...and The Gruffalo makes it 700

Sunday afternoon 13/03/2011

n.e.a.r. (a group of Geocachers I've mentioned previously) published a new series today based on The Gruffalo, a famous children's book/poem. This is a child friendly series, created by their young daughter, where each of the four caches is hidden somewhere appropriate for each animal met in the story.

We were having a lazy weekend because Jade had a heavy cold but eventually the lure of a possible FTF, plus the planned fresh air, was too much and we headed off. The plan fell apart quickly and Jade was left at her mother's while I inherited their little sister Olivia - who has more Geocaching eagerness than either of my two have ever had.

We drove up to Wickersley, parked and were quickly on location at the first cache. Whilst hunting, weakly it must be said, Angellica turned up with her two girls Grace (aged 2) and Katie (age 6?). Katie was quickly onto the cache firmly, I suspect, putting Olivia's nose out of joint.

We walked around the short circuit in about 45 minutes basically circling the entire Wickersley Woods. Katie is an expert and got three while Olivia got one, although truth be told I actually found #3 and #4 and then hinted to the kids where I thought they might be - it's a kids series and I wasn't going to spoil it for them!

It was all over far too quickly for Olivia and we headed back to the car.

This last one was Hannah's 600th and that reminded us that I would now be on 699 so we drove off to pick-up a simple drive-by at Ravensfield. This cache has been on my radar for ages but it wasn't really worth the distance to pick-up a single cache. However as we were most of the way there it was an ideal single to bag my 700th - even if the actual cache was something of a let down (sorry but terrible coordinates do bug me.)

[A small walk of just over a mile, 5 caches and 4 joint-FTFs.]

n.e.a.r.ly done

Having finally accepted that the dark nights are here to stay we kitted up last night, right from work, and set off to do a nearby series called "n.e.a.r." by a family who use that as their username (it's an acronym of their real names). This is a simple walk set in a 'motorway triangle' created by the roads leading to and from the M1 and M18 and the M1 itself. The entire walk only took us 35 minutes so we thought we'd also clear up another couple placed by the same family a mile or so away in Thurcroft. The first was a simple 'cache and dash' where we parked practically next to it, and the second was a short 0.5 mile round trip to the first cache of the night that wasn't an insta-find.

On the way back to the car I saw the largest toadstools I think I've ever seen. Here's a photo and given that my GPS is just over 10cm (4") long you can see how large they are.

Back at the car by 19:25 we thought it would be almost rude not to go off and get the only n.e.a.r. cache that we've never found so we drove up to Wickersley and did another 1.1 mile round-trip down a lane, around a field and into a wood. It was very dark and we resorted to using the hint to find this one - possibly because my stomach had started rumbling.

We were home for 20:10 and while making tea I loaded up the bread maker and the slow cooker so tonight I guess we'll be eating before we go out and then won't have to rush home.

(Total 7 caches, 3 miles walking.)