Snow and Puzzles

Apologies for not blogging about last Sunday's Team PADs run out to Dodworth. It was beset with work problems and phone calls, which spoilt the day for me, so we postponed plans to do one or two more series in the area for another day. In a very brief summary we did 3.7 miles and got 8 caches.

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This Sunday, despite the settled snow, we decided to venture down south by 20 minutes into the warmer climes of Harthill situated between Kiveton and Woodall. This was for yet another series of Ron's who I've blogged about several times.

The series involves parking at Harthill Reservoir, solving a simple on-site puzzle for the first cache and then walking around the reservoir to pick up a total of 7 caches over 2.2 miles. As usual Ron has found a lovely area to walk but this time it was very different for us as this was the first time we'd been out caching in snow.

Initially we were somewhat reluctant as we thought we would be leaving obvious tracks where we were looking for caches, but these worries soon faded; with 9 people and a dog doing the walk we were leaving such a large area of disturbed snow that there were no actual clues to lead Muggles to our treasures.

A quick and simple walk round, with only one cache causing us any troubles (triumphantly found by Patrick) we decided to stop off on the way home to do two nearby puzzle caches we'd recently solved.

I should add at this point that on the previous night my son had a sleepover with a couple of his friends to celebrate his imminent 15th birthday. He had stayed up all night and as a consequence was like a zombie today. This, coupled with my daughter and others grumbling about the cold, caused severe apathy amongst the children and as a result of this the adults won the finds by a whopping total of nine caches to nil! We've now agreed we like caching in the snow because it is cheaper for us!

Anyway... Ron had published two puzzle caches the previous week. One of these I had assisted him with, so I couldn't go and grab it immediately because that would spoil it for everyone, but the second was a devil of a puzzle. Last Sunday I had been talking to Patrick and Donna about my interest and fascination with the mathematical number PI (3.1415...) which had started when I had memorised it to 120 decimal places at about the age of 18 to win a bet. (Even now I can still remember 50 places or so). In an amazing coincidence Ron published a puzzle called "...with Peas? And Gravy?" that same evening and it didn't take long to figure out the obvious connection.

I set to work on it rightaway but simply could not get started. A couple of emails to Patrick and back the following day and he showed me the first stage of the puzzle. Again, as usual, I was disappointed with myself for not getting it but I have to confess I don't think I ever would have. So the first stage led me to a couple of sets of numbers but these still weren't coordinates, what to do now? I worked and re-worked them any which way I could think of but still nothing until the next day when it hit me. I can't say much here for risk of spoiling it for anyone but I have to salute Ron for a great puzzle.

So back to Sunday, after doing the Harthill series we stopped to pick both of these up. Lots of snowball fights and snow-angels ensued as we walked past lots of sledging Muggles. A tough walk up a hill rewarded us and in total we had done another 1.2 miles for 2 more caches. More importantly we'd had fun, seen some great views and got some exercise to boot.

(Total for the day was 3.5 miles & 9 caches.)

Guilty Postscript: In early celebration of Adam's birthday we all then went to the Centretainment Centre in Sheffield, to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and undid all the good work of the day!

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.