August 29 : Quarr Abbey, Fishbourne and Tennyson’s Monument

Quarr Abbey

We were on week’s walking holiday on the Isle of Wight, but, as most of the walks were with largish walking parties, it wasn’t easy to cache as we walked.

Our day off enabled us to choose our own route, and select a few interesting caches.

We were staying at Freshwater Bay (on the South West of the Isle of Wight), and we had identified a small number of caches near the ferry terminal at Fishbourne (at the North East of the Island). We had originally thought about finding these while we waited for our homeward ferry, but we brought the expedition forward.

Our first target was at Quarr Abbey (useful free parking). Quarr Abbey is still a working Catholic Benedictine Monastery, but visitors are allowed to wander the grounds, and visit the stunning brick church. The Abbey was originally built in the 12th century, and destroyed during Henry VIII’s Reformation. Monks returned to Quarr in the early 1900s from a temporary home elsewhere on the Island, and over 25 years had the current monastic buildings erected. To enable a level of self-sufficiency there are vegetable plots, fruit trees, chickens and pigs. The monastery layout was shown on a numbered information board, which was the start point for the first multi-cache of the day. (Not many multis start with ‘Orchard – Church’ and ‘Abbey – Pigs’ !)

One of the many Quarr Abbey pigs

A quick solve and fortuitously enough the cache was in the direction of a couple of other caches we had come to collect.

These were part of the Ferry Distraction series of puzzle caches. (Each cache had a puzzle to solve with an Isle-of-Wight twist.) For one of the puzzles we had to find 32 Isle of Wight placenames and match them to pseudo-cryptic clues (‘Oriental Bovines = East Cowes’), another involved solving an online jigsaw puzzle and a third a logic puzzle involving five families, the places they visited and how they got around during their mythical holiday. These puzzles were supposed to be time-fillers for the ferry journey across to the Island, but we solved them before leaving home…(in much longer time than the ferry journey!!!).

Our first puzzle find was deep in a footpath near the Fishbourne Ferry terminal. A path we had driven by many times, and never spotted. The second was near the shore edge, and which took us some minutes to locate. The hint was very clear, and there was only one place to look, but the presence of a mother, a child and a dog made searching tricky. Most people turn right after leaving the Fishbourne Ferry terminal, but turn left and a very tranquil shoreline emerges. A place we would never have found without geocaching.

Fishbourne Ferry Terminal

We returned back to Quarr Abbey, to look around. Many other people were doing the same – the café was full – the stunning brick church was solemnly quiet (once a young family had left), and of course some very friendly pigs !

Our next cache – a relatively rare, standard cache was yards from the Abbey – but we failed to read the instructions and gleefully followed the GPS to a cacheless tree, rather than ‘walk 10 paces from the railings’ mentioned in the hint!

Our route then took as away from the 12th century ruins to the last of the puzzle caches (after vaulting a non-existing stream). An easy find.

One of the puzzle caches

Not so at our final Quarr cache. In an oak tree, in the middle of a field. A huge hole was checked and nothing found, then we spotted, high up at the rear of the tree a narrow hole with the cache poked inside.

Can you see the cache ?

It was 10 foot up with slippery bark as our only means of approach. Then we remembered the geo-pole! We extended it, and with great caution hooked it underneath the Tupperware container. Slowly, slowly we inched the container out until it fell to the grass.

Success.. now how to get back up!

A quick sign of the log and then… how to get it back up there? We sealed three side of the container, and balanced the geo-pole end into the fourth end’s locking mechanism. We slowly raised the pole until we were level and in the hole. Success!

Our caching at Quarr and Fishbourne were complete, so we headed back across the Island to find Tennyson’s Monument. We had the ‘Bee’ (Birthday Buzz) trackable to place, and we had told the trackable owner we would place it somewhere scenic on the Isle of Wight. We knew we would be passing the Monument in one of our walks, but wouldn’t have to time to undertake the multi set around it.

Tennyson Monument

We located a free car park at the foot of Tennyson Down. A steep, stepped ascent led us to the Monument – and the grassy slopes surrounding it. The views were well worth the climbing effort – they were stunning. We could see right across the Solent to the mainland, the tip of the Needles on the Isle of Wight and to the East much of the Island itself.

