Rompin' 'round Rivelin

The kids and I popped out on Sunday morning to do the 10 caches I'd planned the other Friday at Rivelin Valley near Hillsborough.

I had set Adam up with my old GPS so he could get more involved with the walk - the deal was to alternate caches with Jade but as usual she wasn't bothered. However I shall continue to do this because it seemed to be quite a successful plan; I wouldn't go as far as to say Adam enjoyed himself but it did give him something to focus on.

We got there at 11am, a fair bit later than intended, in light drizzle and after finding somewhere to park set off walking up quite a steep hill through a muddy woodland to get the first of a small 3-part series. It was an easy find by Adam and we backtracked down the hill to cache #2 and then had both coordinates to get #3. This third cache has had loads of did-not-finds logged against it because of dodgy coordinates and also it being a tricky hide. Fortunately the cache owner has recently made a couple of tweaks to the coordinates and also added a 'spoiler picture' to the log.

Despite this, and after only 15 minutes of looking, I was ready to add this cache to my ignore list where it would have had the dubious honour of being my first ever on said list.

The spoiler picture had us as the right location - which was essentially a load of rocks and stones that had fallen away down a slope. The grass was slippy in the drizzle, the rocks were even slippier and the brambles growing through some of the cracks were invisible, yet painful, traps.

In essence caches like this are a lottery; there's a hundred stones in an ever moving landscape and the cache could be inside or under any single one of them. Cachers, including me, move the stones and in doing so scratch them thereby giving off false clues to subsequent visitors. Even walking on them can change the spread and spoil the photo or again give off fake clues. It's a gamble and it's not really any fun.

Thankfully I found it and was surprised, although in reflection perhaps I shouldn't be, to see that I was only the second person to find it since it was published in November, almost three months ago. It was a nice short series in an area I've never been to but it was, in my opinion, let down by this random final cache.

After this cache we headed back down to the main road and then walked west along Rivelin Valley. There are several standalone caches down here and we picked these up easily as we walked beside both a stream AND a river through a landscape I guess would be much more beautiful in summer. Aiming for another small series called Rivelin Romp we got to, and found, the first one quite quickly but I then decided to call it a day; the kids had been grumbling they were hungry for an hour (it was now almost 1pm) and we had a couple of miles to walk back to the car via two more caches in the sort-of-circular loop I'd planned.

Bouyed by the prospect of food we were quickly back at the car, the two caches found easily en-route, and then started the painful drive home - Hillsborough was gridlocked and we were stuck there for 20 minutes, in a traffic jam, infinitely frustratingly heading in the wrong direction - the road we wanted was closed and the diversion had us going 180% the wrong way.

Walking would have been quicker and a damned sight more fun!

[Total for the short day was 4.5 miles and 8 caches.]

Blustery Castleton

On Saturday Patrick worked out a plan to do some caches at Castleton on the Sunday. I was busy so quickly created a Pocket Query (a list of caches that match your desired criteria in a certain area) which I downloaded on to my GPS without having the time to actually read about any of the caches.

We all (Me, Patrick, Hannah, Donna, Adam, Jade, Christianna, Bethany, Jordan and Dizzy the Dog) met up in the main Castleton car park at 12 noon and headed off to the chippy for a sandwich to set us up for the walk - we didn't eat too much as the hills would be hard work.

Patrick, Hannah and Bethany wandered off to find the nearby cache-under-a-bench, that I had already picked up last summer, whilst Donna and I ordered half a ton of chips for nine.

We set off up to the 'fallen road' (the abandoned A625) on Mam'Tor. A good brisk walk through bracing winds and we soon found a couple of caches, got confused about waypoint clues and also took a couple of required photos for two Earth caches (no physical cache but photo and answers to email to the cache owner).

Once walking I quickly got frustrated with my lack of preparation as one of the caches had 4 waypoints I didn't know anything about, and also Patrick was looking for 3 caches which had been disabled but he was sure were still fine as there were recent logs - presumably the cache owner hadn't removed the disabled flag after the caches had been maintained. Anyway, these caches also weren't in my GPS and because of this I felt I was being led blind, didn't know where I was going and consequently felt a little lost. (This does make me wonder if the kids might enjoy walks more if they had a GPS? Do they get bored because they've nothing to do?)

Walking along the broken road the wind got stronger and stronger and was now being accompanied by a light rain which was being driven into us. At one point, whilst I was at the back figuring out waypoints, I saw Jordan literally get thrown over by a gust of wind - fortunately he didn't land flat on his face and just managed to catch his footing.

We rounded the corner, after I think it's the Blue John Cavern car park and back onto the working road, and whilst walking directly into the wind we decided to call it a day. Had there just been the adults we would have carried on but it was getting too much for the kids. We backtracked down the road and hill, picking up a further clue we'd missed coming up the hill, and back into Castleton.

A frustrating and cold day but a great way to clear the cobwebs out of your head - one of those days where you get back home and feel like you've really done something.

Overall we walked 5.4 miles and somehow, thanks to Patrick, bagged 6 caches.

Sofa Caching

On Friday I took some lieu time off from work to get out and about after an incredibly stressful week. I needed to get some fresh air into my head so had planned a short 5-6 mile walk around Rivelin Valley picking up about 8-10 caches on the way.

On the way home from work I stopped off at a nearby burger van and treated myself to a hot pork and stuffing sandwich. I took this home and ate it whilst preparing my rucksack - fresh water, batteries, pen, that sort of thing.

I sat on the settee to let my food settle for ten minutes.

And woke up three hours later.

Total for the day: 0 miles. 0 caches. 1 oops.