500 and one thousand

27/12/2010

A hungover day after Boxing Day, and Patrick rang me wanting to get out and about as he was pushing for his 1000th cache before the year was up; he'd started caching on New Year's Day and as he was almost at 1000 it seemed like a good way to round the year off. We know it's not all about the numbers - but it did seem like a neat coincidence.

Just he and I went up to Dodworth once again, this time to visit a couple of series there by 'terencem' called Waggonway Trail and Dodworth Muck Stack.

We parked up and set off in the bitter cold at 11am and commenced a 4.4 mile walk along and around the Waggonway Trail - based along the route of the railway line which served Dodworth Coal Mine in years gone by. It was a lovely, well planned out walk and we had a good chat as we also wandered around and over the nearby golf course. We detoured a little to pick up two extras and Patrick didn't break tradition and managed to take us on a small wild goose chase. All good fun and 8 more caches and one DNF.

By the time we ended up back at Patrick's car (at 13:10) we noticed all the hedgerow's now wet and no longer frozen - the thaw was setting in.

After lunch (a sandwich and flask of tea in the car) we drove a short while and started the nearby Dodworth Muck Stack series which is through a regenerated woodland presumably on the waste created by the old mine. If it was originally wasteland it is very mature and makes a good woodland walk, which was made all the better by some ingenious hides.

The first, a microcache, caused us a nightmare and eventually we had to give up. However on the way around we PAF to Easiron (thanks Ron yet again!) and he told us where the micro-cache had fallen so we picked it up on the way back to the car.

On this smaller 2 mile walk we found 12 caches and also, on the way around, we detoured a little to pick up an extra one which turned out to be my 500th cache! Hurrah for me!

Finally, with Patrick desperate to close in on his 1000th, we popped over the motorway to Locke Park where he knew there was a (very probably) missing one and two more to find. We scanned quickly for the missing one and then easily bagged the other two.

Total count for a busy and great day out with a good friend was 20 caches, two DNFs and 7.4 miles walked. Marvellous.

(Incidentally, both the DNFs were maintained and replaced by Terencem the very next day - I'm very impressed - a big thanks to him for being so prompt.)

Christmas Eve Eve

I had taken another day off to use up some of my holidays and also to get out and about again. I decided to do a series in Sheffield called MAP's Animal Trail - MAP being the initials of the three children who placed it with their parents.

This series starts at Endcliffe Park, leads into Bingham Park, onto Whitely Woods and back through Trippet Wood and into Endcliffe Park again. I only know this because I'm looking at my GPS track in another window - I don't know Sheffield too well and I actually thought this walk was pretty much all in Endcliffe Park.

Hmmm that seems strikingly ignorant given that I walked through it all 5 days ago and never noticed - I'll blame it on the heavy snow covering up any signs that may or may not have been there!

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Hannah, Adam and I arrived just before midday and within moments of leaving the car it started to snow again. It was still very cold with no signs of a thaw but we were wrapped up well and would be OK.

This was a really lovely walk which I am not going to detail except to say when we opened our own supply tub at number 6 (because the pencil in the cache was broken) we noticed a flipping cache log which was full of signatures.

We hardly ever use our supply tub as we rarely do swaps (except for Travel Bugs and these we keep in our pockets). We cast our minds back and hoped that it was because Hannah had swapped a Santa at cache number three. I prayed it wasn't in the tub from another day and another series.

We had no trouble with the series except for a nightmare find at number 7 by which time Adam was cold and had had enough. However we continued as there was no point in returning (because we were actually half way) and also because he's 15 and I say tough.

Back to the car and a drive up to number 3, a quick trot along the track and YES! a missing log quickly replaced - I've never been happier to see something missing!

Home, shower, change and out for Jade's birthday meal. A lovely refreshing day in a very pleasant part of Sheffield and thanks must go to "Hulababy and the.gillinghams" for bringing us here.

[Total for the day was 13 caches and 3.5 miles.]

Reindeer Ramble

17/12/10 - After the stress of work the last few weeks I insisted on a day off to finish my Christmas shopping. I took this opportunity to get in and out of Meadowhell as fast as possible and to then do some solo caching in the peace and quiet of open countryside.

I had chosen to do the Reindeer Roundabout Ramble series near Overton, a village 20 mins up the motorway. This is a short walk of around 4 miles starting and ending at the Reindeer Pub near the National Coal Mining Museum.

I arrived at midday and quickly set off south down the road looking for the path off to the left heading east. It was bitingly cold, extremely frosty, with all the puddles frozen solid but I thought I'd be OK. After all I had a flask of tea!

I was stressed from work and I was stressed from Christmas shopping so I was hoping to 'come down' as I walked around.

I was at the first cache within 10 minutes and then the problems began. I simply couldn't find this cache and the hint was being no help. I phoned-a-friend (PAF) to no avail. I'd forgotten my hat, my batteries ran out and I had to keep taking off my gloves to use my iPhone for calling and also searching previous logs for information that might help. It was BITTERLY cold and the driving wind was of course making things much worse.

So it was starting to look pretty grim but THANKFULLY I found the little bugger. It was a test-tube style container hidden in the crack of a tree which was perfectly covered up by a blob of ice.

Change of batteries. Still stressed. Deep breath. Try to chill out (mentally not physically, that was already happening) and onwards.

The next two caches were thankfully really easy although again I was really exposed to the wind. The fourth was tricky as it was hidden under a stone I couldn't even see - it was frozen into the ground under the grass but luckily I tripped on it after about 15 minutes of looking.

An easy one and then one I was convinced had been Muggled. I PAF Patrick again and he tried to recall the cache but nothing rang any real bells. Fortunately I'd been misled by a pile of stones and somehow, I never figured out how, I found the cache stuck in a little hole half the size of the cache and covered with a clump of dead grass. I couldn't replace it similarly so had to resort to putting it under the stones 6" away. Freezing cold I stopped for a cuppa.

The walk now moved away from fields onto a tree lined track which afforded me some protection from the elements and as a bonus the sun was also peeking out - although it was guaranteed nothing was going to melt today except my stress which was starting to fade.

The next cache was at the side of the track, down a ledge and under a tree. I'd not seen one single solitary soul in the two hours since I'd started and as I stepped up onto the track it must have looked as though I was trying to abduct this poor female horserider. The horse reared up only marginally higher than I did as my feet got even colder temporarily leaving my boots. I apologised but I think she'd lost her voice, or her bowels.

We trotted off in separate directions both no doubt adrenalised by the experience and two minutes later I bumped into, it transpired, her friend leading a pony. She asked me if I'd lost my dog as one had been running wild nipping at her pony. We got chatting about the area, Christmas, the weather and her friend with the newly found heart murmur further up the track.

The next cache was a tricky one, frozen and camouflaged as it was into the mud, and it wasn't until logging it later that evening that I noticed the two previous loggers had logged a DNF (did-not-find) - it's a good job I'd not noticed these or I'd likely have given up searching.

The 'pony girl' returned and we chatted for another 10 minutes before our paths separated.

Now into woods and on the way back there's little of interest to note as I found the next three. I then couldn't find the last of the series certain it had been Muggled and finally I had to PAF Patrick again as like a wally I'd forgotten the clues from the first three caches of the day to get the final mystery cache.

A mile back to the final (thanks for the coords Patrick) and then another quarter mile back to the car - too late to get a sneaky pub lunch.

Total for the day was 3.8 miles walked, 14 finds, 1 DNF, frostbite and a tiny heart attack.

(Thanks must go to MikeG for the series and the two randoms I picked up en-route.)

Icy Dinnington

On Sunday afternoon, after a quick lunch following on from the morning's Beeley Wood clean-up, Patrick, I, Hannah and Donna met up (as Team PADS) to do a second 'Great Scots' series in Dinnington. We had done the first series a month or so ago.

This series was about 10 days old but because of the heavy snowfall had only been found once. There were also several did-not-finds (DNFs) because of the snow, a DNF because of child muggles playing nearby, and one that was believed muggled before ever being found.

Having suffered badly from the snow ourselves, which was clearing away nicely, we hadn't expected to see so much still at Dinnington. Also, strangely, the hill sides were coated in solid ice - I don't mean compacted snow that has been walked on and turned into ice, but ice like you would find on the top of a pond; the tracks up the hills were solid ice with water running under them as though the trails were originally streams. Very odd.

We first walked across what appeared to be flood plains with huge frozen puddles-come-lakes and quickly got the first easy cache. We then went up the tracks to another easy second one with Dizzy the dog eating ice where possible. On the way to the fourth one we stopped by the third which was seemingly muggled, just in case, and lo and behold it was there in the snow in plain view. We presume that it had fallen from it's hiding place in the snow and was buried for the previous two seekers - we happened to be first to arrive once the thaw had started. A completely unexpected First-To-Find (FTF) and amazingly the first one for Team PADS as a group.

The fourth was another easy find and after a wet trudge up semi-frozen tracks and a good search Hannah found the fifth. Then it was just a brisk mile back to the cars.

A great Sunday afternoon; fresh air, a good walk and good company. What more could you want?

[Total 5 finds, 2.5 miles.] [Forgot to mention in last blog the 2.4 miles done this morning.]

Beeley Wood - Rant and Tidy

Sunday morning, bright and early after my work's Christmas do the evening before, Patrick picked me up and we went down to Beeley Wood to do a clean up. Beeley Wood is located between Hillsborough and Oughtibridge and was the location of a very badly maintained series that I originally completed in June.