Looking West to the Needles (Chalk Cliff)

Looking East across the Isle of Wight

The poet Alfred, Lord, Tennyson lived for many years very close by and the monument was placed to commemorate his life. The hill we had climbed was also renamed in his honour too!

We had a quick look round for the necessary information for the multi. A strangely worded set of instructions and we couldn’t find anything matching the clues at all. We waited for a seat to clear, and we imbibed a coffee (at this point Mr Hg137 somehow angered a wasp and it fought back stinging him on his hand). The sting must have caused an adrenalin rush, as when we looked again at the monument the instructions for the multi became clear.

Was it a coincidence we had a ‘Bee’ trackable in our hand and a ‘Wasp’ attacked ? Who knows!

We discovered that the final was close to the car park from where we started so down we went and a quick find at GZ. Farewell ‘Bee’ – hope you enjoyed the view!

To the North : Fishbourne, the Solent, and the Mainland

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August 3 : Birthday buzz tag

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

On a ridiculously hot – 32C – day in early August, we were walking along the Ridgeway and stopped to find a multi-cache. Inside was this trackable. Its simple mission:

To go anywhere and everywhere a man or woman or child may go!! Take me to new exciting places!!

Birthday buzz tag

It’s doing that rather well. Setting off from Washington, in the north-western USA, in May 2016, it travelled around that area for a bit, visiting Idaho and Seattle. Next, the bee flew 5000 miles east to the Netherlands, circled that country for a little while, then hopped over the English Channel. It went on a grand tour of Cornwall, visiting moors and tin mines, before being picked up by Crumpit’s Dad, and moved on to Dorset, via a visit to Tyneham deserted village, and then a brief trip to Wokingham, just a few miles from us. Crumpit’s Dad is a local cacher – local to us, that is – and we’ve met both him and his wee white dog, Crumpit. Finally, the trackable went for a walk along the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and was dropped off at the White Horse, overlooking Uffington and the Vale of the White Horse.

And there we found it. I wonder where we Will take it? We have somewhere suitable in mind and it’ll be buzzing along to a new location soon.

August 3 : Sandhurst (Gloucs) to Sandhurst : Uffington to Sparsholt Firs (Ridgeway)

“Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” – Noel Coward

A six mile walk. In a 30+ degree heat. A very steep climb to the Ridgeway. And 26 caches.

Were we mad ?

In fact our first two caches were not part of our six mile route. They were hidden close to the village of Uffington. The first was a cache in the ‘Village Sign’ series. This cache was a multi, and we had worked out the coordinates on our previous visit to Uffington, but not collected the cache. As we entered Uffington, we pulled over in a small car park and wondered whether the car and driver in the car park was another cacher. It wasn’t. It was a salesman busy making call after call while we hunted, just out of his eyesight. A quick find – one down, twenty five to go !!

First cache of the day!

Our second Uffington cache was a puzzle cache we had solved a few days previously. With very little information supplied in ‘Terse Puzzle’ GC36970 we had somehow solved it quite quickly. Parking the car, locating the cache and driving away took much, much, longer…

We parked the car easily enough and walked into the wood containing the cache. We arrived within 10 feet of the cache and looked at several host items. The first three were barely large enough to hold anything, let alone a cache, and it took us sometime to see the actual host. Guarded by 3 foot, slightly desiccated, stinging nettles.
A few minutes search and the cache was ours. It was last found at the beginning of March, and the previous finder had remarked about snow… we remarked about the 30 degree heat !

Then we heard voices. We tidied away the cache quickly and walked out of the woods to the voices. It was a farmer and his wife trying to coax 70+ cows from one field, across a road, passing our car, and into another field. The cows didn’t want to. Whether it our parked car that spooked them… we don’t know. After a few minutes we offered to help – we blocked one side of the road and the farmer stood the other and the wife coaxed the cows across. Some cows looked at us suspiciously … especially Mrs Hg137’s red shirt!

We are not MOOOving!

And so after two caches, one salesman and 70+ cows we parked the car at the start of the walk.

It was 1030 and although we hadn’t ‘started’ our walk, there was a seat and a quick coffee break was agreed. It was at this point Mr Hg137 realised there was no milk in the coffee! It was black! And we both take it white!
For once, lady luck smiled upon us. Next to the car park, was the village shop. We decided against buying a pint of milk, since it would have to be carried in a rucksack all day and it would be cheese by midday. So, powdered milk it was.

