Icy Dinnington

On Sunday afternoon, after a quick lunch following on from the morning's Beeley Wood clean-up, Patrick, I, Hannah and Donna met up (as Team PADS) to do a second 'Great Scots' series in Dinnington. We had done the first series a month or so ago.

This series was about 10 days old but because of the heavy snowfall had only been found once. There were also several did-not-finds (DNFs) because of the snow, a DNF because of child muggles playing nearby, and one that was believed muggled before ever being found.

Having suffered badly from the snow ourselves, which was clearing away nicely, we hadn't expected to see so much still at Dinnington. Also, strangely, the hill sides were coated in solid ice - I don't mean compacted snow that has been walked on and turned into ice, but ice like you would find on the top of a pond; the tracks up the hills were solid ice with water running under them as though the trails were originally streams. Very odd.

We first walked across what appeared to be flood plains with huge frozen puddles-come-lakes and quickly got the first easy cache. We then went up the tracks to another easy second one with Dizzy the dog eating ice where possible. On the way to the fourth one we stopped by the third which was seemingly muggled, just in case, and lo and behold it was there in the snow in plain view. We presume that it had fallen from it's hiding place in the snow and was buried for the previous two seekers - we happened to be first to arrive once the thaw had started. A completely unexpected First-To-Find (FTF) and amazingly the first one for Team PADS as a group.

The fourth was another easy find and after a wet trudge up semi-frozen tracks and a good search Hannah found the fifth. Then it was just a brisk mile back to the cars.

A great Sunday afternoon; fresh air, a good walk and good company. What more could you want?

[Total 5 finds, 2.5 miles.] [Forgot to mention in last blog the 2.4 miles done this morning.]

Great Scots

(I make no apologies for the blog spam today - this is my diary!)

We had a day off work on Monday to unpack, wash and generally relax from the excesses of Ireland before returning to work on Tuesday. However by 5pm I was fed up of being in a stuffy house so, encouraged by an email from Patrick, we spoke and arranged a quick night caching trip out to pick up a new series near North Anston - Great Scots.

Each cache in the series was related to a Great Scot, for example Sean Connery and William Wallace, and we thought it an amazing coincidence that as we sat in the car waiting for Patrick that Radio Two were interviewing an author who had just published a book on Robert The Bruce - or cache #5 as we'd later call him!!

Patrick arrived at 6:15pm, in the bitterly cold darkness, and we set off on a 3 mile stroll through woodland and open fields. This is a pretty simple, yet very good series on flat terrain, which was made more difficult by the cold and the dark. (I've found a fault with my super-high-powered police-issue torch - it's metal and it's flipping freezing!!)

Time for the gloves to come out methinks.

It was great to catch up with Patrick and tell him all the Irish gossip and to see what he'd been up to without us this weekend. A very good geocaching friend indeed.

We got home about 8:10pm having logged 3.1 miles and 6 more caches, cold and fresh I knew I'd sleep well later that night.