I say 'completed' but I mean 'tried to complete' and I alluded to this rather subtly in my very first blog as I was still sore about the neglect afforded to this series.

Before I rant I will first say that several of the caches (the 5th, 6th and 7th in particular) had several comments by finders about how inaccurate the coordinates were - sometimes as far off as 50-60 feet. That's a major bugbear of mine and only serves to hurt a potentially lovely day's walk by slowing it down and 'spoiling the game'.


[wibbly wobbly lines as the present fades and we go into the past...]


The first two caches were on a road leading through an industrial estate and were nothing special but the third cache, called 'Beeley Wood - Dumpit Site' was hidden under a stone at the topside of a huge pile of trash which people had flytipped over the side of the lane into the woods over the years. I had found this on a hot summer's day (25th June) and after digging around trying to find this cache I then spent the rest of the day smelling and feeling as though I had slept in a wheelie bin. It was disgusting. Why on Earth anyone would hide a cache here simply beggars belief.

I found the next cache easily and then spend almost an hour, including being on the phone to someone who had already found it, before giving up on the 5th cache. (Terrible coords and eventually presumed muggled.)

The 6th was another easy find (albeit again with terrible coords) and then I had to do some calculating for the 7th as it was a mystery one and I was missing the number from cache 5. It was pretty obvious what the number was as it was a significant digit and anything else would have me a long distance away so off I set, in a bad mood, to attempt the last one.

Arriving roughly on location I could see two huge fallen trees which were part of the clue. I only spent 5 minutes looking before giving up; even though it was a red hot day they were laying in mud, I still stank of wheelie bins, the actual coords did not point to a fallen tree and basically I was fed up.

I walked back to the car and went off to do a lovely series a few miles away before going home. I reported the did-not-finds (DNFs) on the logs and added a polite-but-constructive comment about the dumpit site.

Over the next few months the number of DNFs on number 5 added up and also complaints about the location of number 4. Additionally DNFs also started accumulating for number 6 which I do recall was hidden quite blatently in a muggle-able spot right on the public footpath. Comments were also made about a trackable item which had been stuck in the final cache for over 6 months.

The cache owner (CO) ignored all maintenance requests and complaints until a reviewer stepped in during October saying something should be done. False promises were made, more complaints were made and then the reviewer finally placed the missing caches on 'disabled'. At this the CO closed down the entire series saying he'd left the area, and promised to pick up the caches as essentially they were now just litter, in November.

So the series disappeared and nothing more was heard. However I liked the area and I mentioned this to Patrick who had never done the series. My reasoning was that once you had passed the industrial estate, and all the fly-tipping, the woods themselves were a lovely walk and it was a shame there was no series there. So we hatched a plan; we'd go and check-out a circular walk and pick up the caches which we presumed the cache owner would actually have left there.


[wibbly wobbly effect and we're back to 15th December...]


So Sunday morning... we did a drive-by on the first three caches - yes they were still there despite the CO pretending to go and remove them, then parked up and set off into the woods.

What a difference 6 months make! (Obviously, but I thought the sentence had impact.) I'd been here in the height of summer and now it was the depths of winter; the ground was either hard ice or mud, and there were rotting leaves everywhere. The river was easily 18 inches higher than before and I was surprised to see that the weir was almost invisible - in fact if you did not know it was there you really wouldn't have known, the water flowing over it was so high it was almost level from the top side to the bottom side. Also riverside areas I had walked along looking for missing cache 5 were now several feet inside the river.

We struggled a little with number 5 as I'd forgotten where it was hidden and then went to number 7, the final.

Grr. We spent, and I kid you not, 70 minutes looking here. We unearthed every single tree that had fallen, or looked about to fall, within 150 feet. We might not be super-experts but we've got 18 months and 1500 finds experience between us and we tried and tried and tried to find this one. It was a beautifully cold day, we had a flask of hot tea, and we were in no rush. Plus we didn't want to be beaten. We looked online at the log and tried to work out who to ring and there was only one finder for whom we had a number and calls to him were going direct to his voicemail.

So like I say after 70 minutes we gave up and trudged back dejectedly. We'd just got to the car and Ron rang back giving us exact location of the cache. It was a tree I had definitely searched and Patrick had actually been to twice. We're pretty sure it has been muggled - but just to be sure we will go back and check again when we actually scope out the area for our new series. We didn't do it this weekend because there was too much mud and ice.

Overall we did 2.4 miles and Patrick got 4 finds (and 4 physical caches). None for me but I did get a nice clear head from the Sunday morning walk and hunt.

** Notice to cache owners - if you can't commit to maintainenance then don't place a series! **

Christmas Corroboree VIII

I'm not sure why the organisers have used an aboriginal word (for ceremonial meeting) but on Saturday afternoon we attended, for the first time as we've only cached for 6 months, the annual Christmas Corroboree VIII in Elsecar. This year it was run by MikeG and involved a HUGE puzzle cache hidden up in the woods full of presents and sweets for the children, a raffle for charity, pie and peas and of course lots of chatting to friends old and new.

Having some time constraints I decided we wouldn't do any caching on the day except for the related puzzle cache "A Gift from St. Nicholas" which now takes the credit as being our largest find to date, it being about 36" long, 18" wide and 24" deep. A hearty and merry thanks must go to MikeG for the effort (and cost!) in arranging and positioning such a festive treat for everyone.

I had a lovely chat with Mr Truffles about my planned walk along the Yorkshire Dalesway next year, met up with The Black Sheep (Rob and Jen and their super-energetic 20 month old son), chatted to MikeG and Penfolio, and teased Bleaklow about him not being able to find Not a Bit Sticky - with an invite around for a cup of tea next time he looks for it.

Patrick and family were all there and also YorkyPudding and AgingHippy, many more I don't know and no doubt a few I do know but I've forgotten to mention... sorry!

We bought a fiver's worth of tickets and ended up winning the donation YorkyPudding brought (a string/wood puzzle) and in return she won the ready-to-place cache container I'd donated. Such a small world, she only lives a few doors away so we could have just popped around, done a swap and saved ourselves a few quid :) [I know that's not in the spirit of a raffle, I was joking!]

Big thanks again to MikeG - well done Sir.

Snow and Puzzles

Apologies for not blogging about last Sunday's Team PADs run out to Dodworth. It was beset with work problems and phone calls, which spoilt the day for me, so we postponed plans to do one or two more series in the area for another day. In a very brief summary we did 3.7 miles and got 8 caches.

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This Sunday, despite the settled snow, we decided to venture down south by 20 minutes into the warmer climes of Harthill situated between Kiveton and Woodall. This was for yet another series of Ron's who I've blogged about several times.

The series involves parking at Harthill Reservoir, solving a simple on-site puzzle for the first cache and then walking around the reservoir to pick up a total of 7 caches over 2.2 miles. As usual Ron has found a lovely area to walk but this time it was very different for us as this was the first time we'd been out caching in snow.

Initially we were somewhat reluctant as we thought we would be leaving obvious tracks where we were looking for caches, but these worries soon faded; with 9 people and a dog doing the walk we were leaving such a large area of disturbed snow that there were no actual clues to lead Muggles to our treasures.

A quick and simple walk round, with only one cache causing us any troubles (triumphantly found by Patrick) we decided to stop off on the way home to do two nearby puzzle caches we'd recently solved.

I should add at this point that on the previous night my son had a sleepover with a couple of his friends to celebrate his imminent 15th birthday. He had stayed up all night and as a consequence was like a zombie today. This, coupled with my daughter and others grumbling about the cold, caused severe apathy amongst the children and as a result of this the adults won the finds by a whopping total of nine caches to nil! We've now agreed we like caching in the snow because it is cheaper for us!

Anyway... Ron had published two puzzle caches the previous week. One of these I had assisted him with, so I couldn't go and grab it immediately because that would spoil it for everyone, but the second was a devil of a puzzle. Last Sunday I had been talking to Patrick and Donna about my interest and fascination with the mathematical number PI (3.1415...) which had started when I had memorised it to 120 decimal places at about the age of 18 to win a bet. (Even now I can still remember 50 places or so). In an amazing coincidence Ron published a puzzle called "...with Peas? And Gravy?" that same evening and it didn't take long to figure out the obvious connection.

I set to work on it rightaway but simply could not get started. A couple of emails to Patrick and back the following day and he showed me the first stage of the puzzle. Again, as usual, I was disappointed with myself for not getting it but I have to confess I don't think I ever would have. So the first stage led me to a couple of sets of numbers but these still weren't coordinates, what to do now? I worked and re-worked them any which way I could think of but still nothing until the next day when it hit me. I can't say much here for risk of spoiling it for anyone but I have to salute Ron for a great puzzle.

So back to Sunday, after doing the Harthill series we stopped to pick both of these up. Lots of snowball fights and snow-angels ensued as we walked past lots of sledging Muggles. A tough walk up a hill rewarded us and in total we had done another 1.2 miles for 2 more caches. More importantly we'd had fun, seen some great views and got some exercise to boot.

(Total for the day was 3.5 miles & 9 caches.)

Guilty Postscript: In early celebration of Adam's birthday we all then went to the Centretainment Centre in Sheffield, to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and undid all the good work of the day!

