sunday morning was lovely and sunny and probably the perfect morning for an enjoyable paddle along the river. We started early, before it got too hot packing little but our pen and our GPSr (I was convinced we would fall in). The river was surprisingly quiet and shallow (But I was still scared). We didn’t see any other boats, kayaks, canoes, etc. and there weren’t that many muggles either, even when it got busier later in the morning. It was the perfect river for a beginner and it all went very well, well for the first 2 or 3 meters and then we met THE SWANS! Ah! More swans than I had ever seen in my entire life. Talk about the worst cache to start with. To cut a long story short, I was too scared to get the cache that was near the swans (we had a few tag alongs) and flipped into a massive panic attack. So we bypassed that one! The second cache, Kneely there, we spotted easily however were unable to reach as it required kneeling on the kayak so that we could reach it and there was no way that was happening!!! So it was onto the 3rd cache, Reed ‘em and weep which was a nice half mile paddle up the river, through a lock which went very well (surprisingly!), to a container that was missing. I checked the logs in the morning and realised it was gone, but the CO had said if you spot the ring that the container was attached to you could log it. We spotted it, but didn’t feel right claiming that so had brought along a replacement container that we hooked on a branch and later asked the CO if we could log it. The CO said that of course we could, but they had actually visited in the afternoon to do the replacement so swapped our cache for theirs! Typical! As if that wasn’t bad enough, they actually did the maintenance on an inflatable tiger!!! And there was me freaking out in a proper, stable kayak! At that point we turned around and went back through the mad swans, which were just as scary. It must have been at least a mile and a half of paddling to the next cache, Bolt. It was worth it though as it was a find, and a very easy find which filled the D1/T5 square on our D/T grid which is, in my opinion, the hardest one to fill. The last cache, Follow the Arrow was another easy find before we paddled back. Those last few caches and the paddle back were the most rewarding and confident boosting ones. I felt quite pleased with myself after that. I think I would have been braver if we had done those caches before the one with the swans, however despite us only being able to find 3 out of the 5 caches along the series it felt very rewarding!

It’s definitely a series I would recommend, particularly for beginner kayak/canoeing due to the river being so quiet and shallow. It also probably helps if you don’t have a massive water phobia! After the crazy paddle down the river we took a short stroll down the river, if only to give the swans an evil look! We noticed a herd of horses. There were 13 of them and when we first looked we thought they were a special breen as they had very brown tails and manes. When we got closer we realised that the brown colour was caused by thousands of little brown thistle heads weaved into their fur. Teddy gets annoyed if he gets one or two thistles caught in his fur, but these horses were literally covered. It was horrible, and very sad. I took photos, and jotted down the GPS coords and sent these to the RSPCA. They got straight back to me and acknowleged my report telling me they would pass it on to a field officer. I just hope they can help these poor horses as they looked so uncomfortable. It’s unbelievable that someone could leave them like this.

Poor horses

We’d travelled a long way to the River Nene for the kayaking series and wanted to make our trip worthwhile so in the afternoon visited a series around Sywell Country Park and reservoir. Planning this trip consisted of me noticing a loop of caches around a body of water and knowing it would be enjoyable. I wasn’t wrong! I always end up liking cache series around reservoirs, or lakes.

Despite the cache containers not being very exciting (just film cans and tubes) the area was beautiful and we were pleased with our choice of caches to finish off the day. It was so hot out however and the conveniently placed benches around the reservoir were most welcome.

The reservoir and pumping station

Birds on the reservoir

There were plenty of circular series around the area to keep us busy, however we wimped out because of the heat and settled for some drive-by’s instead. There were quite a lot around the area, especially as we hadn’t been there before. The highlight of these however, was “The Plane! The Plane!” placed at Sywell Airfield. To get the cache you had to enter the airfield, however once there you could stand and watch the planes flying. We stayed there for a little while before heading home.