Sitting, drinking our coffee we could see much of our route. A flattish mile or so’s walk to the Ridgeway slope, a fierce up, a walk WESTWARDS to White Horse Hill and Uffington Castle, then retracing our steps heading EASTWARDS to the car.

Easy.

Apart from the heat.

High on the hillside.. the Uffington White Horse

We set off, through a playing field and then numerous farmer’s fields. Each separated to the next by a mixed bag of stiles. Some tall, some wobbly, some covered in brambles, all different. The White Horse (high above us) became closer and more distinct, until we lost it, when we entered woodland and our next cache. We didn’t really have to search for it, as it hadn’t been well hidden. Fortunately a quick find, as a dog walker was yards behind us. She only caught us up as we were ‘finishing business’ at the next cache (a false stone). She headed off across a campsite, where a mixture of brightly coloured tents and tepees had been pitched.

We crossed the not-very-busy B4507 and started to climb. Within yards should have been a cache 5 feet up a tree. We failed to find it. We took on water, as our very steep ascent was about to start.

Sneaky!

About halfway up was another cache, cleverly hidden in a ‘false branch’ – welcome respite from the puffing and panting of a 400 foot steep (at times 45 degree) ascent.

Halfway…up this steep slope!

The path levelled near a gate and – as one comes to expect – so does a cache. Not quite where we were expecting it to be, but a straightforward find. A few more feet of climbing on a far gentler slope and we arrived at the Ridgeway… and another cache.

A bison.

Hanging on the ‘Ridgeway footpath sign’.

Mr Hg137’s hands were sweaty, and as he unscrewed the base…it slipped through his fingers. Amongst stinging nettles and brambles. We searched the ground. We parted the brambles. We poked and prodded the nettles. But no bison base could we find. The bison base, contained the log, which we had yet to sign. Twenty minutes later we gave up our search. We would be returning past here later so we could search again.

Whoops! Just the top half of the bison remains

We headed West, to the top of White Horse Hill. A fabulous viewpoint. We undertook two caches at the top – the first an Earthcache based on the formation of The Manger – a curious dry valley formation.

The Manger

Our second cache, a multi, involved collecting numbers from three different signs, and calculating a set of co-ordinates. Fortunately the final cache was only a short walk away, and a large container too. We found a ‘bee’ trackable which we hived off for release elsewhere on our journey. We had loaded a couple of other caches near the White Horse Hill, but the high temperature put us off walking further than we absolutely had to.

Is this really a horse ?

The White Horse we had seen from afar is barely visible at the top of the hill. The chalk body is roped off (to prevent vandals/erosion), so we couldn’t get close to it. Uffington Castle is an Iron Age hillfort surrounded by ditches. It is still very impressive to walk around, and with views in all directions one can see why it was so important in years gone by.

Mrs Hg137 walks around the ramparts of Uffington Castle

Our route back to the car was a 3 mile walk along the Ridgeway. It is an ancient trackway, perhaps 5,000 years old linking Avebury (in Wiltshire) to Ivinghoe Beacon (Buckinghamshire).

The Ridgeway is a Bridleway

We walked the full 87 miles back in 2012. Indeed we found our first geocache towards the Eastern end of the Ridgeway (a large ammo can hidden in yew tree roots).

The Ridgeway is predominantly a chalk ridge with extensive views over Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Much of the Oxfordshire views has one, major feature – Didcot Power Station. Originally it had 6 towers, – three were brought down a few years ago, the remaining three are due for demolition shortly.

The 3 remaining towers of Didcot Power Station are just visible in the haze

Despite the Ridgeway being a chalk ridge – frequently the views are obscured by trees either side of the track. These trees provided excellent hiding places for our remaining caches. Sometimes in the boles, sometimes in ivy, and because of the quantity of trees, frequently hard to find the correct tree.

We had searched (unsuccessfully) a second time for our dropped bison, but fortunately found the other caches we attempted. Looking for a cache in a tree was an excellent way of finding cool shadows on this baking hot day.

Hot chalk, lots of trees, but little shade

Eventually we stopped and took stock of progress.