Ron's last one (or not)

On Saturday we met up again with Patrick, Donna and their kids, along with my two pests newly returned from a long holiday in Orlando, to do Easiron's series entitled TTTWHSFTCP - a humorous acronym of his That's The Third Walk He's Started From This Car Park.

Starting from the same small car park in Ridgeway we used for a walk I blogged only two weeks ago, we set off on what *was* Ron's last series and was the only caches of his we hadn't yet done. This is another spectacular walk of 11 hides (the last being a calculated bonus) taking in over 6 miles of woodland, farmland, hedgerows and paths. I commented in my logs at the time that Ron had excelled himself with this walk and I think all agreed.

The kids were all quite excitable, as usual, but I do think Christmas is already creeping up. Aside from this we had been to see Paramore at the Sheffield Arena two days before so Jade and Christianna had lots to gossip about.

We stopped at the pub, like last time, when back at the car park but this time we only had coffee and biscuits to help us thaw out - once the sun had set it turned very cold.

The sun was disappearing behind us as we walked down this field.

I don't know whether it was because we've cut back on the walking over the last couple of weeks (bad weather and bad diaries), or whether it was because this walk took in a couple of hills, but the next morning my legs and even my arms(!) were aching quite badly.

Roll on the spring when we can get out more often!

As for Ron, the sneaky chap, he published another series of 8 whilst I was logging these so it looks like we've got another good walk to look forward to!

(Total for the day: 11 of Ron's plus a random nearby cache so the total for the day was 12 caches over 6.6 miles.)

Thurcroft Colliery

The last week has been a quiet one Geocaching wise. We can handle the dark nights and we can handle the rain but when both are put together it starts to make us think why bother?

We didn't get out at all until Saturday afternoon where we had arranged to do a new series by n.e.a.r. over in Thurcroft with Patrick and Donna. This is reclamation ground on the site of the old colliery.

n.e.a.r. have excelled themselves with this 3 mile walk through nice open spaces and woodland and which includes 12 hides, many of which have had some good effort taken to disguise them. I was pleased with their efforts and grateful for their time.

Once back at the car we were all chatting and I realised that Hannah was very probably on 399 caches so with a nudge of an idea from Patrick we popped over to Dinnington, after saying our goodbyes, to pick up a standalone urban cache to round Hannah's day off on 400 finds. Following Patrick's description, as we didn't have this cache logged in our GPSr, we actually found it quite easily and it wasn't until later that night when logging the find online that we realised we must have found the old cache. It transpires that after several did-not-finds the cache owner had replaced it several tens of metres away with new coordinates. As Patrick had found it several months before he wasn't aware of this and had directed us to the old spot where, fortunately for us, the original container still existed despite the previous DNFs.

It's quite amusing, to me at least, to think of finding a cache several searchers had missed and that the cache owner had then looked for, abandoned and republished.

I just hope she let's us count it as a valid find!

Ford Walking

On Sunday we set off in the morning to do another of Easiron's series - Ford Walk. This is in Ridgeway, an area of Sheffield that's relatively near to us as the crow flies yet awkward to drive to,

This walk starts from the same car park as a previous walk of Ron's called Plumbley Walk (which I completed two weeks before I started my blog) and is a series of 8 hides, the eighth being found using coordinates taken from 6 of the first 7 hides.

I have a lot of respect for Ron's walks as he takes you through areas that are very changeable. For example they can go from woodland into farmland onto a short stretch of road and back into woodland, up hill and down dale as they say. Couple this with good hides you always seem to enjoy Ron's walks and this was no exception.

We made a few wrong turns (missing footpath signposts), and had a bit of a panic when we realised at find #3 that we'd forgotten to take the coordinates out of #2, but we soldiered on figuring we would be able to calculate this missing coordinate when we'd found #7 and had to get back to the car park - they're almost always on or very near the obvious route back.

And find it we did. The actual single digit missing meant we had to check a spot roughly every 30 feet heading in a particular direction and based on where that trail was going it was pretty much a given that it was the third number we tried. After hunting around in the area we were soon rewarded with a Geoclunk when my walking pole hit plastic hidden deep in dead leaves.

Not so much a lucky find but certainly a fortunate one.

After this it was a quick mile hike back to the car park and the adjacent pub for a lovely Sunday lunch and a couple of drinkies to reward ourselves.

Total walk was 3.6 miles and included 8 finds - the first of which I had completely forgotten was my 400th.

Ghosties and Geocachers

Hannah's parents Julie and Martin (Geocaching name Fat Bloke) came down for the weekend to do a spot of local Geocaching and also to attend a Halloween Geocaching event with us.

After catching up on our geo-gossip we set off to Barnburgh, near Doncaster, about 11am on Saturday, arriving a little early for the Noon meet but not early enough to do any nearby series although we did pop off to do a single find just up the road.

There are quite a few series around this area almost all placed by Mr Truffles. He has a local Barnburgh 1-12 series, plus two small series (each with 4) placed specifically for last year's Halloween event and another series of 8 placed for this year's event. He also has two random single ones locally too.

It was really nice to meet so many Geocachers and to have a proper chat with Ea51ron and Mr Truffles, both of whom I have a lot of respect for. Ron has done several well planned series with nice hides and always manages to make really interesting walks. Mr Truffles has found over 9000 caches and has about 200 of his own hides; he almost single-handedly keeps Rotherham Geocachers busy. He kindly complemented me on my recent puzzle cache and container and pointed me towards two other infamous puzzles that I've since started work on solving.

I must thank Angellica for organising this event, the travel bug swap box and for scattering lots of horrid creatures around the tables, but I must also make a mental note to myself so that next time I do not do as many or even any caches and to invest the time in meeting and greeting and exchanging stories and tips with fellow Geocachers.

Anyway I had planned two routes to take in most of the local caches but by the time everyone had arrived and we'd met many familiar names (and put faces to them) and then eaten, time was pushing on so we decided to just do one of the circuits.

We set off with Patrick and family and planned to meet up with Yorkypudding & AgeingHippy later.

A few easy caches later we came across one of Mr Truffles epic hides. This was an off-set cache where the coordinates point to a location that has the coordinates to the actual cache. Nine of us spent 40 minutes hunting high and low for these coordinates all to no avail. It was one of those occasions where you've invested so much time it makes you less likely to quit but eventually we had to tear ourselves away and get on with the day.

We completed the part circuit and arrived back at the carpark far too late to meet YorkyPudding and AgeingHippy who I correctly presumed had gone on without us. We left Patrick at this stage and Hannah, myself and her parents decided to quickly do another nearby series of 4 before retiring for the day.

In total we did 5.4 miles and picked up another 11 caches - I ended the day (without realising at the time) on 399 finds.

n.e.a.r.ly done

Having finally accepted that the dark nights are here to stay we kitted up last night, right from work, and set off to do a nearby series called "n.e.a.r." by a family who use that as their username (it's an acronym of their real names). This is a simple walk set in a 'motorway triangle' created by the roads leading to and from the M1 and M18 and the M1 itself. The entire walk only took us 35 minutes so we thought we'd also clear up another couple placed by the same family a mile or so away in Thurcroft. The first was a simple 'cache and dash' where we parked practically next to it, and the second was a short 0.5 mile round trip to the first cache of the night that wasn't an insta-find.

On the way back to the car I saw the largest toadstools I think I've ever seen. Here's a photo and given that my GPS is just over 10cm (4") long you can see how large they are.

Back at the car by 19:25 we thought it would be almost rude not to go off and get the only n.e.a.r. cache that we've never found so we drove up to Wickersley and did another 1.1 mile round-trip down a lane, around a field and into a wood. It was very dark and we resorted to using the hint to find this one - possibly because my stomach had started rumbling.

We were home for 20:10 and while making tea I loaded up the bread maker and the slow cooker so tonight I guess we'll be eating before we go out and then won't have to rush home.

(Total 7 caches, 3 miles walking.)

Great Scots

(I make no apologies for the blog spam today - this is my diary!)

We had a day off work on Monday to unpack, wash and generally relax from the excesses of Ireland before returning to work on Tuesday. However by 5pm I was fed up of being in a stuffy house so, encouraged by an email from Patrick, we spoke and arranged a quick night caching trip out to pick up a new series near North Anston - Great Scots.

Each cache in the series was related to a Great Scot, for example Sean Connery and William Wallace, and we thought it an amazing coincidence that as we sat in the car waiting for Patrick that Radio Two were interviewing an author who had just published a book on Robert The Bruce - or cache #5 as we'd later call him!!

Patrick arrived at 6:15pm, in the bitterly cold darkness, and we set off on a 3 mile stroll through woodland and open fields. This is a pretty simple, yet very good series on flat terrain, which was made more difficult by the cold and the dark. (I've found a fault with my super-high-powered police-issue torch - it's metal and it's flipping freezing!!)

Time for the gloves to come out methinks.

It was great to catch up with Patrick and tell him all the Irish gossip and to see what he'd been up to without us this weekend. A very good geocaching friend indeed.

We got home about 8:10pm having logged 3.1 miles and 6 more caches, cold and fresh I knew I'd sleep well later that night.

Geocaching in Dublin - Day 3

Today we went out primarily to visit the shops and mop up a couple of caches. We found a great one called 'The loneliest bin in the World' (GC20VM8) which was hidden in a hedge behind a railing fence and I must say I felt quite sorry for it! We found one that was hidden so well I even paid for international Internet access just so I could download a spoiler picture to help us. (It's called Firefly series #1 if you're interested - GC263R0.)