A small ww2 shelter at the airfield

Sywell Airfield

A successful day of caching and completing our difficulty/terrain matrix was definitely a massive achievement that we’re really proud of. It was a great challenge as it forced us to seek caches that we wouldn’t usually do, and helped us find caches that were quite special. Not only had we paddled down a river, but entered an old tin mine, entered an old quarry, climbed numerous trees, climbed to the peaks of a couple of mountains, did some scrambling, climbed up a waterfall (by mistake!), waded through a swamp, done a bit of amateur rock climbing, and solved some extremely hard puzzles!

The completed D/T matrix. Hooray!

For anyone attempting the challenge, our qualifying caches are below. Of course we just keep our fingers crossed that no-one changes the difficulty and terrain ratings of those caches!!!

The list of all of our combinations

Welcome to Selsey

We grabbed around 20 geocaches on our way down south including the Haroldsea Hunt series and began the Tuesday needing 74 caches. Tuesday was unashamedly all about the numbers so that we could hit our milestone conveniently on the Wednesday.

Tuesday 15th September

We started with redirected male’s “Sullington Heights” series which boasted 20 caches for only about 3 miles of walking. In case you hadn’t realised, the clue for the terrain is in the name of the series, however silly Cass hadn’t thought about it like that! We started the series by almost wading through a path of quick-sand style mud and followed that with a steep ascent. It was ok though and about 3 caches later and the hill was out of the way. With the sun shining through the clouds, the views were magnificent and well worth the climb.

Views from the top of the hill

Which way?

The cache hides were easy ones to discover with detailed hints so we didn’t struggle with any of the finds and were just left to admire the views which seemed to be present at every cache location. It was obviously quite a popular walking location as despite it being a weekday, muggles were well dispersed around the area!

Views on the way down

Once at the very bottom we were treated to a quaint waterfall at the appropriately named ‘Waterfall Cottage’ before ascending one last, short hill alongside a cow pasture.

The waterfall

All the way up the main hill of the series we were dodging cow pats so I was quite convinced that we would bump into our 4-legged friends, however when we finally did they were actually behind a fence! Phew!

Well, ain't I just the cutest!

With the bonus numbers collected we headed off to find the final stash and were greeted by a well stocked ammo can. A nice end to an enjoyable morning of caching.

The bonus

All that was left was the afternoon. 20 caches down, 54 to go! Cue another redirected male series, AVR which with a few extra caches and a couple of slight detours would hopefully yield 45 caches over about 9.5 miles and take us very close to our final goal.

The series started off rather flat and on the way to AVR05 we bumped into some other cachers doing the series, mikelevett aka Mike and Christine (out caching with Cobbett and Matthew). We recognised the famous owners of the Sussex Amble series instantly from when they visited the Langdon Plotlands event in Essex this summer. We hadn’t spoken for long back then so they didn’t remember us, but it was a good opportunity to stop for a chat. They warned us that the next section of the series got a bit windy and hilly. Indeed it did and it was definitely a case of “Hold onto your hat!”. We climbed up the hill past a mill and herd of goats who all rushed over for some food. Unfortunately we couldn’t deliver!

Feed me!

We were around 3 miles from the sea at the top of the hill, however we could see the sea clearly in the distance.

I can see the sea!

We soon realised that we were in a national trust area, ‘Highdown Hill’ and I was quite excited when I noticed a trig point on my map so we stopped off at the trig before moving on.

Highdown Hill

The Highdown Hill Trig

The rest of the series went very well and we didn’t have any DNF’s. The majority of the caches were micros, however the hints were very detailed if needed and rather than using film cans, the CO had used slightly larger specieman pots. This really did make a difference and made the caches more satisfying to find. Despite this, there were also a couple of caches for swaps.

One of the larger containers

With only a few caches to go we bumped into mikelevett again. They had been doing the series in a slightly different order to us and we couldn’t have met them at a better time as there was a huge herd of cows in the field that we had to cross through and reinforcements were most welcome! However, we soon learnt that they were heading off to do the nearby church micro that we had already visited so we were on our own. Mike told us that they were friendly cows who would come up to us and say hello. I told him that’s what I was afraid of!!! We were, however slightly reassured and actually as we passed through the cows, they headed towards us, but over the other side of the field meaning that they effectively moved out of our way and we were safe. Phew!