We had a just over a mile to go, and 10 caches to find. We were hot, our water bottles were getting low, and time had slipped by as the day had gone on (the cow crossing, buying milk, a lost bison, and slower and slower searches). We decided to change our searching strategy.

We would attempt every third cache until we reached our car. This would increase our walking pace, and our search time would be reduced.

We walked by, and looked longingly at, two likely hosts and arrived at our first ‘third’ cache. Could we find it ? No. We searched high, low, in ivy, in branches. Nothing. We agreed to attempt the next cache, in its place. Same again.. high, low, nothing. So much for saving time and energy.

The next cache was successful as well as the very next one (the second ‘third’). A final push and we’d be near the car for our final cache of the day..until…until… we saw a waterbutt. Next to the path. Waterbutts are often used to hide caches… yes we were 10 feet from a cache (hint ‘underwater’). Our fried brains meant it took us two circuits of the butt to find the cache and as we did so, we noticed above the butt… a tap. A drinking water tap.
We filled our bottles, doused our hair, drank and drank and drank.

The tap was a memorial to Peter Wren, who died at the very tender age of 14.

Revived, we had bounce in our step for the last quarter of a mile. A final quick find under a signpost and we collapsed in a heap by our car.

Last cache of the day

“Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”

A six mile walk. In a 30+ degree heat. A very steep climb to the Ridgeway. 21 caches attempted, 18 found.

Were we mad ?

Probably.

Some of the caches we found included :

July 13 : Mega Devon 2017 Trackable Tag

We discovered this trackable in the Wombles Signature Cache.

In fact there were two other trackables in the cache, and we were spoilt for choice. Which should we take ? Should we take all 3 ? In the end we decided to take this trackable for 2 reasons – it was the smallest (and therefore easiest to hide in a cache), and we had been to the Devon Mega last year – and really enjoyed it!

The Devon Mega had taken place early August 2017 at Bicton Park near Otterton and we had spent a couple of days caching both on our own and following the hundreds of cachers from cache to cache.

Bicton Park – home of 2017 Devon Mega

The trackable we found was used to promote the event and started its journey nearly 18 months ago. It was initially placed in a cache near Princeton on Dartmoor. There it remained for 2 months, unfound, but then got discovered and visited various caches in Devon and Cornwall (Including Bude, Sennen Cove near Land’s End, and Combe Martin about halfway between Ilfracombe and Lynton.) It had one objective to attend the Devon Mega in August.

Did it achieve its objective ?

Sadly no.

In mid July 2017, it had been placed in a cache in Dartmoor – close to where it started – but sadly it stayed there for a month and missed the Mega! Thereafter the trackable stayed in the West Country with two exceptions, brief trips to Northern France and Turkey! This return journey to Turkey added nearly 4000 miles to its distance – which is the majority of its 5300 miles it has so far travelled.

One other interesting fact about the tag was that it was initially found by cacher ‘Chudleigh Traveller’ who enjoyed its company for its first month (before placing it in a cache in May 2017). Chudleigh Traveller re-found the trackable at an cacher’s meet in November 2017, and again took it caching for a few weeks. Amazingly Chudleigh Traveller found the tag a third time in March 2018, and once again, a few weeks later placed it in a cache – this time the Wombles Signature cache, where it has been for the last few months.

We can’t promise to take you to Devon, little tag… but we will move you on soon!

July 13 : Bath and Chippenham : spas and Wombles

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

July 13th is a special day for us. Doubly special if it’s a Friday, too. So we both took the day off work and had something doubly special planned: a trip to Bath, to visit Thermae Spa, then a couple of caches in the city, followed by a diversion to Chippenham to look for a cache we had long been hoping to find: the Wombles Signature Cache.


Thermae Spa was a Millennium project which went monumentally over both time and budget http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5230322.stm But it eventually opened and now brings over £10 extra million into the economy of the city each year. What to say about it? Well it’s certainly not cheap, but it is huge fun and an experience worth saving the pennies for. There’s a pool at ground level, a floor of saunas and steam rooms, and an ice bath (shiver!) but the highlight is the rooftop pool, overlooking the rooftops of Bath and the Abbey, and beyond to the surrounding hills. All this water is from the hot springs under the city, filtered and at a lovely warm 35C – it’s quite buoyant, like sea water, and leaves the skin beautifully soft. Photos are not allowed, but here’s one from the web.

