To ease ourselves in again last night, after our Sunday over-exertions, I decided to try and finish Mr. Truffles mystery series and also mop up a couple of problem caches.
We drove to Kimberworth and whilst firing up the GPS I noticed that I had Mystery #6 listed in there twice so without further thought I deleted one of them. What a wally. There were two in there for a reason: a marker reference which is simply in the right region and is listed on the website, and then the actual co-ordinates which I'd added myself once calculated from the clues in Mystery #5.
I'd deleted the original photo of the clue in Mystery #5 from my iPhone, so all we had was my memory. Somehow I could remember the first half of the co-ords and bizarrely I could remember the calculation to the second half so we looked up the root figure on Wikipedia (the height of Ben Nevis in metres) and then applied the calculation to get the second half of the co-ords. We then set off, without any great faith, walked the wrong way around a huge wheat field, but blow me if we didn't find it - now that WAS an achievement!
We got the rather vague clue for Mystery #7 which we already knew was somewhere up near Elsecar - an area with which we had a score to settle - and for which I had already pre-loaded two other caches into the GPS.
10 minutes on a very slow loading Geocaching.com and we had the co-ordinates for Mystery #7 which turned out to be very close to one of our problem caches.
Our Elsecar History
We went to Elsecar and had a great day the very first time I had my *real* GPS device. We did about 14 caches with my Mum and Sister but we had three problems: 1) "Tucked Away" we gave up on after 20 minutes searching presuming it was muggled 2) "Black Beauty" we gave up on and we were pretty sure it had been muggled and 3) Some other cache we thought was in a bad spot (glass/nettles/holly) and as it was was late, and now raining, we abandoned it quickly.
It transpired over time that "Tucked Away" was indeed still safely tucked away and that "Black Beauty" had indeed been muggled - but it had finally been replaced this last weekend.
So... off we went to Mystery #7, parked up and had a nice easy find of a large cache box. It was very pleasing to have finished a long puzzle series after a couple of months on and off of it. Tucked Away was only about 500 metres away so we set off for that and somehow, strangely, we found it within 10 seconds of arriving. I left it alone, told Hannah I'd found it and she looked near me and also found it immediately, so whether it was covered in more undergrowth previously or whether we all had a mental block I have no idea. It was very strange.
We returned to the car and moved it the Heritage Centre and trotted off to find Black Beauty (see what I did there?) - it was exactly where we'd previously thought so another easy find.
Overall a nice rewarding evening; we finished a long puzzle series and tidied up two previous fails.
2.8 miles walking total and home for a nice, but late, tea.
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Friday, 6 August 2010
Disappointing Morocco...
I'll confess immediately; the title of today's post is misleading. Morocco itself is a fabulous place for a relaxing holiday, we had a week of reading, lazing, sunbathing, tennis and playing hat-frisbee in the sea (it's more erratic and therefore more fun than normal frisbee) and we've come back both worn out and also refreshed.
The only disappointment, and it's really only a very minor one, is that there's no caches there. Despite my best endeavours using the tools available, I only managed to locate 17 in the entire country and the nearest was 60 miles from where we were stopping. I was tempted to hire a car for the day but then I saw how they drive! We did pass close by one on our pre-organised excursion day to Marrakech but it was so hot (42 deg C - cool by our guides standard of 51 deg C the week before!) we didn't want to get lost from the public places and risk losing our way back to the coach in the limited free time available.
No matter, even without caching we had a great break.
Having had a couple of seriously late nights (we landed back at 3:30 am) we've been run down a little so I thought yesterday that I'd ease us back into Geocaching with a couple of short-walk puzzle ones nearby in Rotherham rather than a long walk. We'd already worked out the co-ords for Mystery #4 previously so we drove off to Gibbing Greave Woods (another place we'd never heard of) and had a 1.6m round trip to the cache and back. Hannah found it quickly and we took photos of the lid for the clues to Mystery #5. We stopped on the way back to the car for a Google and solved the Russian numbers to get the co-ords required. We then drove off to Boston Castle where we'd been a couple of weeks previously to find Mystery #5.
A single mile return walk but the cache itself took some finding. It was hidden under some heather and whilst looking we were deluged with ants and midges. It was an absolute nightmare - I'm never normally attacked or bitten but it must be something to do with my tan, or a distant residue of suncream, but I was covered in insects and it was driving me potty. Fortunately Hannah (again) found the tub, we swapped, signed, photographed, re-hid and ran off!
Another two for the counter, and another two by the legendary Mr Truffles leaving only two to go in this mystery series... please excuse me while I go and puzzle...
The only disappointment, and it's really only a very minor one, is that there's no caches there. Despite my best endeavours using the tools available, I only managed to locate 17 in the entire country and the nearest was 60 miles from where we were stopping. I was tempted to hire a car for the day but then I saw how they drive! We did pass close by one on our pre-organised excursion day to Marrakech but it was so hot (42 deg C - cool by our guides standard of 51 deg C the week before!) we didn't want to get lost from the public places and risk losing our way back to the coach in the limited free time available.
No matter, even without caching we had a great break.
Having had a couple of seriously late nights (we landed back at 3:30 am) we've been run down a little so I thought yesterday that I'd ease us back into Geocaching with a couple of short-walk puzzle ones nearby in Rotherham rather than a long walk. We'd already worked out the co-ords for Mystery #4 previously so we drove off to Gibbing Greave Woods (another place we'd never heard of) and had a 1.6m round trip to the cache and back. Hannah found it quickly and we took photos of the lid for the clues to Mystery #5. We stopped on the way back to the car for a Google and solved the Russian numbers to get the co-ords required. We then drove off to Boston Castle where we'd been a couple of weeks previously to find Mystery #5.
A single mile return walk but the cache itself took some finding. It was hidden under some heather and whilst looking we were deluged with ants and midges. It was an absolute nightmare - I'm never normally attacked or bitten but it must be something to do with my tan, or a distant residue of suncream, but I was covered in insects and it was driving me potty. Fortunately Hannah (again) found the tub, we swapped, signed, photographed, re-hid and ran off!
Another two for the counter, and another two by the legendary Mr Truffles leaving only two to go in this mystery series... please excuse me while I go and puzzle...
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