February 26 : Basingstoke

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

We’d decided on a morning’s geocaching in Basingstoke, a place we’ve rarely visited; and so we found ourselves in War Memorial Park. Even on a chilly weekday morning, the park was busy with joggers, lots of dog walkers and folk out braving the cold air and fresh breeze.   The park contains football pitches, a skate park, a play area, an aviary and lots of open space.  At 9am on Saturday there is a parkrun and can get very busy (anywhere that hosts a parkrun gets very busy at 9am on Saturdays!). We planned to find a mixture of physical caches, some in the park, some nearby, and an AdLab cache, too, which would mostly take us around the park.  (FYI:  AdLabs require you to visit several locations and answer a question at each.)

Our initial action was to collect the first stage of a multicache – this gave us coordinates for the second, and final stage, which we’d complete later as our last cache of the morning; some cachers think this stage is actually the final, and sign the coordinate sheet – we didn’t check how many then move on to the other location!

Now, on to the Adlab.   We reached one of 6 stone plaques set into the path: this one contains a quote from Ode to Evening by William Collins. A bit further on, we came to an aviary containing cockatiels and budgies, all chirping away merrily.   They all seemed warm and happy, but the cold was seeping in and our fingers and toes were a bit numb.

All Saints Church, Basingstoke

We emerged into the streets by the park and made our way to our next geocache, a Church Micro cache at Basingstoke All Saints, an imposing building about a hundred years old; the original tin church was moved around the corner and is now the church hall.    Having worked out the coordinates to the cache, we scooted off to find it, then huddled in the church porch, out of the howling north wind, for a warming cup of coffee.

Marginally warmer, we moved on to the Top of the Town, the old town centre, before Basingstoke expanded in the 1960s.    The pedestrianised street widened into the Market Place, close to the museum and complete with an almost life-size statue of Jane Austen; or maybe she was very small?  Further on, we left the car-free area and reached the northern entrance to the park.   Here stands the War Memorial that gives its name to the park.

Once there, we looked for – and failed to find – a couple of caches in the shrubbery; we felt we’d failed at the time, but neither has been found since, and one has been archived; so it wasn’t just us, they simply weren’t there!   And finally, we completed that cache we had started right back at the beginning of the morning.  The GPS led us on a merry spiral, and we gradually moved inwards – we were pleased when the centre of our spiral was where the cache was located, nice and dry.   And that completed our caching; we’d intended to stay longer, and find more caches, but we’d got really, really cold, and drove home to warm up.

And what did we think of Basingstoke – the bit of it we’d walked through?   The park was great, and clearly appreciated by the many people using it, even on a cold, grey day.    And, having always thought of Basingstoke as a ‘new’ town, the Top of the Town, and the area around, showed us a side of the town we’d not realised was there.   An interesting morning – but COLD!

February 24 : South Hill Park : Ad Lab

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

South Hill Park, Bracknell

Just a quick, local geocaching trip today – to South Hill Park, on the southern edge of Bracknell, for a walk around the park and an attempt at an AdLab cache. 

South Hill Park is a large, attractive historic park, open to the public every day of the year.  It has landscaped gardens, woodland, and two large lakes, surrounding a Grade II listed mansion which contains two theatres, a cinema, art studios and galleries, plus a café/restaurant.

We’ve walked round the grounds many a time, especially during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, when we sometimes used it for our ‘permitted exercise’ after food shopping at the nearby superstore; it was a different place to visit, and most welcome for that reason.  But we hadn’t been there all that often since.

The Rings of Pachamama

We set off along the path by the North Lake, in front of the mansion.   Part way along, we came to some large white concrete rings, some partially embedded in the ground.   I’ve always assumed they were seating, or something for fitness exercises – nope, I was wrong – they are a sculpture, the Rings of Pachamama , specially made for South Hill Park by sculptor Lucy Strachan. 

We turned onto a boardwalk which runs across a wetland area through reed beds and ponds.  Spring growth was getting under way and we saw lots of frogspawn! 

Chasing Pokemon …

Passing a lovely bank of miniature daffodils – and several groups of Pokemon chasers, staring at their phones – we followed the path round the narrower, tree-lined South Lake, on the other side of the mansion.   

Crossing the bridge half-way along the lake, we walked through woodland, back towards the house.   There’s an amphitheatre here, we’ve been to several outdoor theatrical events here on past summer evenings, some traditional theatre, some more ‘experimental’.

Entering the formal gardens, we descended the steps into the Italian Garden, all neat, clipped hedges and formal planting, then out along the terrace.   And that completed our AdLab – and our tour of the grounds, too.   As so often with geocaching, we’d learnt new things about a familiar place …

February 16 : Elvetham Heath, Fleet

Elvetham Heath is a relatively new housing estate to the North West of Fleet. It comprises about 2000 dwellings with building work starting in 1999 and it was completed just 10 years later. To the north of the estate is the M3, to the south the main railway line to London. Despite these apparent ‘noisy neighbours’ Elvetham Heath is very pleasant, and surprisingly quiet.

In the centre of the estate is a supermarket, a village hall, a school, a church, a pub and many other facilities needed to support its 5000+ population.

The central car park is free for a limited time, but we thought (and we were right), our caching trip would be longer than the free car parking would permit, so we parked some distance from the centre in a residential road.

We planned on locating a cache on our way to the estate’s centre, attempt the multicaches set near the middle and return by visiting a few more caches.