We finished the day just 3 caches away from our 5000th find. It turned out perfect with what we had planned for the following day. Although we had to drive past some easy cache and dashes on the way home so as not to upset the numbers it was worth it for the place that we headed for our 5000th…

Wednesday 16th September

Our chosen 5000th milestone was a 5/5 cache in Portsmouth, The Caching Olympics Challenge – GOLD. A challenge cache that requires you to have found 100 caches in a day. On the day that we did the Chiltern Hundred series we found 123 caches so we knew that we qualified and all that was needed was to find it. There is also a The Caching Olympics Challenge – SILVER and The Caching Olympics Challenge – BRONZE. Silver requires 50 finds in a day, and Bronze requires 25 finds in a day. With 3 caches required, these olympic challenges fitted perfectly with what we needed!

We hadn’t realised that the caches were hidden in such a beautiful area, a large park called ‘Milton Common’ nestled deep in the city. Complete with some lovely lakes, views of the sea and bright sunshine it was a lovely area to go caching. There were also a few extra caches scattered in the park for us afterwards.

Views from Milton Common

After picking up the bronze for cache #4998, and silver for #4999 we headed off for the gold! To get to the cache we had to lift up a large block of concrete. Along with the cache container, and many snails, we also found a little newt!

A very cute cache guardian

Mr. Newt didn’t want to move from his spot and was very comfortable. We encouraged him with a stick and managed to lift him out of the way. We thought he may have been a little hurt

OUR 5000th FIND!!!

We ensured that our newt friend was out of the way before replacing the concrete block on of of the cache and moved on, happy with our choice of milestone!

The day wasn’t over and with the sun still shining, we headed north to complete the 7 Points Ramble. As soon as we parked up at the car park and saw the views we knew we’d be in for a treat with the series.

Views of Goodwood airfield

We managed to find all of the caches on the series easily, however were quite surprised to see in a lot of cases the caches were actually sitting on top of the camo and completely out in the open. Naturally we hid the caches a lot better than we found them. The way back was up through a sheep field with some very dainty looking sheep in it. There was also quite a hill on the way back, but what do we expect with such nice views?!?

Views from the sheep field

Lady sheep (I'm sure of it!)

After completing the 7 Points Ramble, we headed up another hill on the opposite side of the car park to find a virtual. This required us to have our photo taken at the Trundle One trig. There were again spectacular views from the top!

At the Trundle trig

Thursday 17th September

Our previous caching days had mostly been hitting trails which included a lot of caches over just a few miles. On Thursday we got to do a series I had really been looking forward to since our previous trip down to West Sussex, JaceBy’s Balls. On the previous trip we just didn’t have chance to fit the series in, however it would have been a crime to miss it again! Why is the series so special? The caches are quite well spread out on the series, however it’s special because it follows a trail of 13 chalk balls that sculpturer, Andy Goldsworthy had created. The series therefore isn’t just a case of finding the caches, but also finding the balls and the CO did a good job of adding instructions to each cache page on where you will find the next ball on the series.

So up the hill we went in the magnificent sunshine where we found our first chalk ball. These balls were definitely bigger than I expected (said the actress to the bishop ) as I was expecting them to be the size of those boulders that the blokes on “Britain’s strongest man” lift.

At the first chalk ball

Views from the first chalk ball

We carried on along the series, thankful that the route to the first ball was the only hill and entered a woodland which carried on for pretty much all of the series. It was fabulous and an absolute blessing on such a hot day. Woodland trails are my absolute favourite and this one was a real haven for interesting mushrooms. We were however slightly disappointed when we got to the second ball as it was really cracked and parts of it were on the ground. It must have taken quite a whack for it to break.

Cracked Ball, number 2

The woodland

Mushrooms in the woodland

The chalk balls were placed in varied locations along the path. Some were hidden by undergrowth so it was quite a challenge to find them, but we made sure that we spotted every single ball on the series.

