The Essex Camping Event

Essex has been buzzing with great Geocaching events this month! We had Essex Meet #15 by Unobtainium on Wednesday 16th May, Mr. Crow/Kitty!!’s Goldhanger Meet and Cache Trails on Saturday 19th May, McWomble’s Heading Down Under by Hollyncharlie on Wednesday 23rd May, and now Grimmerscotting’s Essex Camping Event on 25th May near Dengie on the Essex coast! Anyone would think we’d all be sick of the sight of each other by now!

We arrived at Waterside Holiday Park on the Friday night and managed to get our tent pitched up just before it got dark. Over 200 new caches had been released to keep us busy for the weekend so we headed off early on the Saturday morning to get cracking on the new St Peter’s Ring series. There were 77 caches in this loop, however it could be split apart into sub-loops. We decided not to try and conquer the entire series and picked a loop that started within walking distance from our tent (about 200ft!)

St Peter’s Way

A nice feature of the series was that each cache was named after a cacher attending the camping event or other Essex geocachers. Likewise we had a cache named after us which was #5 of the series, however we were starting from #77 so wouldn’t be picking it up on this day. Grimmerscotting had also made us all flags with our caching names on them for us to label our tents. We thought this was a lovely touch!

Home of Cassandy!

The first stretch of the series took us along the sea wall. The low morning sun shining across the sea made for lovely scenic views across the water.

Morning views out to sea

A single stranded boat

Through Stones yacht club

We continued along the series. Although there were lots of people at the campsite it seemed that we were only the second cachers to attempt this part of the series. We didn’t have much of a cacher trail to follow or logs to help us when we got a bit stuck and at times it was quite tricky. After leaving the sea wall we found ourselves on footpaths that looking like they were very rarely walked. The grass and undergrowth was waist high and we had to battle to find the footpath and make our way through. Thankfully this was just a temporary feature of the series and we were soon back onto good paths again. We even managed to get 2 FTFs whilst on the series. It was announced that anyone could claim joint FTF on the series as long as they attended the camping event, but it was nice to be able to get our names in the logbook first.

Through the broad bean field

We had planned to do about 7 miles of the loop, however cut it about a mile short as my feet were starting to ache. It’s quite unusual for me to get pains in my feet over such a short distance and it was feeling more like we had walked 16 miles rather than 6 by the time we got back to camp in St Lawrence.

St Lawrence Village Sign

After an hours rest I was feeling a bit better so we headed off to do All aboard for a Pirate Adventure. This was a series of 21 letterbox hybrid caches. We’d heard from other cachers that had done it the previous day that it was a really enjoyable series.

Once we arrived at the first cache in the series we grabbed a treasure map with coordinates for the rest of the caches. It took some time to enter all of the waypoints into the GPS, but once we had done that we were off and running. In each cache was a pirate stamp which matched the name of the cache. The caches were great quality, as were the ink pads inside and we started to build up a really lovely picture of all of the different stamps!

Some of our pirate stamps!

The series took us along a lovely shaded path and all of the cache containers were of very good quality. Eventually we got to the “Treasure Trove” cache which was listed as a ‘Large’ and it truely was a large. An absolutely brilliant treasure chest stocked full of pirate swag. We were stunned. The effort that went into the series was so impressive!

The treasure trove

All of the loot!

After the Letterbox series we were able to stop off for the Saint Lawrence Church Micro #542. It was an amazing church which looked fabulous sitting on the top of the hill.

St. Lawrence Church

In the evening we all gathered back at our tents with many cachers having BBQs and socialising.

Dinner at the mel-ray tent

A little later we all gathered at the Grimmerscotting tent for the event raffle and a mingle with caching friends. We all owed John and Fi a big thank you for getting it all set up and coordinated.

Crowding around the Grimmerscotting marquee

A big thanks to John and Fi!

I had a word with Daisy, Grimmerscotting’s doggy and she told me that the whole event was actually her idea. John was just taking all of her credit!

The real star of the show!

On the final day, Sunday, it was time to take the tent down and head home. There was still one important job to do: Get our Cassandy signature cache! This was another cache that we could walk to along the sea wall and we walked with stones2005 who also needed to get our one. Again we were treated to some lovely views out to sea and spotted an oddly positioned boat!!!

More views out to sea

Oops!

We finally got the the 5th cache, our cache and like many others posed with it and our event flag!

