Marvellous May Day

Monday the 2nd of May and an early rise to get ready for a 10:30 start near Matlock. Patrick had put a shout-out on Facebook for anyone who would like to join him there to do the Alphabet Soup series. I'd mostly prepared the night before so set off easily at a reasonable time as prompted by my SatNav. I got there 40 minutes early; plenty of time for me to find the first cache before the rest arrived, and to fix the blummin' average speeds used by my SatNav.

Alphabet Soup was first brought to my attention by Mr. Truffles during his Coniston 10,000 outing. He raved about it and said I should do it ASAP. Indeed it is something to note that certain caches on this series have some of the highest 'favourite' counts I've seen.

In attendance we had Patdhill (Patrick, Donna, Christianna, Bethany, Jordan and Dizzy the Dog), Ea51ron (Ron and Honey the Dog), Snoopyisboss (Sarah and Megs the Dog) and myself (with an imaginary dog if it makes you, dear reader, happier.) We opted to sign the caches as Team SYMO - an acronym for South Yorkshire May Outing.

This series is based on the alphabet, so unsurprisingly there are 26 caches, but it is not just the quantity that makes this series so good, it is a combination of several things...

Firstly it is set in a beautiful area known as Darley Dale. If I may quote Smart451 the series owner "[Darley Dale] is in fact made up of several smaller settlements, namely Churchtown, Darley Bridge or South Darley, Darley Hillside (Hackney), Northwood and Two Dales."

These small settlements afford a good mix of terrain so although there is a little A-road walking there is also a good amount crossing fields, bridges, quiet B-roads and walking through fabulous unlittered and unspoiled woodlands.

Secondly each cache has a themed name related to its place in the alphabet and also to something near the location or failing that something related to the cache container. For example the second cache is called B - Alphabet Soup (Bridge) and is of course hidden near a bridge. The third cache is called C - Alphabet Soup (Cow) and is hidden near a field of cows inside a model cow.

This brings me nicely to the third point. Bucking the all-too-common trend nowadays of simply hiding 35mm film pots everywhere, the series owner here has taken a great deal of time and effort thinking about each cache. I don't want to give too much away for fear of writing spoilers but I'll give a few unnamed examples... One cache is an ammo can (a large waterproof metal tin) that once you open you are confronted with a padlock and a bundle of keys - only one of which works. Another has a four foot long camouflaged tube stuck vertically into the ground inside a bush in the woods. The cache is at the bottom of the tube and you're given two small tools to work the cache up the inside using small holes on the side of the tube. Another cache is inside a drilled out rock.

Overall I would estimate that of the 26 caches there were 18 that were innovative designs or just plain and simple great camouflage - none were difficult to find but I'd be surprised if they would be found by Muggles.

A great series - definitely one of the best, if not THE best, bettered by good company and yet again fabulous weather.

Huge thanks must go to Smart451 for all the time and effort in placing a well thought out and original series.

[Total was 28 caches (two randoms) and 8.8 miles.]

... and back home in time to watch the last session of the World Snooker Championship in its entirety.

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.