Hidden balls!

At cache 15 we ran out of balls and retrieved the bonus cache. Last year when we looked at doing the series it was a linear trail with instructions on how to catch a bus back. Since then, however, the CO had hidden some additional caches to take you back in a loop which integrated with some ‘Novel Caches’, caches based on books. There was, for example, The Hobbit, which required me to squeeze into a very tight spot to retrieve the cache

Smiling through the discomfort!

There was also The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (One of my favourite books when I was little), Kidnap in Willowbank Wood, Alice in Wonderland, and Little Red Riding Hood. Some of the Novel caches were custom containers which were great, others were just real monsters to find. We were pleased to find them all however before looping back to the last couple of JaceBy’s Balls caches. We had been really lucky in that the paths were perfect along the entire series until we got to the last cache which was so overgrown. The damp grass soacked the bottom of our trousers. This continued all the way down the hill back to the car, however there were some lovely views despite being a bit uncomfortable with wet legs!

Views on the way down

In the evening we headed off along the coast near to where we were staying for 2 earthcaches and a virtual. I always feel compelled to visit an earthcache or virtual even if it means a considerable walk for a single cache as I know it will usually be rewarding whereas you can never be too sure with physical boxes. The first Earthcache we headed to was 45 Million Fossiliferous!. This was quite an interactive earthcache in that you didn’t just have to answer questions and take a photo, but actually search the beach for fossils! You then needed to identify the correct name for your fossils and send the names to the CO along with a measurement of their size. There were mainly two types of fossils that we found, ‘Turritela’ (Pointy one) and ‘Venericor Planicosta’ (Shell-like ones) You could tell these were fossils rather than normal shells as they were all a browny-beige colour. There was also the possiblity of finding sharks teeth on the beach. We walked up and down for a while, but didn’t find any. Photos on the cache page suggest that although we failed a few others have actually found them. I absolutely loved this earthcache as I’ve never really been fossil hunting before! I wish we had left a bit more time in the evening for our search as I would have loved to have found a shark’s tooth!

Fossil Beds

Our fossils

We stopped off for a very quick and easy virtual, Days Gone By – West Sussex before heading for our final earthcache, West Wittering – West Sussex (Spit). This took us to a section of the beach where we learnt how longshore drift had helped build natural sea defense using the sand on the beach. The earthcache answers this time around were really quite hard and we spent a while pacing up and down trying to answer them. It turned out that if I’d listened harder in Geography at school I probably would have been able to answer the questions, however I did a bit of research later and was able to pick out the answer, but it was indeed a very hard earthcache.

The Spit

Our little birdy friend!

There were beautiful views from the beach though as the sun was going down and as we headed back to the car we watched a young couple catch crabs from a crab pool using a stone covered in bacon dangling from string. It worked very well and they were hooking them out at lightening speed. I just wished I’d known about it so we could have caught some too!

Friday 16th September

Friday was our last day and we headed off for a final caching series before heading home, Out and About in Sussex, 32 caches over about 6 miles. Typically my camera died as soon as we started the series and I discovered my spare battery wasn’t actually charged (typical). There was enough battery however to capture a photo of the worst guard dog in the country! As we walked through a farm on the series he barked at us, ran up to us, wiggled his bum, and then rolled over for his tummy to be tickled! He escorted us through the farm before jumping into a hole that some builders were digging!!!

Cute doggy!

The series was ok, however not one that I would leave a favourite point on as we felt that it lacked variety with the hiding places a little. It was all very fence/post/stile oriented and you probably could have worked out where most of the caches would be hidden without even looking at the GPSr! Saying that, it was a nice stroll on a sunny day to end our caching trip before heading home.

Overall we had a lovely few days caching down south and were more than happy with our choice of cache for our 5000th milestone. Roll on 10,000!