We did a virtual cache (GCC2DE) down on the River Liffey which involved reading about the Great Famine and this then led us, having piqued our interest, to the famine museum based onboard a replica 18th century sailing ship moored on the Liffey. It was a very good guided tour led by an enthusaistic Canadian which had little to do with the actual famine but was primarily about the voyages taken from Ireland to Canada and back during the famine.


Today we also had our first DNF - Did Not Find - hugely frustrating but we had to let go because we couldn't search as well as we'd like given the huge Muggle factor - something we'd been amazingly lucky about all holiday.

Day three in Ireland complete. 5 caches found. One boat museum and dozens of shops visited. 7 miles walked. One pair of ladies boots purchased (not for me I hasten to add!) and still no Guinness consumed although not from illness but from guilt about my health!

We left the hotel at 5pm and were back in our own bed by midnight. A fantastic break to an amazing city with so many sights, sounds and drinks savoured and as a bonus to it all it was our first international geocaching trip.

A huge hugs must go to Hannah for arranging it. Thanks babes xx

Geocaching in Dublin - Day 2

After another hearty breakfast we set off for Phoenix park. This park is about 3 miles to the west of Dublin and I had previously planned to go here because it had one of the largest caches around and would be ideal to leave a couple of travel bugs inside and perhaps bring a couple back with us.

I also wanted to do this walk today as penance and also to make us, theoretically, feel better after the previous nights excess.

We took a convoluted route to the park, passing through Temple Bar (the tourist part of Dublin with overpriced bars and shops) and heading out west. Once at the park we popped into the zoo (we had free tickets) and spent a couple of hours looking at various tigers, sealions and penguins and generally feeling pretty ill. We then did the extra 3 mile walk into the centre of the park to get the Phoenix cache and back out. Disappointingly all the logged travel bugs were missing but I hoped these were simply a loggers oversight as all the remaining contents seemed to be in order.

By the time we were leaving the park (Europe's largest city park) around 4pm we were both struggling. We'd walked a good 10 miles, had slept badly and were both aching. Fortunately the heaven's opened and it started to belt it down. This was the final encouragement I needed to give up and flag down a taxi back to the hotel!

In the evening we went to a fabulous restaurant and logged in another 3 miles walking although no caches.


Day two tally:
13 miles walked.
5 caches found.
2 aching legs.
1 zoo visited.
1 sore head.
0 Guinness consumed.

Drinking in Dublin - Day 1

Spandannah and I took an evening flight from Leeds/Bradford to Dublin for a long weekend on Thursday night. We didn't arrive at our city centre hotel until it was too late to do anything, apart from a quick Guinness in the bar, so we simply unpacked and looked forward to our three days in Ireland - a place I'd never been to.

After a hearty (too hearty!) breakfast on Friday morning we decided to wander randomly around the sites of the city centre and drift off in the direction of any caches that popped up within a reasonable range.

Within 30 seconds of leaving the hotel we got two firsts: our first Irish cache which was also our first webcam cache. I'd seen this cache before we left England but hadn't realised how close to the hotel it would be. I texted two work friends who both watched us appear on the webcam and then saved a copy of the picture for us.

This break was our first big urban caching session (apart from York which had been carefully pre-routed) and a lesson has been learnt for the next time - I think we'll remove all the puzzles & multi-caches from our listings and leave the simple traditional caches, virtual caches and webcam caches. This is because these are generally easier to pick-up on random wanderings and don't require any pre-planned routing. Quite a high proportion of Dublin's city centre caches are puzzle caches, some admittedly very simple, but when you are on a short timescale and in unknown territory I think it is easier to sightsee and wander randomly without letting geocaching interfere too much. (Perhaps on a return trip you could pre-plan these routes more capably?)

So on Friday we wandered randomly, we met three fellow Geocachers inside the castle and ultimately headed off towards the Guinness Storehouse - which is an exhibition/museum and also the brewery where they make most of the Guinness for the whole World (there are 3 breweries in Africa for that continent, everything else is brewed in Dublin - 3 million pints per day, 5 million for St Patrick's day and Christmas!)

Having been a Guinness drinker for about 22 years I was quite looking forward to the visit and after picking up a cache at the gate we went in and spent a fabulous 3 hours wandering around seeing how the 'Black Magic' is made, marketed, served and drunk. We had a pint each at the top of Storehouse in the 360 degree viewing room looking over the whole of Dublin, and then made plans for the evening.


(I tried to take an 'Arty' photo of the two free samples we got at the Storehouse.)

Plans plus drink.

They don't work do they.

We planned to have tea about 8pm after sampling a few local beers & bars whilst wandering roughly back towards the hotel. We had two rounds at the first bar, wandered further and then found another friendly bar and got chatting to a talkative local and the landlord - the most perfect landlord I have ever met because he gave away rounds every now and then.

At 8pm they convinced us that restaurants are open all night, besides who needs to eat anyway?

At about 11pm we were in an American restaurant, goodness knows where, eating a burger meal. Well Hannah was eating, I was sleeping. The next thing either of us remember is waking up at the hotel, 8:30am, with next to no idea how we got there.

So day one in Ireland was over. 8 caches found. Two museums visited. 7 miles walked (excluding distance inside the museums). 11 pints of Guinness consumed. Ouch.

A Snapper's Stroll

After a quiet two weeks of caching we finally got our teeth into a meaty series on Sunday. As part of Team PADS again (Patrick, Aggrajag, Donna, Spandannah, kids & doggie) we met up at 10am in Barnsley to do the reasonably new "The Snappers" series "A Snappers Stroll".

This starts a couple of minutes drive from J37 of the M1 at the Locke Park car park but heads off south and then west over the M1 then a long W/SW loop before heading back, over the M1 again on a different footbridge and looping back up to the start.

It's a very good series of 18 caches during which we also picked up 3 unrelated ones. Total walk was 8.3 miles over 4.5 hours including searching, signing, swaps and a lunch break.

I took a couple of travel bugs on the way around which I'm hoping to drop in Dublin at the weekend - assuming we find caches big enough to place them in.

We were out of practice and aching a bit last night but a big thanks must go to the UKSNAPPERS for taking the time to lay down a nice long series.

Also a big thanks to Patrick, Donna and family for entertaining us on the way around.

Lose 6lbs in two weeks

After someone at work showed us some pictures they'd had taken & professionally edited (a la magazine cover style) I thought I'd save the quoted £4000 and do one myself for a laugh.

I did this at work and it took me under 90 seconds, it's not meant to be realistic and is meant to be a bit of a joke along the lines of those adverts you continually see online.


I lost 90lbs in 6 months Geocaching!

Jeremy Creak

Well my long-awaited new puzzle cache went live last night Jeremy Creak and the lost cache (GC2GC32) which took much longer to make than I had anticipated. I had written the puzzle a couple of months ago and I believed it to be 'nicely' difficult but blow me down if the cache wasn't found within 10 hours by 'snoopyisboss' aka Sarah.

I hid it at 8:30 last night in the pitch black, it went live on the servers around 10pm and Sarah solved it during her work shift, ahem hope no-one is reading from her workplace!, and she found it at 8am.

Well done Sarah!

The cache is currently for premium members only but I'll likely open it up for all to see after a couple of months, just like I did with my previous puzzle Not a Bit Sticky (GC2C5QM) last night.

This has took a few nights of my time so hopefully I can now get back to some 'proper' caching and continuing on from that hopefully back to more interesting blog posts.

Scoffing Scones in Swaffham

We've were down at my mother's house in Norfolk this weekend - she's got quite a large amount of woodland that would be great to hide caches on!

On Saturday (unfortunately we couldn't plan it for the 10/10/10 global event) we popped into Swaffham and had tea and scones at the second-hand bookshop, which has a small cafe in the back, and then wandered off to do the Swaffham Saunter series. This is about a three mile series with six 35mm film canister caches each with a coordinate leading to the final seventh. We forgot to take the clue from the first but it was pretty obvious what the missing coordinates was. The hides were all simple and there's actually little really to write about. Total walking distance was 3.9 miles including the walk from & to the car-park.

I spent a fair amount of Sunday working on my next cache. I researched the coordinates and wrote the puzzle about 6 weeks ago and then last week I uploaded the webpage which is now sat ready to be activated but still I needed to make the actual hide. I haven't really had the time or the materials but I set to work with a vengeance on Sunday whilst the kids were all hatching 'get rich quick' schemes and making magic wands which they hoped to sell at school.

I can't write too much in my blog for fear of leaving a spoiler as I'm hoping both the puzzle and the hide are difficult and therefore will be highly rewarding to successful finders.

My plan is to have it finished and published by next weekend.

**********

Muggled!

I received a DNF (did-not-find) notification and a detailed email last night from a well-experienced Geocacher who could not find my "Queen 2" cache, even after she had resorted to PAF (phone-a-friend - ring somebody for help who has already found it).

I've not had chance to check yet but from her email it really does sound like it has been stolen and it's very frustrating. I know this sort of thing happens all the time with this hobby, and I quite accept that, but as it's my first one to go missing I'm a little bit more disappointed than I probably will be in the future.

I have a replacement tub and contents ready, and it's not the money that bothers me, it's just the time it will take and also the frustration at the pointlessness of the destruction or theft.

