Bank holiday caching in Cambridgeshire

We’ve had a rough few weeks weather-wise in the UK, but with the bank holiday weekend starting 5th May approaching we kept our fingers crossed for good weather. We didn’t mind a bit of rain, or a few showers, but we just hoped that we wouldn’t have another experience like that when we were in Melton Mowbray when we could barely even do drive-by’s!

On the Saturday we headed to Cambridgeshire to do a couple of new Poshrule series: King’s Cliffe and Apethorpe Agadoo. We were so pleased that we went out despite the fears of rain as both were great series, each with some lovely features. We started with King’s Cliffe, a series of 30 caches over 8 miles with 3 extras along the way as well. To get to the first King’s Cliffe cache we had to pass by an old watermill. There was a very loud gushing sound of water which we could hear as we walked by. There was a gap in the wall where we could peek through and see the mill in action. It was very dark inside!

A peek inside the watermill

We crossed over the stream and were able to get a good view of the mill. The stream was very high, nearly at the top of the bank from all of the recent rain.

Looking back at the watermill

Going underground for our 10,000th find!!!

After all of our fun in the US we were left at about 75 caches away from our 10,000th find. We thought long and hard about the cache that we wanted for our milestone, after all 10,000 couldn’t be just any old film can! We still needed to get the 74 other caches though so on Saturday 21st April we headed just north of Cambridge for a couple of walking series…

Alconbury Amble

Alconbury Weston

The first caching adventures of 2012

Monday 2nd January

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

Caching on International Geocaching Day!

Saturday 20th August was the 1st International Geocaching day (Hooray!) however, I had a family wedding to attend so couldn’t do much caching (boo!) However, I couldn’t let the day pass without finding at least one cache! I hope everyone had a nice Geocaching Day and was able to get out and find a few caches to celebrate! Anyone who has logged a cache on that day should soon get a souvenier added to their profile.

Saturday – International Geocaching Day!

Along with Teddy I headed off to do the RAF Hunsdon series, situated around the old airfield. There were 4 caches around here, 2 multis and 2 puzzles. The first cache, RAF Hunsdon started off by requiring that you get numbers from the airfield memorial. In addition to this you also needed numbers from an unrelated cache about 4 miles down the road. I found this very strange as the memorial had plenty of numbers on it to work out coordinates. Luckily I still had the numbers from this cache that I found about a year ago. Off I went to find the memorial to get the coordinates for the cache. It was about 0.75 miles to the memorial, and it was a very sunny morning. It wasn’t long before we had reached the track which used to be the old runway.

The old runway

Donkeys, Stepping stones and Steam trains (Oh My!)

Last weekend and this weekend we headed up to Peterborough to knock off some more poshrule trails. We are gradually getting through them, although I’m sure some new ones will pop up when we’re least expecting it!

I’ve got a bit behind on blogging recently as there is so much going on at the moment. This entry encompasses two weekends and includes our visits to Castor Canter, Poshrule’s Perambulate, Woodnewton Womble, and Nassington Nobble cache series…

Sunny caching in Cambridgeshire

Old Weston

Hooray! The sunshine came out this weekend, but unfortunately it didn’t make my geodog happy! He spent the entire duration of Friday and Saturday sulking about something. He didn’t want to eat, drink, play, go walkies, and he certainly didn’t want to join us on Saturday to go Geocaching (Which is quite unusual for him) Thankfully he came back to life on Sunday, however on Saturday we just went it alone.

Not a happy doggy!

We started off with a recently laid poshrule series, Old Weston Outback. A nice stroll of 26 caches over 5.5 miles. We started off with blue skies and golden corn with some lovely views into the distance.

Sunny views across the corn

A wet weekend of caching! :(

Well! What a complete wash out Saturday was! It’d been planned for a while that I’d be working this weekend, however I found out that in the end I didn’t need to and would be free to cache! I think working was definitely the dryer, safer option and despite the weather lady warning us of a horrible day we chose to ignore her and drove off for a day of caching!

Upton Circular Series

It wasn’t raining when we left home, however when we arrived at Upton it was steadily drizzling. We covered ourselves in waterproof trousers and coats and decided to brave the rain!

Upton Village Sign

Sawtry Saunter and Lutton Walk – The Cambridgeshire countryside at its best

On Saturday we headed north towards Huntingdon for (yes, you’ve guessed it) some more poshrule trails. These were Sawtry Saunter (23 caches over 4.6 miles), and Lutton Walk (22 caches over 4.2 miles).

Sawtry Saunter

We started off with Sawtry Saunter, a series we had planned to do a few weeks ago when we were in the area, however were put off by a sudden surge of rain. I’m so glad that we had delayed it as we saw some amazing wildlife out on sunny Saturday…

The walk started off at a lovely open park near a housing area. We immediately marked it as the place to stop for a lunctime picnic as our reward for completing the series.

The perfect picnic spot

The first few caches were easy enough to find, however we were distracted by a large bird in the distance which I spotted whilst I was taking some photographs of the views.

The bird is just about visible in the distance

As we got closer we soon realised that it was a very special bird, it was in fact a Red Kite. They have very distinct wings and forked tails so even we were able to identify it. Suddenly the caching became far less important as we were transfixed on the red kite gliding through the sky. We watched it for 10 minutes as it soared over our head.

The red kite over head

Caching, Waymarking, and the Langdon Plotlands event

On Thursday we went into Peterborough city centre for a few caches and a go at our first real waymarking. To start off the day, however we headed just north of the city for a trail of 22 caches called Helpston Hike. We’d got quite used to poshrule’s hides in this area, however this series was laid by fluffy-chick. There were no hints for the caches so we just had to use our noses. We started off by parking in Helpston near a lovely church. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the “church micro craze” that we’re quite used to down our way has caught on up here so we quite often drive past lovely churches which would be ideal spots for a church micro, but don’t have caches there yet.

Helpston Church, but no church micro

After passing through a horse pasture we reached the first cache, which definitely put a smile on our faces. At this point we thought that the series may be a little bit more special than we had realised!

A cache to make you smile!

Caching for our 4000 milestone!

This weekend was the weekend for the 4000th milestone. We had 3891 caches on Friday morning and finished Sunday afternoon with 4005 finds. A busy weekend! We booked the day off work on Friday to make a start with some more brilliant poshrule trails just north of Huntingdon, I then joined mel-ray for a truely beautiful trail near Clare on Saturday, and we finished on Sunday by unexpectedly heading back up near Huntingdon for another poshrule trail where we scooped up that all important number 4000…

Friday: Winwick Wander and The Gidding Round

Unfortunately Friday wasn’t the day weather-wise that we’d hoped for. It was damp, grey and drizzly, but it didn’t dampen our spirits. We started the morning by heading up to do poshrule’s Winwick Wander. This is a trail of 23 caches (Plus 1 extra) over just under 5 miles. There was a nice variety of cache sizes as well which kept it interesting. There were a few injuries at the beginning of the trail however as poor Andy got a thorn stuck in his hand, fell down a rabbit hole and fell on his knee, twisting his ankle, plus got a scratch that caused a fair amount of blood to gush out of his arm. I was wondering if he was on a suicide mission, however thankfully there were no more injuries after that!

Along the first stretch there was a rabbit that seemed to toy with us. He dashed along the footpath, towards us, then away, then back towards us, then sat still, then tried to get through the corn, then came towards us, before eventually deciding to run off!

Waiting...

We then headed through the prettiest fields I’ve seen all year. They were full of purple flowers and we walked straight through them. I’m not too sure what crop they are, anyone know? They looked very pretty with the yellow rapeseed in the background.

Beautiful purple fields