Our cache!!!

We made it to cache #6 before I suggested turning back. We’d only walked about a mile, but again my feet were feeling like they’d done about 10 times that! I later discovered that my feet weren’t aching just because of walking a distance, but my right foot was very swollen and it seemed a lot like plantar fasciitis, where the tissue under your foot becomes inflamed due to over stretching. I’d done a lot of walking and running throughout the week and it seems like at some point I’d overstretched it. I think the miles over the weekend just about finished me off because by Sunday evening I couldn’t actually walk and had to hop around. I’m resting up now and cutting right back on any exercise this week so that (fingers crossed) I can get back to walking at the weekend.

All in all it was a lovely weekend caching with our friends. I think the social side of caching is one of the things that I love most about the hobby. It’s just a shame that there aren’t any more weekend events for a while, oh well… there’s always Piratemania in July!

Goldhanger Meet and Cache Trails launch 2012

And so it was time again for the Goldhanger Meet and Cache Trails launch event. We had a wonderful time last year when Mr. Crow and Kitty!! gathered us all together on a Saturday for the Goldhanger West competition. This year however, it wasn’t so competitive with the focus being on a nice sociable event with plenty of caches to be had!

There was a choice of walks depending on your ability: the Standard route of 34 caches over 8.7 miles, the Extra route of 54 caches over 14 miles, or the Super route of 74 caches over 20 miles. We picked the “Extra route” and found 53 caches (We had found 1 already) and our GPS logged it as 15.5 miles.

15.5 miles for 53 Geocaches

We got to the area really early with half an hour to spare so we grabbed 5 cache and dashes in the area before arriving at the pub to find some other cachers waiting outside.

Waiting for the pub to open

Winter caching adventures in Kent, Northamptonshire, and Essex

Hill climbing in Trosley Country Park

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

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

Officially a “Well-rounded cacher”!

With the unexpected heat wave that we’ve been experiencing over the past couple of weeks, a couple of trips caching along the river were in order. On 24th September our river of choice was the River Lea, and on 2nd Octobber it was the River Nene.

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

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

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!

Goldhanger West Meet – A very special event

Saturday was the day for a very special event, Goldhanger West Meet and Cache Trail Launch (West). This was an event in Essex organised by cachers schoolfrenz and The Kitty Cachers which preceded a new cache trail launch… with a twist…

The new Goldhanger West trail that was launched consisted of 23 caches over around 6 miles, plus 3 new multis in Chigborough Lakes Nature Reserve. This all added up to around 8 miles of walking. We all met at the pub at 9am for a bacon roll and cuppa to give us some energy and whilst we were there we had the chance to catch up with some old friends and new ones too. It was particularly nice for us to meet stones2005 at long last as they live very literally just down the road and if it hadn’t been for all of their caches in our area, then we wouldn’t have had many caches to find to get us started when we were newbies. It was also lovely to finally meet Jane and Simon of Silver Horde as they live in San Diego and Jane often comments on my blog. Brilliant to meet in person (And Hi Jane if you’re reading, hope you had a safe flight back) as there probably won’t be many more chances. Although you never know, we may be caching in San Diego one day and bump into them!

Caching around Essex and Hertfordshire

We stayed close to home on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but still managed to get out and grab some caches…

High Fields

Just down the road from us is the recently published High Fields trail. This took us across the fields near Great Dunmow, Essex over 6.5 miles for 13 caches. I must admit that after the day before when we were spoilt with 35 caches over 7.5 miles it did seem quite a trek for these 13! It was, however worth it for the special location at cache number 8… A secret bunker! It was constructed for the cold war in case of a nuclear attack. After we found the cache we thought we’d be daring and peek inside. We didn’t go down the ladder though!

The outside of the secret bunker

It's like season 2 of Lost!!!

Caching along the River Chelmer and River Ter

We spent Saturday completely scrubbing our cars inside and out to clear away the mud that accumulated from caching down muddy footpaths in the winter. Sunday however, was free for caching. We’d had our eye on the recently placed The River Ter trail for a little while so we thought we’d take Teddy for a walk along the river. This trail was just to the east of Chelmsford, Essex. We started around 9am and the sun was already shining very brightly. The trail started along a very quiet narrow country lane for the first 3 caches before diverting off along the slowly flowing River Ter.

The River Ter