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.)