Thermae Spa, Bath

Soon our two hour session was up and we were back out in the city streets with silky smooth skin and ready for a spot of geocaching.

But why so many people in mortarboards and gowns? It was graduation day at Bath University and a ceremony was taking place at Bath Abbey.

Still slightly damp, we repeatedly paced out the length of the Roman Bath while researching the answers to the ‘Hot Springs’ earthcache. Six times we tried, getting four (similar) different answers, yet all this marching up and down went unnoticed amongst the students, parents and tourists. Nearby is a traditional cache (ie physical, with a log to sign), ‘Abbey Green’ – there are very few caches like this in the centre of a tourist city and this one is very popular indeed, with seven visits on the day we were there. The owner must go through a lot of logbooks!

We walked back through the city … and past a lot of owls … they are part of the Minerva Owl trail https://minervasowls.org/

Somehow it was mid-afternoon already and we travelled to Chippenham, sort of on the way home, to look for THE cache of the day, the ‘Wombles Signature cache’, owned by The Wombles and placed on 1st January 2004. Dotted around the country in various caches, mostly in the south-west, are a number of Wombles. Half of them have a keyring attached with the westing coordinates for this cache and half have the northing coordinates. Find both northing and westing Wombles and you have the coordinates to the cache. We’d read about the cache, thought no more about it and then, in February 2018, we went out in the snow to do some maintenance on our own cache, (Berry Bank, GC452NG), and discovered that it contained a Northing Womble, Shansi. We noted the coordinates (several times) and carried on with caching life. In late June 2018 we found another cache at Badbury Clump in Oxfordshire , and found it contained another Womble, Welington. Once again we noted the coordinates several times. When we got home and checked, we’d got both northing and westing coordinates so were good to go for the cache. Hurrah! (Sometimes it takes years to find both coordinates – if ever – and we had found both by chance.)

We got an extra hint from the cache owner and parked in the suggested place, by the A350 (the cache is in woods and the GPS signal isn’t good in the summer when the trees are in leaf, hence the extra hint). We walked up and down the verge, next to the roaring traffic, and tried in vain to find a way into the woods. After a bit we were both grumpy and scared so we re-parked in a nearby housing estate and questioned several passing muggles on the best way to get into the woods. A bit more walking, a bit more muggle questioning, and we were among the trees at last and following the GPS. We were pleased when we arrived at a place which matched both the coordinates we had found and the hint. And we spotted something that … was the cache. Wow, we’d found it.

Where in the woods?

Where in the woods?

Now we ‘just’ had to open the cache and sign the logbook. Simple. Umm, no. We weren’t there yet. The cache is a very large ammo box, above ground level, and is firmly bolted down. It’s also locked shut by two fearsome 5-digit combination padlocks which can be opened using the numbers from the northing and westing coordinates. So we clung to something suitable and both worked away at the padlocks until we’d worked out which was ‘west’ and which was ‘north’ and got the locks open. We prised the stiff lid off the box and … a large Womble was gazing at us. Hello, Orinoco! We emptied out the contents of the cache – toys, geocaching-related stuff, trackables (we took one of the three and there will be a post about that soon, dear readers) – signed the log, and took a selection of pictures.
We went back to the geocar, and home in a state of high satisfaction.
Mission accomplished and a great day!

(Editor’s note: We met Mike Batt, he of the Wombles, at a wedding reception a while back, when he was singing in the house band at the wedding. He refused to sing any Womble songs … )

May 22 : Fearless Traveler !

During our second visit to Chester we discovered this delightful trackable ‘Fearless Traveler! ‘

Fearless Traveler!

As you may guess from the title, it emanates from America. It started its journey in Illinois back in April 2015 and quickly galloped to the Western side of Canada based in and around Vancouver. It also visited caches not too far from the American border, before heading to Ottawa where it pranced for some time from cache to cache. Interestingly the trackable never made it back into America, but instead headed for the UK.

The first British cache it was placed in, was one we had found back in March 2015 when we walked the Thames Path. It had been placed in a cache called ‘Mosaic Trail – Fishes’ at Newbridge. (Interestingly the cache, if our memory is correct, is a 35mm film canister..so how the horse got into its British Stable, we are not sure).