Wildlife

On Sunday, once the rain had abated, we popped out to plant Hannah's new series. We'd done an exploratory walk a couple of weeks previously and had made approximate location plans for each cache so that they wouldn't fall foul of each other regarding the 0.1 mile apart rule and also wouldn't infringe on my 'reserved' spot for another mystery cache. (It's not really reserved but Hannah was kind enough to let me keep it as I'd planned it a month before. More news on this cache in a couple of weeks hopefully.)

We wandered around a very sodden landscape looking carefully for the best locations and taking multiple averaged GPS readings which we then manually averaged in order to be able to publish the best coordinates possible.

The fifth cache is a clever, yet easy little puzzle using wildlife carvings on posts alongside the River Rother between Catcliffe and Treeton and adds some interest to a part of the walk where you have to backtrack on yourself.

We published them at 8pm last night, they were live by 9pm, and there's already been two finds of each cache today by midday!

I'm very proud of her and in one fell swoop she's equalled my total number of cache ownerships!

(Series Final cache is here: Geocaching - Wildlife Final)

Not-So Wet Weekend

After picking up another couple of loose-ends on Tuesday we didn't have the time or the weather to get out again until Saturday. We met up again as Team PADS (minus Adam and Jade who were in London for the day) to complete the KB series near Doncaster which we'd started the weekend before and which Patrick had expanded a little with four more caches in a nice additional loop to the south.

After the torrential rain of Friday we were a little apprehensive, and packed accordingly, but the day turned out to be a total joy.

We arrived at 11am to find Patrick and Donna mopping up the remains of the third 'final' cache which had been Muggled and scattered around the parking area.

(This series has a final cache which you calculate the coordinates for on the route around. This final cache has coordinates inside for a bonus cache which itself has coordinates inside for an extra bonus - it was this one that had been damaged.)

We did almost 6 miles walking over three hours in lovely autumn sun and picked up 14 caches. The ground was extremely wet in places and involved some walking around or paddling but it was all good fun.

At one stage we passed (what I thought was) an amazing wooden bridge structure that appeared to be carrying a gas pipe across a ravine. We walked under it and I've never seen something so old-fashioned, large and bizarre. It was very Hollywood-esque if you imagine the old westerns or suspense movies where a steam train crosses a rickety bridge.






En-route we replaced one of the missing caches which had been alerted to us by the series owner. Patrick took the tub, pen and pad and we took some goodies to drop in it. We had a little fun watching the kids searching for it for 5 minutes before Patrick 'found' it in his rucksack. Needless to say the children didn't share our sense of humour.

On the way home we stopped off for a drive-by that Patrick had seen en-route. This was at a lifting bridge in Barnby Dun and was a magnetic nano attached to the fencing on the bridge. We had just arrived when three barges and boats queued up so we had the bonus of watching the bridge in action. (I doubt it's much of a bonus for the 100 cars that were sat waiting within 5 minutes!)


Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the bridge raised, or being passed under, as I was videoing it.

We'd all given up on this cache and were just turning around to leave when Hannah found it. She was very pleased with herself and for good reason, it had been a tricky one and rather than ending the day in frustration it turned out to be a good final find of the day.

Rewengy

Stuck for cache inspiration Hannah came up with the idea, on our way home from work last night, to do one we'd aborted way back in July (pre-Blog days). This had recently come back up on our radar as the cache owner had just put another cache on the same path - two for the price of one.

Back in July we'd missed a subtle turn in a path and had ended up the wrong side of a river in complete darkness - it was about 10pm. We'd already found two so we aborted that cache and headed home with the thought of returning, and of course we never got around to it. Until now.

This time we, of course, took the turn and headed along the woodland path to an easy find and then continued further along to the new cache - a nano hidden on a metal fence, the fence identical in design to where my "Queen 1" cache is hidden.

Well what a nightmare! We were quickly on location and Hannah actually started in (it turns out) exactly the right spot but we simply couldn't find it. I even spent 20 minutes behind the fence (having simply walked around the end of it 20 feet away) inside 'private property' (and goodness knows why it's private, it's a lump of nothing in the middle of nothing on the outskirts of nowhere.)

We eventually reluctantly phoned-a-friend and Patrick (one of only two previous finders here) directed us back to the correct location but we still couldn't see it. However two minutes scratching around later I found it in the mud underneath. We signed the micro-log and replaced it in the same spot but moved it slightly under the lip of the fence cross-bar to shelter and protect it from the wind and rain and to hopefully help it stay stuck on. Bloody nanos.

It was dark by the time we returned to the car but I still fancied picking up one of Patrick's puzzle caches (Carr Car) that I'd solved a month previously. It was only a mile away as the crow flies, but turned out to be a 3 mile drive. Despite the pitch black the coords were good and Hannah had her hands on it in mere moments.

Three more finds but only just over a mile walking.

Cooling Towers and Keyboards

After a very quiet Geocaching week, because we both had heavy colds, we ventured out on Sunday for the third Team PADS outing. Patrick had spotted a good sized series on the North side of Doncaster called the KB series, KB being short for Keyboard and used to solve the final-cache puzzle. We took sandwiches for a break somewhere and met up at 10:30.

On the way around the series we popped in to do a cache that was in a now disused power station and for the first time in my life I was up close to some HUGE cooling towers. The winds that appear from nowhere once you are under them are quite amazing, the echoes are quite deafening and the scale quite bewildering. Of course the kids made the most of the echoes and made as much noise as possible.

Another first on this series, believe it or not, was my first ever on-foot crossing of a railway line. I've driven over them of course on real roads, but I've never seen a small countryside foot one. Our route snaked over the line in a few places and at one point we had to wait for a London bound train to pass at considerable speed - as highlighted by the crossing signs warning pedestrians of trains passing "in excess of 100 MPH". Not surprisingly a couple of the kids were quite intimidated by it.

Two new things in one day; if I keep this up someome might think my life is exciting!

The series was a distorted figure 8, with the car being parked centrally, and after completing the larger northern half we decided to call it a day as we would eventually run out of time and light - we pledged to do the second half within the next couple of weeks.

Overall we found 16 caches and did 7.5 miles walking. The weather held out nicely and it was a good day all around.

Bradfield take two

After a lazy Saturday (not planned but as a result of a needlessly long Friday night session with several friends from work) we set off on Sunday to do two separate series around South Bradfield. We had originally planned a long series around the North side of Doncaster but the bad weather made us think twice so Patrick (he of Team PADS fame) came up with a plan of two small series split by a pub meal - this way we could stop if the weather was too awful.

We met at 11am in light drizzle, on the Damflask reservoir wall (where we were only two weeks ago) and set off to do A Stroll Around the Brickworks. This was a nice 2 mile series of 6 caches with some lovely views and unfortunately some heavy mud.

Once again the children had been bribed at 50p per cache but to avoid in-fighting between the 5 of them I came up with a new plan; the kids would share £1 between them... they initially thought this was a bad deal until we explained they had five times the chance of getting 20p each.

This also meant the adults had to try harder to save some dough!

We finished the first series and went to the Nag's Head Inn for a fabulous home-cooked meal each, and then decided to continue onto another series called Storrs Circular. This was a longer walk of nearly 4 miles, 4 caches, a little more hill-climbing involved but the view were staggering and made all the more beautiful by rainbows.

The drizzle was on and off all day but not really bad at all; I think we got more drenched from wading through a couple of cow-pat soaked fields! We had a great day caching, chatting and walking and for once I also think the kids enjoyed it too!

Overall result: Kids 6, Adults 4.

Actually I'll put this in more detail to put Patrick and Donna, in fact the Hills overall (except star Bethany) to shame:

The Kids
Bethany 3
Adam 2
Jade 1
Christiana 0
Jorden 0

The Adults
Mark 3
Hannah 1
Patrick 0
Donna 0

Special thanks to the Hill family for their company and also their map which we needed for one of the puzzles. Cheers all.

Only fools and horses

We rushed from work last night to a new local cache that had been published two hours earlier. I knew the odds were against us as my friend Patrick was out and about and I had a sneaking suspicion he'd be onto this one.

The cache was a simple find and it looked good for an FTF until I opened the crisp new log sheet and saw his name at the top. He emailed me later mocking me, saying "Hi STF" (presumably "second-to-find") and then saying his wife had found one earlier he couldn't find and he hated being a runner-up, something I presumably was used to by now.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold so I'll bide my time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As promised last week (here) I returned to pick up the actual Wath Wood Wanders cache last night.

Despite abandoning my son at his guitar lesson ASAP, parking the car nearer to my destination and also running 200m to the cache it was still dark by the time I arrived. And I'd forgotten my torch. Again.

Fortunately the cache was a doddle to find.

As I leant on a nearby fence, to sign the log, I got the fright of my life as a horse nudged me. It had followed me up it's field as I'd walked up the woods. I petted it and within a couple of minutes there were 4 of them.

I showed them the swaps in the cache but they weren't interested.

Funny things horses.

Meersbrook Meanders

We made the horrendous mistake last night of trying to get to Meersbrook Park when Sheffield United had a match at Bramall Lane, a fact I neither knew nor cared about, and it was a problem exacerbated by the SatNav desperately trying to route us directly into the traffic or alternatively the wrong way down one-way streets.

So by the time we arrived I was already worried about the dark drawing in. However, thankfully, it was a nice short route around the park picking up 4 caches of a series and 2 randoms nearby, a total of about 1.7 miles.

