Hide and Walk

On Sunday morning I set out to place my new cache. I've been working on a puzzle in my head for a week or so now but couldn't progress with it until the cache was in place and I had the coordinates to work with.

I popped out and placed it locally in a location I've had my eye on for a while but which, I have to confess, I'm not overly happy with. There's little reason for people to be there as there's not really a walk involved.

It was a nightmare getting accurate coordinates because of the tree cover and also, I believe, because it was placed on a south facing banking which blocks the view to the satellites. I spent 45 minutes there with both my GPS devices taking multiple readings (each averaged for a couple of minutes) before moving away and returning to reset and do another. Each reading was nowhere near the previous so it took me ages to finally get some coordinates I was happy with. (I had 15 readings in total, disposed of the furthest out-of-range, and averaged the rest but weighting ones which were more common).

Back home I searched online for all the clues and calculations to allow people to solve my puzzle and published it about 12:30am. It was reviewed and went live within two minutes (DalesmanX certainly on the ball today!). As I type this blog no-one has yet solved the puzzle which I'm surprised at as I made it only medium difficulty. It is, however, a completely different style of puzzle to one I would normally think of - the result of specifically trying to do something different.

Shortly after this was done we set off to meet Patrick, Donna and clan to do the High Hoylands Hike - a short walk of 3.5 miles and 9 caches.

This was a hundred times more interesting than Friday's walk - we were back to fields, woodlands, lanes, tracks, roads, hills, farms and mud. A very pleasing walk with some interesting hides (and some we don't agree with as they involved nails into trees which is generally frowned upon) and we timed it perfectly as the rain started to come down as we got back to the cars.

The only downer for the day, for me anyway, was that the kids rang their mother and vanished off home when we told them we were walking. I didn't put up a fight but in hindsight I was wrong. They might not like walking and I know they would rather be on MSN or Facebook but "normal" families do activities together and next time I won't be so soft.