Thereafter its British journey headed North West to the Chester area where we found it!

We will release it when we find a suitably large cache for it to enjoy the British Countryside!

May 22 : Chester (part 2)

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Chester city centre

Tuesday already, and we returned to Chester to complete our caching mission from two days earlier. Taking the bus from outside the hotel, we arrived on the north side of the city at the smart new bus station https://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/watch-take-ride-round-chesters-13073745

Fearless Traveler

Before going right into the city, we attempted a cache hidden close to a nearby underpass … we must have tried every exit from that *!?* underpass, and looked at a lot of brick walls and signs, but we eventually got ourselves into the right place, finding the cache and a trackable of a little horse, ‘Fearless Traveler’.

Captain Morgan’s cannon

Then it was through Northgate in the city walls, and another cache, near a sculpture of a broken Civil War cannon. We would spend much of the day diving on and off the walls, eventually completing the 2-mile circuit, my ‘must do’ item for the day. It’s a walk well worth doing (and free!), with great views of the city streets, the cathedral, the racecourse, the river … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_city_walls

It was a short walk to the city centre, with more statues (there are loads and loads of sculptures in Chester), including this one of a baby elephant http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8569557.stm – there is a similar statue at Chester Zoo …

Janya

Apart from statues, there is unofficial ‘art’ advertising local businesses (and another elephant) …

It was a short walk to Eastgate, close to the city centre, where the clock on the bridge over the gate is, so they say, the second most photographed clock in the world. There’s a cache here, too, though muggles swarm around the bridge, and you must pick your moment to find it.

Chester, Eastgate clock

Further on round the walls we climbed down to pass the Roman amphitheatre, where a group of schoolchildren were being trained to be Roman soldiers and having lots of fun doing it, being ordered about with shields as large as they were.

Attention!

Having diverted from the park, we went further on and back into Grosvenor Park, where we’d had a cache DNF (did not find) two days before. We had a slightly amended set of cache coordinates, and we were hopeful. We approached, only to find a muggle asleep on the grass nearby. We retreated to eat our sandwiches and to watch a muggle carrying a large, opened bag of monkey nuts through the park. And we found some of those nuts wedged into the trees when we started our search (so THAT’s why the squirrels are so tame and brazen!) We looked around for a bit – we thought we’d searched here before the coordinates were changed – then a chance look down revealed the cache lying on its own in the open, in a small dent in the dirt. We signed the log and tried to replace it as the hint said it should be. Good to find one of our earlier failures.

Chester city walls

We returned to the southern section of the walls, overlooking the River Dee, then around the corner to the western walls, overlooking Chester racecourse, the Roodee. http://www.d2architects.co.uk/a-brief-history-of-chester-racecourse-730.html It’s the oldest racecourse in England, and one of the smallest, tightest circuits, with one lap being just over a mile, but this means that you get a good view of the whole of each race from either the grandstands or the walls. The course was being prepared for a race meeting the next weekend, and it was quite busy even then: it must be heaving on race day itself! There are a couple of caches along this section, too, and it was again a struggle to find the caches and sign the logs without attracting the attention of the many passers-by.

Chester racecourse – the Roodee

We arrived back at Northgate with our wall walk completed. But we still had another mission to complete … we had started on two multicaches on our previous visit, but had failed to finish either. Each had multiple stages: one involved looking up at various items above head height around the old city, and the other required us to glean information from some of the many blue plaques dotted around. So far so good: we reviewed what we had done two days before, then went off to complete the rest. We checked our answers, but we STILL hadn’t finished them. Grrr! We’d got our looking up confused with our plaques and had missed things. We sighed, and set off on another couple of laps of the city, to check all the clues again, some for the third/fourth time. I was getting a bit fed up by now. Eventually we had some answers and set off for the allotted locations. We thought we’d walked along every single street in the city centre but we found two we hadn’t tried, one in a pleasant residential street, and one in a less salubrious service area behind shops.

Phew! We were finished for the day. We returned to the swanky new bus station and went off for a rest and a meal.

Some of the caches from our previous visit remain resolutely unfound (by us, anyway). But here are some of the caches we did find, some fresh for today, and some at the second try from two days earlier: