A new-ish series had been placed around Yateley Lakes. This is an area we have walked and cached several times. It seems a popular place for a cache owner to place a few caches, leave them in place for a couple of years and then remove them, allowing the space for other caches to be placed.
We had previously found two of the Yateley Lakes caches in 2018 and 2021, but now there were another 10 to find.
The River Blackwater runs parallel to the Lakes, and perhaps it was not a good idea to undertake a series so close to a river and lakes the day after 2/3 of an inch had fallen. Hindsight is wonderful.
Alarm bells started to ring as we drove to the car park near cache 1. Farmers’ fields were awash and the water was flowing from the fields across the road. As we approached the car park we saw a sign saying it would closed the following day, but it was padlocked shut today as well.
We had one other alternative, to drive back through the flooded roads, to another car park. This one was closer to cache 12. As we approached the car park the roads were even wetter as roadside ditches had overspilled their banks. We also noted that 3 caches we were due to find were along this flooded section.
We decided to start the route, and would abandon if the riverside paths were too submerged. We also decided to miss the caches near the flooded road section.
The caches were set by local cachers VR7, who are frequently devious in their choice of containers and hiding place. Given that Yateley Laeks is a popular area for walking, this is no bad thing – it just meant we wouldn’t have any ‘quick finds’. We also had a 5 stage ad lab to complete, though we noted a couple of the sections were closer to the flooded road, so again we decided to move these stages to a subsequent visit.
Surprisingly the paths around the Lakes were easy to walk around. A couple of large puddles here and there, and one very long muddy section where we had to navigate by and avoid the nearby barbed wire. Otherwise our sturdy walking boots were ideal.
As we expected the caches were ‘devious’. Sometimes the hints were misleading – “I’m next to a Multi-Trunked Tree” was one such hint. The GPS led us to a large tree where the cache would have been placed by most other owners. VR7 had put the cache next to a much, much smaller tree about a yard away! We spend ages here as we did at several other caches.
The ad lab stages were far simpler, a quick question – sometimes involving counting, other times noting names from a memorial bench.
Soon we were approaching the lowered numbered caches and we saw a couple walking towards us. They had parked in the car park which we thought was locked. It was, but it is generally unlocked from 930… we were there at 920! The approach to the car park from the River Blackwater is along a footpath on one side, a hedge in the middle, and a bridleway on the other. The caches we had to find were invariably on the wrong side of the hedge, so some backtracking was needed.
We were surprised to see a birdbox close to cache 1, and assumed this to be the cache. It wasn’t and a bird flew away as we approached. We are sure many other cachers would make the same mistake, and the cache owner has changed the hint, so that the birdbox is ignored.
Sadly the route is not totally circular – and we headed back to cache 12 taking one diversion to cache 7 (the easiest cache of the day) situated partway between 2 lakes.
With hindsight we could have completed the series, but we had mentally said ‘park the rest for when the conditions are drier’, so we drove back, through the slightly dropping water levels back home.
Yateley Lakes – we will be back!
sandhurstgeocachers 
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