The first cache we attempted was a puzzle cache based on the TV series ‘Death in Paradise’.  We thoroughly enjoy this series, but as it turned out the puzzle didn’t require expert knowledge of the show. A swift google search, some straightforward calculations and the final coordinates were discovered. The cache was hidden on a long, straight track running parallel to the railway.

The cache was a well crafted ‘bird-box’ container hidden just behind rhododendron bushes.

The path was surprisingly empty, we only saw a couple of dog walkers on our 10-15 minute walk to the village centre. We emerged from the quiet, tree-covered path to face the main centre. The supermarket car park was busy, people were crossing roads on errands… the quietness we had experienced had melted into a hubbub of people!

We had two multi-caches to find. We decided to collect the information for both caches, and then plan an optimal route to find the containers.

The first multi-cache entitled ‘My First Multi-cache’ required us to write down numbers from a parking restriction sign. The second multicache, part of the village hall series, required us to use digits from a phone number.

Both caches were in opposite directions! Before we set off to find the first cache, we found a simple cache close to the telephone box and post box – part of the Fine Pair Series. We first found a Fine Pair cache back in 2013 – that cache was number 64 in the National series – this cache was number 1435.

Interestingly the post box was an old George VI post box, so must have either been here 60 years ago, when the estate was a wooded area, or moved from another location. In keeping with the time-travelling nature of the post-box, it was topped with a Dalek, while the no-longer-used phone box, was a frostproof plant container!

With the Fine Pair cache, found, we headed North to find one of the multicaches. The final was a some distance away, and the twisty-turny nature of the roads and pavements, meant it took some time to reach Ground Zero. We were glad for a quick find, as the hiding place was very exposed in front of several houses, on a road junction.

We returned to the village centre and headed a little way south, picking up the other multi-cache.  Again another street sign was the host and a hint that confused Mrs Hg137, who seemingly never learnt the orientation of compass points based on the phrase.. “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” !

Time was pressing, and we limited our searching to one further cache. This was close to the car, but, at the time, many of roads and pavements were being dug up, and non-optimal alternatives meant we took longer than expected to arrive at GZ. The hint was magnetic, and it took us a few minutes to find the correct metal object, but once we did we had our largest container of the day.

There are still a few caches in the Elvetham Heath estate, which no doubt we will collect at some other time.

February 10 : Swyncombe and the snowdrops

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

St Botolph’s Church, Swyncombe

Today’s walk and geocaching adventure took us on a circular route, taking in parts of the Ridgeway and the Chiltern Way and, of course, the snowdrops at St Botolph’s Church. We’d passed the church while walking the Ridgeway back in the summer and had planned to return for the Snowdrop Festival.

There are lots of published snowdrop walks, but we decided to invent our own (similar) version to include some geocaches on our way.   Parking in a large layby on a country road, we set off south across Ewelme Downs.      We were caught up and passed by two lady muggles (non-geocachers) and their excitable spaniel, Banjo, so paused to give them an explanation of geocaching; otherwise, they might have wondered what on earth we were up to, poking around in bushes and behind trees!

We turned east, and climbed gently towards the edge of the Swyncombe Estate, and onto the bridleway known as Ladies Walk.   There were a surprising number of walkers about, and we had snowdrop themed chats with several of them.

Joining the Ridgeway, we reached Swyncombe Church.   Crikey, it was busy, we were glad we hadn’t tried to park here, there was no space on the narrow lane.    And the people … so many!  

But it was obvious why everyone was here.   The churchyard was carpeted by snowdrops and aconites.   We did several circuits of the churchyard, admiring both the tens of thousands of flowers, and the ginormous pieces of delicious cake on sale by the church.   It was lunchtime and we were tempted, very tempted … but we’d brought a picnic lunch with us, and removed ourselves to a quieter corner of the churchyard for a peaceful break.

After a few more circuits of the churchyard and many more pictures of the snowdrops, we moved off for the return leg of out walk.   Our morning’s caching had been part of the Ridgeway Ramble series of caches, while the afternoon was planned to be a number of puzzle caches that we’d solved over the previous few days.   Puzzle caches tend to be found less often than standard caches, and that also means they are harder to find (less logs to go on, no tell-tale ‘cacher’s path’ to the location).   We found five, distributed along a steep down-and-up section of the Ridgeway and the Chiltern Way. 

The Ridgeway

We stopped to chat to two walkers: yes, they’d seen the snowdrops (of course!) and they were also checking a route for a Ramblers walk in the next few days, which will, unsurprisingly, pass the snowdrops.    Our route now followed the wooded northern edge of Swyncombe Downs, along the line of a medieval earthwork, with expansive views across Oxfordshire to the north.    The woods gave way to a grassy hilltop, then we plunged down a steep descent through more woodland – skidding to a stop a couple of times to plunge into the undergrowth for a late cache or two – then we emerged back into full daylight at the start point of the walk.

A very old postbox

We’d saved one special cache for last: one from the ‘Victoria’s Post Box’ series, which celebrate the diminishing number of working postboxes from Queen Victoria’s reign.   We’d done copious online research and had come up with some coordinates, not too far from the box itself.   Parking close-ish to the final location, we went for a walk, and then spent a while crashing about in the undergrowth to no avail.  We read some old logs and came up with another location (well, exactly where we’d first looked). This time a more dedicated search and feel (and a torch) located the container. After the 30 minutes of angst locating the cache, this was our favourite for the day … apart from those fantastic snowdrops!

Here are some of the caches we found:

Ammo can under here!