Nothing of real interest to note; the usual bramble scratches, I almost had to phone-a-friend (until Super-Spandannah spotted the nano) and a now-missing tree that one had been hidden under - it had been chopped down earlier that day but luckily the park keeper had left the cache there albeit in full view.

Otherwise a relatively quiet, Muggle-free walk around a new to us park.

We Hope to go back

I took the kids to Hope in Derbyshire on Sunday to do one of the series there: Silver Train. This is a simple series of 10 (I think) caches which each have clues in them (alongside a sister series called Treasure Fleet) all leading to one final cache.

I'd not realised this when we set off, having prepared the caches at short notice, so of course I never got all the available clues to the final. Having said that, with the state of most of the logs, and the cracked laminate around some of the clues (making them wet and blurry), I doubt I'd have bothered anyway.

The walk led us east out of Hope towards the railway station and then north up (and up) a hill onto the tops. Unfortunately the walk wasn't circular at this point so once we'd got the uppermost cache we simply turned around and walked back down to a certain point where we diverted from our original path and re-entered Hope from a different direction.

It was a lovely walk of 5 miles and certainly got the thighs aching because of the steep hill. (Lowest elevation was approximately 535 feet, highest was about 1250 feet.)

Rain threatened several times which looked very ominous given that both kids had not brought their coats/macs as usual. When will they ever learn? Fortunately there was only slight drizzle for a few minutes about three times. No harm done.

The kids had been bribed at 50p per find again and it worked, they hardly even complained when I realised I'd walked a tenth of a mile past a cache, while chatting and telling jokes, and we had to go back!

Finally I must apologise for the dreadful blog title, but I really do hope to go back again and do the sister series.

Damned nights

While Adam was at his guitar lesson last night I went off to Wath Woods to collate the clues for a cache - there's 4 points to visit from which you calculate the 5th and final location.

With limited time (an hour including driving) I set off hoping to get the 4 clues and leave the final point for next Wednesday when Adam is in his next lesson.

I parked up about 7:45 and it was already going dark. I walked down a huge long alley between two housing estates leading into the woods and as I entered the woods and it was now dark.

Bloody nights drawing in.

I got the first two locations easily but by the time I was setting off for the third it was so dark I was struggling to see the path; it was hard to tell whether the dark ground 10 metres in front of me was path or leaves or just a gaping hole. Fortunately most of the paths are of good quality so I walked reasonably quickly and safely to the third clue.

I say 'reasonably quickly' because by now I had spooked myself a little. Here I am, a grown man who's not particularly afraid of the dark, walking through unknown woods in pitch black with no torch and no idea where the surrounding population is. (Although I can always get back to the car using the GPS of course).

I might not be bothered about the dark, per se, but I am a little worried when there are huge CRACKing noises and things running and falling through the trees. Gulp.

I moved on to the 4th location which was on the outside edge of the woods, near a tarmac lane. Sanctuary. I got the clue and stopped to look at the GPS - the road route back to the car was over 2.5 miles long - I only had 20 minutes left and also needed 5 minutes driving time.

So, big deep breath, stop being silly Mark, I set off back through the woods up the fourth side, unknown territory again.

Walking quickly, using the GPS to the car, I was now hoping I wouldn't bump into anyone else, not for my sake, but for THEIR sake... the site of a 40+ year-old man walking alone in the dark and breathing heavily would probably be more than enough to spoil someone else's night!

Geocaching. It's all fun!

Not enough time...

We had already planned to pop down to 'Go Outdoors' last night to pick up a ticket for the new Geocaching competition and to also genuinely look at a new GPSr device. I'm toying with the idea of upgrading to an Oregon 450 for the paperless caching features.

As we'd be in that area we had also planned a quick 6 caches at Meersbrook Park but just as we were leaving work an email notification of a new cache came through and coincidentally it was only a couple of miles from where we were headed.

We went home, got changed and set off for the new cache. By the time we arrived, blindly following the GPS in road mode in an area I'd never been, it was raining steadily but after a short walk we successfully got another First-To-Find (FTF) only about 70 minutes after it was published.

We signed the log, turned around and then we saw a gentleman and two children approaching, all looking just as suspicious as we did. A quick chat and it turned out they were just a couple of minutes late for what would have been their very first FTF. For some reason I do love my FTFs but I felt bad that the kids hadn't got one. I'm really sorry. Good luck next time!

We went to 'Go Outdoors' as planned and spent some money on a decent backpack that's bigger, lighter, more ventilated and generally better on my back. I also got some more walking trousers and a water bag.

Yet more money - who would think walking would be so expensive!!

Going back to the title of today's blog, time... with other events coming up, and the nights drawing in, it really looks like the caching is going to take a hit and I'm not happy about it. It also looks like I'm going to have to bribe the kids again so I can do longer walks at the weekends...

Damflask

After my sister bravely completed the Sheffield 10k run on Sunday morning we met up with my Mother and set off for a short route around Damflask near Lower Bradfield on the outskirts of Sheffield. This was a nice easy stroll around a reservoir, put together once again by Mr. Truffles.

If anyone is after an easy Sunday afternoon's walk I do recommend this one - there's a total of 14 finds, 3 of which are puzzle caches but are simple to calculate en-route, the walk is all flat and the hides are pretty easy. We logged it in at 4.4 miles total and to top it off you can have an ice cream on the way to the bonus cache!

I tried to motivate the kids into getting involved by offering £5 to whichever of them got the most finds. This caused some squabbles in the last couple of seconds at several caches, but Adam soon became despondant when he was 4-0 down to Jade with 7 found and only 7 more to go. At this point, to motivate him YET AGAIN, I changed the rules to £1 per find each. Well blow me down if he didn't win 5-4 in the end.

Hopefully he might have learnt a lesson about not giving up.

Hopefully I might have learnt a lesson about not changing rules and losing an extra £4!

UK GC Podcast

I've just been listening to the UK GC Podcast via iTunes (link on the right) and I got two mentions! Well one-and-a-half to be accurate.

I've emailed Collin (the host) several times in the last 6 weeks or so as he has the first UK based podcast about Geocaching and I was really impressed with him making the effort on our behalf.

However it transpires that his web-based contact form has been broken for ages and he only realised this week. I emailed him to ask how long it had been down and then based on his reply tried to remember everything I'd emailed him previously.

In this months show (episode #3) he gave me a simple shout-out (ie. a mention) and also gave out this blog's web address; I hadn't told him this so he must have done some research!

Then in his mention about the previous show's question-of-the-month, for which he'd misplaced all his email replies, he did say he had heard from someone, he couldn't remember who, who had said they were currently about 15 feet from their nearest Geocacher at work - but as it was also his girlfriend it was a little bit like cheating as he also lived with her. Well as you've guessed by reading this, that was also me. (I had mentioned that I also only live about 8 doors from Yorkypudding and Aginghippy but he must have forgotten that too.)

Anyway my other email gave him a possible question-of-the-month and he thinks he may use it next month.

Fame at last!

Return - and revenge

It's been a busy week with little time for Geocaching since our Bank Holiday but we have managed two quick runs...

On Tuesday, when we were supposedly having a night off, we had just finished watching a film when an email arrived at 20:55 reporting a new cache only 4 miles away. Well of course we couldn't resist and dashed off in the car, arriving and signing the log by 21:15! FTF of course, but more satisfyingly also our quickest to date. On the way home we detoured several miles and picked up a drive-by down at J31 of the M1. A nice easy 2 in the pitch black.

Tonight we planned a quick walk back to Rother Valley - firstly to get revenge on the one that eluded us on Monday and secondly to pick up another very close to it that was frustratingly published on Monday while we were already out.

The bridge was a doddle - it was a bit annoying we didn't get it before, but at least it's now done.

Two caches and two small miles.

Frogs, Friends and Frustration

The Bank Holiday weekend just gone has been a hectic few days of Geocaching.

We started with a lazy day on Saturday and just picked one up as a drive-by while we were passing; it was competely unplanned and we actually forgot to log it for two days.

However on Sunday we went on a trip arranged by our new Geocaching friends "patdhill" and family. (Patrick and I have emailed each other a few times and we went around to meet them last Tuesday). This was a 10 mile hike around the top of Froggatt Edge for our two families, and included some serious rock-climbing to get to 3 caches rated 5 difficulty and 5 terrain.

The day started off pretty grimly with driving winds making the drizzle pretty awful but within an hour it was easing off and by lunchtime the sun was shining brightly. The wind never let up in the exposed places but it was a very pleasant day.

Owing to the complexity of some of the finds (12 overall) the 10 miles took us 7 hours but we had a great day (well most of us did, I think the kids are sick of hiking) and we cemented a friendship we hope will last a long time. Incidentally for the logs we came up with an on-the-spot group name of Team PADS for Patrick, Aggrajag, Donna and Spandannah which is of course much easier than writing 4 (or 9 with kids) names.

On Monday rather than rest our aching legs (and arms!) Spandannah and I decided to go to Rother Valley and pick-up the new series dropped there only 2 days earlier. Patdhill had, coincidentally, picked up First-To-Find on all these on the Saturday so we were, in a manner of speaking, following his trail again. As it was Bank Holiday Monday, and we didn't set off until about 1pm, we were already about 8th on the logs with 3 other Geocachers finding them before us on the same day - it seems like a very popular trail and it's not even 4 days old!

It was a pleasant 6 mile walk with no 'bush whacking' or 'jungle thrashing' but we did manage to get lost once when we added in another cache that wasn't from the same series and deviated from the desired route.

The series of 17 had 16 normal caches, some with clues in their lids, and a final puzzle cache you found from the lid clues. Out of the 17 there was one we simply could not find despite spending a good half an hour looking. Blasted bridge, it's frustrated us both and we'll have to go back another day and try again.

Typically the one we couldn't find included the last clue we needed for #17 but fortunately with one of the coordinates complete we used logic, the hint, skill and a dash of luck to successfully find #17 - and very proud we were too. Overall this was another 17 finds.

Tonight we need a night off - my back, my legs, my arms and even my aches are aching.

Puzzle Caches

I've been working on and off, on a couple of Puzzle Caches this last month, just the odd five minutes here and there.

These two particular caches were, to me, incredibly hard. Having a logical brain I can quickly get to the root of mathematical problems or problems involving shifting the alphabet round, substituting letters or codes, or finding patterns and hidden messages but I quickly run out of ideas as soon as it becomes apparent it's not 'logical'.

For both of these puzzles I eventually asked a friend to give me the tiniest hint possible, which he did carefully, and then I solved them both in 5 minutes flat to zero fanfare.

I felt as though I'd cheated.

And I'm doubly annoyed with myself.

The hardest puzzle had been dissected 5 different ways by me and each way was bringing up something that could conceivably, with a bit of fiddling, become a coordinate - and it's these that make the puzzles so hard. The easiest solution was the one I'd started with but I'd come to a dead-end. I'd also followed the official hint and come to another dead-end but I'm annoyed because I didn't join both dead-ends together properly - I missed something and I didn't exactly give up but I was competely stumped.

The second I was sure was a simple 'Caesar code' (I didn't know it was called that until my friend gave it a name for me) where you simply rotate the letters x number of places left or right. For example A might become D, B becomes E, C becomes F etc. The first thing I'd tried on this puzzle was roman numerals, but the second was a Caesar code because the clue hinted at the number 10. I moved the letters 10 and got what I thought was nonsense. I even wrote a computer program that moved the letters every combination from 1-26 so I could see all possible Caesar results. Nothing. I used Google, crossword solvers, you name it on the Internet and all to no avail. But again, I missed the last step. It WAS a shift of 10 but the words produced weren't 'obvious' English. If I'd looked carefully I would have seen this and had the answer straightaway - so I'm annoyed with myself again.

In a pique of frustration I downloaded all the Puzzle Caches within 10 miles yesterday and in a couple of hours solved 5 of the 6. By myself.

I'm still not happy.

Aggrajag, Lord of the Jungle

Spandannah presented me with a list of caches she wanted to do yesterday lunchtime so once home I quickly dropped them into my software, worked out a route, loaded them onto the GPSr and off we set.

These were all in some woods at the south side of Woodhouse. We're not sure of the name but it may be Penny Loaf Woods or it may be something to do with Birley as that's the name of the pit that used to be there.

It looked to be a simple stroll from the carpark, right around the area and back, picking up 3 normal caches and a multi-cache en-route.

Heh.

As we arrived at the car park the heavens opened, as they had been threatening to do for a while, so we donned our proper outdoor gear and set off in the pouring rain. We've learnt to psyche ourselves into thinking that this is 'extreme sport' rather than two idiots getting drenched in rain and covered in mud. It works for us. We're tough.

Less than five minutes later we were onto the first location and thankfully the rain was stopping. It was an easy find in very wet ground and then we continued along the bottom of the woods to the next one about half a mile away.

This one was a multi-cache and the film canister (easily found by Spandannah) revealed, with no puzzle, the co-ordinates to the main cache. We then made the beginner's mistake of heading directly towards the co-ords and after 70 feet of huge thorns, nettles and thistles we decided to turn back and walk around looking for a path. Back at the cache we felt rather stupid when we noticed a path about 20 feet away leading in the correct direction. A couple of minutes later we were in roughly the right location but the GPSr was struggling under the dense, wet tree cover so it took us 35 minutes to find the true cache. However as it wasn't raining and there were no muggles around we took our time and methodically searched the entire area. A satisfying find when in hand, purely because we hadn't given up.

The next cache was a bit tricky. We walked all the way around the three sides available to the area it was located, following the path, trying to find a way into the dense wood. We had only found one hint of an entrance so we walked back to it and took it into the dense undergrowth and woodland. Again the GPSr was struggling but the hint (yes we used the hint) was a pretty clear one so again we methodically searched every matching location and came up with the goods within a few minutes.

However at this point I'd lost all my sense of direction (Spandannah had lost hers, as usual, getting out of the house) so looking at the GPSr I decided not to try to track my own track back, but to simply head for the nearest path.

Oh ho, what fun...

You get to a point after about 50 feet of fighting through 8 foot high dense reeds, hidden fallen trees, nettles and brambles and all along walking in 6 inches of mud swamp that you know you've a) made a mistake and b) gone that far you might as well carry on.

It certainly was an experience and I would have felt like Tarzan if I had a) the looks, b) the body, c) dry terrain and d) mostly importantly, a machete instead of a bloody walking stick!

Today my legs look like an A-Z map, crazed with red paths and blue veins and if I have to be honest I'm thinking I really ought to go back and look for Spandannah...

The Grand-Old Hike of York

Ooh it's been 5 days since I wrote; I'm slacking.

I had actually started a post last Thursday but realised I had little to say; I'd simply been out the night before (during my son's guitar lesson) and picked up a puzzle cache to which I'd found all the clues the week before but had then run out of time to get to the final location. I was also going to mention running out of local caches, so...

We've decided, with the nights drawing in, that we're going to keep doing local caches in the evenings but make an effort to go somewhere more distant at the weekend. To this end Hannah randomly picked a place, York, and I set to work planning a route or two.

York seems to be inundated with caches and a "pocket query" of the area brought up hundred's within a few miles so I loaded this into my MapSource application and set to work with my electronic scissors. I deleted all the ones outside the walls and also all the mystery & puzzle caches, which left me with (I thought) 31 to do. It seemed a reasonable amount so I arranged these into 2 walks, one to do in the morning which led into the centre of town for lunch, and then a second to do in the afternoon. These came in at 1.7 and 1.4 miles as the crow flies point-to-point so I guessed we'd end up doing about 5 miles total.

(Incidentally I only deleted the mystery and puzzle caches to save time - normally I would plan these in too but as we were already doing so many I decided to keep it simple and not run the risk of running out of time.)

Well what a trek! It transpired that, somehow, 4 of the caches were still mystery types so we dropped those once we got to the location and realised each was invalid without the prior work having been done. Secondly, part of the wall was closed and we had to take quite a long detour around one section and back, doubling up that section's distance. And thirdly we also got lost trying to find HMV for my daughter (and I also doubled up that part again looking for a shop selling drinks while she was in there looking for a specific CD.)

So how do I summarise events without a whole diary for a single day?

We had a nice Steak 'n' Ale pie and a rather filling spiral-sausage-and-mash-in-the-hole for lunch in a good pub. We hunted high and low for caches in film containers, nano caches (magnets about 1.5cm round, with notepaper rolled inside) and hidden magnetic key-holders on lampposts, drainpipes, walls, holes and monuments. We met and chatted with some newcomers to the sport who were struggling with a find in a packed shopping area near the Yorvik centre. We tried not to look guilty in front of muggles as we oddly studied drainpipes, piles of bricks and ivy trees around the city. And we seemed to walk non-stop until 5:15. It was a good but tiring day and the weather was excellent throughout.

On the last quarter mile to the car we all tried to guess the mileage we'd walked. We were thinking it was further than previously estimated because our feet were aching, so guesses ranged from 6.3 miles to 8 miles but we were staggered to find we'd done 9.5 miles.

One final error I had made was in my counting. Of the 31 waypoints in my GPSr I had forgotten that the first one was only the car park and not a cache - but we still happily smashed our single day record with 26 finds!

Miles and weights

Nothing much to report today I'm afraid but I thought I ought to post anyway as we did do the 'Tae Kwon Doubt' series last night. This was 8 easy finds on a pretty dull straight part of the Trans-Pennine-Trail which unfortunately we had to walk all the way back along - as we were new to the area we had no idea how to make it circular once we'd finished.

It was also strange because 3 of the caches were uncovered and one was only half covered. Either the previous cacher was very negligent or there's a mischievous muggle around.

Another 4.7 miles for the diary but the weight seems to have stopped going down. *sob*

In which our legs look backwards...?

I know there's a general bad feeling about people planting new caches when they've only found 10 on their own, as they are still beginners and perhaps not overly aware of rules, regulations and perhaps more importantly what makes a cache good or bad. Also there's the worry that they may get bored of the hobby and end up leaving behind 10 unsupported caches.

For this very reason I decided yesterday to go and bag a brand new series that's recently been placed by newcomers to the sport - I wanted to "get in there" before it turned sour.

Now don't get me wrong; I hope it doesn't go wrong and I hope these newcomers, just like me only 3 months ago, end up being around for the long game - and yes, I am only too aware that for many players I am still a newcomer and will be for a long long time to come.