North Downs Way

It was a sunny morning, and we got off to a good start by finding the first few geocaches, however very soon we realised the reason for the high difficulty/terrain ratings of some of the geocaches… It was because there was a very big hill leading up to the top of the series. Once we were the top however it was quite flat and it was just a matter of getting back down. Although the walk up the hill was quite demanding there was some beautiful woodland and we passed some sections where there were some lovely old trees.

Up the hill we go!

Once we were at the top, were treated to some lovely views of Kent.

Views down the pylon lines into Kent

We felt that the difficulty and terrain ratings for the geocaches were however somewhat exaggerated, as although it took a bit of work to get up the hill it definitely didn’t feel like a 4.5 terrain in places. There were a good variety of containers on the series, in particular we liked the cache owner’s use of a camo’ed tin as an ammo box.

A different type of ammo box

We were also treated to some interestingly coloured mushrooms and tree fungus woodland as we descended the hill.

Marshmellow-like tree fungus!

Tree fungus along the path

We had a few laughs at some of the cache locations. On the way to one of the caches, there was a marker for the North Downs Way which looked rather like a tombstone! And at one of the other cache locations someone placed a toilet roll on one of the trees which made it look rather like toilet area!!!

Ray resting in peace

Nature's own portaloo!

Once we reached the bottom of the hill we realised that we’d been in Boxley Warren nature reserve, an area of outstanding natural beauty of the Kent Downs. It certainly was quite an enjoyable area to walk through.

There was also a bonus cache, and we visited this after doing a few other geocaches. It was a really rewarding bonus as well as it was in a massive tool box. We were really pleased to find it despite it not being very well-stocked with goodies.

A big bonus!

Continuing the high terrain, high difficulty geocache theme we headed off to geocache in a swamp called Shrek. This was a 4.5d/5t cache which required you to wade through swamp to find it. We needed to fill this box on our difficulty/terrain matrix. The alternative cache for this box nearer home required a swim across a river. I can’t swim, so Andy was elected to do the retrieval however he was told if he did this cache in the swamp he didn’t have to do the wild swimming! He jumped at the chance when I suggested the slight wade through the swamp. He was quite convinced that it wouldn’t come past his Wellington boots, however he did find out that this swamp was a bit higher than he had anticipated. At one point Mel suggested that Ray would go into the swamp to retrieve the cache however I insisted that Andy go and fetch it as it was his duty, otherwise he would be swimming across the river!!! We shouted encouragements from the river bank and it wasn’t long before Andy got to the place where we thought that the cache would be and a little bit of rummaging later and he had in its in his hand. It was a little bit fiddly to retrieve however he managed to do it and he was soon on dry land, emptying the water out of his wellies.

Squelch

He's in there somewhere...

Must be around here somewhere...

We were able to grab a few more geocaches in the area as well. They were situated along a lovely river area where there were canal boats and pub. We sat by the river for a few moments and enjoyed the sunshine before moving on to the other geocaches.

Across the canal

A pirate ship!

To finish the day we headed to a cache that Ray had his eye on, it was a 5/5 geocache which required you to climb up an old BT pole. We brought our telescopic ladder with us so were well prepared for the climb up the pole, however it was Ray that got to do the retrieval whilst the rest of us held the ladder. It wasn’t the best ladder for climbing poles as it was a bit wobbly and shakey in places, however with us all holding onto it plus Ray holding onto the pole as he made his way up, he managed to safely retrieve it and pass it down for us all to sign. We felt a little bit suspicious retrieving the cache from this place as there were signs up telling us that we were being watched by CCTV and a camera pointed straight at the telegraph pole, however we weren’t there for long and were able to get the cache sorted and get back in the car within about 5 mins.

We're being watched...

A long way up!

It was a great day caching as we managed to find some very high terrain/difficulty caches and managed to fill in two squares of our difficulty/terrain matrix meaning that we only need two more to complete the entire thing!

If someone could please just hide a 1D/5T cache which doesn’t involve water (as I can’t swim) I would be most grateful!!! With only 17 caches of this rating in the entire country, looks like it might take us a while to get all of our squares filled! We are so very nearly there though…