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.

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.