Anyway after a bad start (and I confess things were looking pretty dreadful for the series) we managed to hack our way through woodland to find our way from the second to the third cache and from then on it was a nice walk to complete the five. The only downside then was that the route wasn't circular and we were 2 miles from the car. However walking back along the roads we detoured a little to pick up an unrelated cache and enjoyed our evening stroll and chat along the country lanes.

Six more in the bag and 4.9 miles walked which then got me to thinking...

After the 15 minute drive home my legs were a little stiff but from then until now I have had no side effects. Yes it was only 5 miles, but how would I have felt 3 months ago? I truly wish I could compare my fitness from 3 months ago side-by-side with myself now.

I can't remember how I felt but I'd guess it was pretty awful.

Puzzles within puzzles

I've not much to report this week so I'll keep it brief. We've had a quiet one mostly and also Hannah has been away visiting relations this weekend so I decided to have a lazy one for a change.

I planted my new cache yesterday which has a multitude of false co-ordinates hidden within the listing; codes within codes and false trails leading to the middle of lakes and empty fields. I can't say much here as this blog is linked from my Geocaching profile and I don't want to give any spoilers away! It's a bit of a tribute to Treeton too - I'm very patriotic about the place! (Link: Not a Bit Sticky). I've rated it 4.5 out of 5 for difficulty as the container is also a devil too.

Anyway I'm hoping it gives people the satisfaction of solving a puzzle and doing some armchair Geocaching!

*sigh* Back to the ironing...

Smoke and Mirrors... and idiocy

To ease ourselves in again last night, after our Sunday over-exertions, I decided to try and finish Mr. Truffles mystery series and also mop up a couple of problem caches.

We drove to Kimberworth and whilst firing up the GPS I noticed that I had Mystery #6 listed in there twice so without further thought I deleted one of them. What a wally. There were two in there for a reason: a marker reference which is simply in the right region and is listed on the website, and then the actual co-ordinates which I'd added myself once calculated from the clues in Mystery #5.

I'd deleted the original photo of the clue in Mystery #5 from my iPhone, so all we had was my memory. Somehow I could remember the first half of the co-ords and bizarrely I could remember the calculation to the second half so we looked up the root figure on Wikipedia (the height of Ben Nevis in metres) and then applied the calculation to get the second half of the co-ords. We then set off, without any great faith, walked the wrong way around a huge wheat field, but blow me if we didn't find it - now that WAS an achievement!

We got the rather vague clue for Mystery #7 which we already knew was somewhere up near Elsecar - an area with which we had a score to settle - and for which I had already pre-loaded two other caches into the GPS.

10 minutes on a very slow loading Geocaching.com and we had the co-ordinates for Mystery #7 which turned out to be very close to one of our problem caches.

Our Elsecar History

We went to Elsecar and had a great day the very first time I had my *real* GPS device. We did about 14 caches with my Mum and Sister but we had three problems: 1) "Tucked Away" we gave up on after 20 minutes searching presuming it was muggled 2) "Black Beauty" we gave up on and we were pretty sure it had been muggled and 3) Some other cache we thought was in a bad spot (glass/nettles/holly) and as it was was late, and now raining, we abandoned it quickly.

It transpired over time that "Tucked Away" was indeed still safely tucked away and that "Black Beauty" had indeed been muggled - but it had finally been replaced this last weekend.

So... off we went to Mystery #7, parked up and had a nice easy find of a large cache box. It was very pleasing to have finished a long puzzle series after a couple of months on and off of it. Tucked Away was only about 500 metres away so we set off for that and somehow, strangely, we found it within 10 seconds of arriving. I left it alone, told Hannah I'd found it and she looked near me and also found it immediately, so whether it was covered in more undergrowth previously or whether we all had a mental block I have no idea. It was very strange.

We returned to the car and moved it the Heritage Centre and trotted off to find Black Beauty (see what I did there?) - it was exactly where we'd previously thought so another easy find.

Overall a nice rewarding evening; we finished a long puzzle series and tidied up two previous fails.

2.8 miles walking total and home for a nice, but late, tea.

Oh the pain!

We signed up for our first Geocaching "event" this weekend and boy did we drop ourselves in at the deep-end! We've not been to an event before so didn't know what to expect but from what I was told on the day this wasn't a typical event; this was simply a walk with a group of friends & Geocachers around a pre-defined route hoping to pick-up a few caches en-route.

The event was published as approximately 13 miles and we knew this was pushing the limits of our fitness - previously we've only done 5, 6 or maybe 7 miles per day. Additionally we were a little dubious about going as we've both been run-down since our holidays and my flight-caught cold had turned into quite a bad cough.

Anyway we decided to take the plunge and set off at 8am on Sunday morning to meet up at Edale. We met a very friendly mixed bunch of people and set off at 9:30.

By 11:00 I thought I was dying. After an easy start, no doubt to throw us off the scent, the route started going up both sides of a tiny stream that trickles down a mountain. I can hardly call it a trail as it was damned near vertical; we rose from 280m above sea-level to 533m within a mile.

This took us to the top of Kinder Scout plateau (made up of, I think, Kinder Scout, Crowden Head and Edale Moor.) We rested and then walked a couple of miles through wet peat (which makes for very tough going with heavy feet and slipping tracks) then we went around the next side of the plateau where the hill is all stones so your ankles are bent every which way and quickly start to ache. Finally about 6 hours later you walk down hill for an hour and your knees and legs feel like collapsing. You don't believe it yourself but the downhill is the worst.

Anyway I know this all sounds like a long grumble but it's not; it is very hard to explain the sheer energy sapping experiences of wading through peat, going downhill knowing you have to then go back up another hill, or carefully picking every single step across a rocky terrain. By 3:15 I would have willingly swapped my house for a helicopter - not the ownership of one, just a two minute ride in one back down to the car. HOWEVER after eight and a half hours we were finally back at the starting point. We'd done some caches (I never took count, they hardly mattered,) we'd done 14.5 miles, we'd gone up to an altitude of 630 metres, we'd fallen over, we'd slipped and got wet & dirty, we'd laughed and we'd made a dozen new friends. It was a great experience.

I'm hoping I'll read this back in years to come and laugh at myself. There were people there of all ages who did it with less effort than we did, a couple of guys even walked around in circles visiting other spots to pass the time while the slow ones caught up. There may be other walkers who read this and think we're total wimps. They're probably right.

However it WAS a personal achievement and, as they say, every great journey starts with a single step. My journey is the journey to fitness. Today I ache, and not as bad as I feared, and I'm also very proud that I have no blisters!

Chapter 7 in which Pooh discovers an amazing co-incidence

(I couldn't resist a Winnie the Pooh type start; I loved the books as a kid and I loved reading them to my kids when they were young enough.)

Anyway I couldn't believe my ears when, as I was packing the car ready to set off on holiday last week, a lady pulled up outside my house and introduced herself. I had spoken to this person before regarding an irrelevant (to this blog) local issue and knew she lived 8 houses away, but I didn't know who she was.

Well slap my thighs and call me Frank but it was Yorkypudding; a local Geocacher with a couple of thousand finds, dozens of hides and an equally keen Geocaching husband Ageinghippy. We'd conversed by email several times and knew we were in the same area but 8 houses! It sure is a small world.

It also has to be noted that she's the owner of several of the nastiest caches I've ever scratched, bumped and scraped my way to finding - damned woman :)

I'll add a P.S. here for myself in years to come... weight loss now up to 12lb. (Hey and that's even after having just been on an all-inclusive holiday!)

Disappointing Morocco...

I'll confess immediately; the title of today's post is misleading. Morocco itself is a fabulous place for a relaxing holiday, we had a week of reading, lazing, sunbathing, tennis and playing hat-frisbee in the sea (it's more erratic and therefore more fun than normal frisbee) and we've come back both worn out and also refreshed.

The only disappointment, and it's really only a very minor one, is that there's no caches there. Despite my best endeavours using the tools available, I only managed to locate 17 in the entire country and the nearest was 60 miles from where we were stopping. I was tempted to hire a car for the day but then I saw how they drive! We did pass close by one on our pre-organised excursion day to Marrakech but it was so hot (42 deg C - cool by our guides standard of 51 deg C the week before!) we didn't want to get lost from the public places and risk losing our way back to the coach in the limited free time available.

No matter, even without caching we had a great break.

Having had a couple of seriously late nights (we landed back at 3:30 am) we've been run down a little so I thought yesterday that I'd ease us back into Geocaching with a couple of short-walk puzzle ones nearby in Rotherham rather than a long walk. We'd already worked out the co-ords for Mystery #4 previously so we drove off to Gibbing Greave Woods (another place we'd never heard of) and had a 1.6m round trip to the cache and back. Hannah found it quickly and we took photos of the lid for the clues to Mystery #5. We stopped on the way back to the car for a Google and solved the Russian numbers to get the co-ords required. We then drove off to Boston Castle where we'd been a couple of weeks previously to find Mystery #5.

A single mile return walk but the cache itself took some finding. It was hidden under some heather and whilst looking we were deluged with ants and midges. It was an absolute nightmare - I'm never normally attacked or bitten but it must be something to do with my tan, or a distant residue of suncream, but I was covered in insects and it was driving me potty. Fortunately Hannah (again) found the tub, we swapped, signed, photographed, re-hid and ran off!

Another two for the counter, and another two by the legendary Mr Truffles leaving only two to go in this mystery series... please excuse me while I go and puzzle...