This last weekend, thanks to some wedding or other, we had another 4-day weekend. I spent Friday doing housework in the morning and then socialising in the afternoon and evening. I had Saturday set aside for food shopping and then to lazily settle down and watch the semi-finals of the Snooker World Championship (which is held 5 miles down the road.)
Struggling to balance my weekend time with the children and their hatred of Geocaching, I decided to take them out early on Sunday for a quick walk aiming to get back in time to watch the first session of the snooker final and also giving the kids the afternoon free to do as they pleased.
I settled on the idea of doing Patdhill's nearby Silverwood Pit Top series. (You may recall Patrick as my good friend and a regular member of our Team PADS Geocaching group.) This series was published a while ago but I had deliberately put off doing it so that I would have a nice walk to do one evening after work.
I've since realised that I'm actually busy 6 nights a week so I scrapped that plan and stole the series as a perfect quick-fix for a Sunday morning.
We parked up near Wickersley and spent a steady 90 minutes doing the 3.5 mile circuit. It really is a lovely walk across regenerated land passing by woods, fledgling plantations and views down to a (presumably new) lake.
This was one of my ideal walks...
I've realised as time has passed that I'm not keen on the actual Geocaching side of Geocaching (yes I know that sounds odd) but I do like that it takes me to new places and presents me with walks I would never have found otherwise. The caches here were all easy to find so there were no frustrating delays and we could pretty much just enjoy the steady walk in the countryside listening to the birdsong, taking some pictures and chatting to the kids.
The kids seemed happy enough with this arrangement although I do think the anticipation of a nice slow-cooked stew waiting at home was the only thing on Adam's mind.
Many thanks to Patrick & Donna for the series.
[3.5 miles, 7 caches.]
Showing posts with label wickersley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wickersley. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Monday, 14 March 2011
...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. (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.]
Thursday, 28 October 2010
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.)
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.)
Friday, 23 July 2010
First To Find!
Dear Diary, I'm off on hols sometime during the next 6 weeks school holidays so expect a break.
---
I'm just sat listening to Radio 4 via the web at work (yeah naughty naughty) because I was alerted that there was a half-hour programme on about Geocaching. I guess there might be an explosion of newcomers over the next week!
We got home from work yesterday and because it was Thursday we ate before we walked, this is because we have the children until about 8pm. About 6:15 I got an automated email from geocaching.com notifying me of a new cache that had been published about 5 miles away at Magna - a science park celebrating air, earth, water and fire which is quite a good day out for the family.
We set off about 8:15, after the kids had gone, but as there's some very keen local cachers we expected it to have already been discovered in the intervening 2 hours. After 15 minutes of looking (the torch was out for the nooks and crannies) we found the nano cache (it's about 1.5cm in size) tucked in a dark corner. We opened it and to our delight found we were the first - our name gets the elusive FTF spot on the log!
Very pleasing. That's our seventh First To Find.
We then drove up to Wickersley again to try to bag another couple in the area. We walked a good half-mile to the first one which we found quickly but the light was already failing us. We returned to the car and drove a couple of miles to the second, and then walked again for about a further half a mile but had to abort; it was pitch black and we had discovered we were on the wrong side of a stream that was too wide to cross.
We'll bag it another day - we know roughly where it is now, and where to park, so it should be a quick find hopefully.
I've been working on a really devious puzzle for my next hide; there's a page of descriptive text about the local area which is simply there to be full of red herring's and false alarms about the actual co-ordinates. It needs more work because I want it to be a total bugger to solve, so I'm waiting for further inspiration.
---
I'm just sat listening to Radio 4 via the web at work (yeah naughty naughty) because I was alerted that there was a half-hour programme on about Geocaching. I guess there might be an explosion of newcomers over the next week!
We got home from work yesterday and because it was Thursday we ate before we walked, this is because we have the children until about 8pm. About 6:15 I got an automated email from geocaching.com notifying me of a new cache that had been published about 5 miles away at Magna - a science park celebrating air, earth, water and fire which is quite a good day out for the family.
We set off about 8:15, after the kids had gone, but as there's some very keen local cachers we expected it to have already been discovered in the intervening 2 hours. After 15 minutes of looking (the torch was out for the nooks and crannies) we found the nano cache (it's about 1.5cm in size) tucked in a dark corner. We opened it and to our delight found we were the first - our name gets the elusive FTF spot on the log!
Very pleasing. That's our seventh First To Find.
We then drove up to Wickersley again to try to bag another couple in the area. We walked a good half-mile to the first one which we found quickly but the light was already failing us. We returned to the car and drove a couple of miles to the second, and then walked again for about a further half a mile but had to abort; it was pitch black and we had discovered we were on the wrong side of a stream that was too wide to cross.
We'll bag it another day - we know roughly where it is now, and where to park, so it should be a quick find hopefully.
I've been working on a really devious puzzle for my next hide; there's a page of descriptive text about the local area which is simply there to be full of red herring's and false alarms about the actual co-ordinates. It needs more work because I want it to be a total bugger to solve, so I'm waiting for further inspiration.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Day two
Day two of my blog and today I'll be starting the mundane log of reporting about my previous day's caching - and trying to come up with interesting stuff when all we did was walk. Fear not, I'm pretty sure I'll not write about everything; after all this is my diary and when I look back on it in years to come I'll probably not care that I walked down xxx lane to get to yyy woods.
Having said that, it's partially interesting that last night we walked down First Lane to get to Wickersley Woods, got the cache, and then walked down Second Lane to get another. It seems the inhabitants of Vicker's Ley back in 1600 didn't have much of an imagination with regard to road names.
In total we walked 3.1 miles to find 4 scattered around caches including a mystery one by the legendary Mr. Truffles for which I'd worked out the clue several weeks ago. The clue to his next mystery (written inside the lid) was solved quickly on-site, with the help of Google, so we'll probably get onto that one at the weekend.
It was also nice to find another one by Yorkypudding and her other half Ageinghippy. It was the next one in the multi-user series after the first one we planted; Rotherham Curse of the First To Find #9. We really must meet up with them as I believe they live only 1/2 a mile from us.
Having said that, it's partially interesting that last night we walked down First Lane to get to Wickersley Woods, got the cache, and then walked down Second Lane to get another. It seems the inhabitants of Vicker's Ley back in 1600 didn't have much of an imagination with regard to road names.
In total we walked 3.1 miles to find 4 scattered around caches including a mystery one by the legendary Mr. Truffles for which I'd worked out the clue several weeks ago. The clue to his next mystery (written inside the lid) was solved quickly on-site, with the help of Google, so we'll probably get onto that one at the weekend.
It was also nice to find another one by Yorkypudding and her other half Ageinghippy. It was the next one in the multi-user series after the first one we planted; Rotherham Curse of the First To Find #9. We really must meet up with them as I believe they live only 1/2 a mile from us.
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