Sharing a cup of tea trying to get to Canada – not the snappiest title but very descriptive on the mission for this trackable:
Sharing a cup of tea trying to get to Canada
… “As I have a friend going to Thailand for a caching trip, she offered to take any trackables that were looking to go that way. This is one of mine that I made to send with her. It would love to tour Thailand and area collecting lots of pictures along the way before eventually trying to get back to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to me by the end of 2023. ”…
The story so far: setting off from Canada in October 2022, the trackable was duly taken to Asia, visiting Singapore and Indonesia, before being dropped off in January 2023 in a cache close to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There it sat for some months, being discovered several times, but not picked up. Finally, in November 2023, the trackable was picked up by TAROTHRUM, a geocacher from Singapore. After another gap of two months, the trackable emerged in Weybridge, England, where we found it. (I looked at TAROTHRUM‘s geocaching activity to see where they might have taken the trackable, but with few conclusions: he/she/they have only found about 200 caches in 10 years, but dotted all over the world – Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Portugal, Greece, and Indonesia. I wonder if they are a pilot, or cabin crew, to fit in all that globetrotting?)
The trackable is now well on its way back to Canada, even if it is a little late for its target arrival date of the end of 2023. We’ll move it on soon, when we find a cache where it will fit!
During our caching trip around Weybridge, we found two trackables. Finding one trackable is quite rare, finding two very rare indeed. Also, trackables tend to be found in rural caches, rather than the urban ones in Weybridge.
Community Volunteer Trackable Tag
The first trackable was a Community Volunteer Tag. We have found at least one of these tags before – we believe they are given to noteworthy cachers on an ad hoc basis. This tag started in Poland in March 2022 and in less than 2 years has had a varied journey.
Not surprisingly its first few caches were in Poland/Germany/central Europe. It quickly arrived in the UK. Here it was taken to some iconic London landmarks, including Big Ben and Kew Gardens. It travelled to Australia (via the Philippines) and has been pictured outside the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Cricket Ground!
Returning to Europe, it toured France, Italy and Portugal, before another trip to Australia, before returning to the UK, and was placed in the Weybridge cache on Christmas Day 2023.
A well travelled trackable – good luck on your future adventures!
Like my owner, I love travelling and drinking Gin Tonics. My mission is to see nice hotels/hostels and bars and even planes and airports! ‘Nice’ doesn’t have to be ‘expensive’,of course. Any hotel, hostel, bar or plane you like and which has an interesting touch or view is well worth it. If possible, and the barkeeper allows it, take a picture with me at a bar with a bottle of Gin. Preferably with Hendrick’s or Bombay Sapphire, but that’s just my owners personal preference… Please handle me with care and take me to places around the world. My sleeping bag is my ziploc bag and I like to stay in there when staying in a cache. I know that I’m really cute; I was given to my owner as a present from his beautiful girlfriend at Easter 2010 at the Ramada Resort in Cochin/India. That is actually quite a nice hotel…
Having written its mission statement (above) the rabbit set off from Zurich Airport in May 2010, for a short trip to Gibraltar. It then toured Germany until July 2012, before another holiday in the Canary Islands. By March 2013, and it’s not clear how it happened, the rabbit ended up on the coastal path in North Wales. The next geocacher who picked it up mislaid it and it resurfaced in June 2022 (!) after a house move. It was dropped off in a cache series just south of London, where it spent the winter in a little-visited cache, before moving on to West Horsley, in Surrey, where we picked in up in December 2023.
We wondered how the rabbit had stayed so clean and neat, when it had been out travelling for 14 years, and why it had only moved 11,000 miles in that time (many trackables of a similar age would have clocked up 50,000 miles in that time). There are several reasons, we think:
The ZipLock ‘sleeping bag’ keeps it nice and dry
For 9 of those 14 years, it wasn’t moving, it was mislaid.
It’s a fairly big trackable, so it’s harder to place in a cache, meaning it spends less time actually in caches, and more time tucked in a cacher’s house/bag/car waiting for the next adventure.
Anyway, the rabbit is well and happy and will move on to more gin-related adventures … when we can find a cache big enough!
West Horsley is a village partway between Guildford and Leatherhead. It has about 1000 houses, a church and a school but its most famous building is West Horsley Place.
Around the roads and paths of West Horsley and West Horsley Place are various caches. These were our targets for today’s walk.
Our research, didn’t show too many parking spaces in the village, so we parked a little outside just off the main road. Our first cache involved crossing the road to a drinking fountain. This was part of the National series of Drinking Fountain caches.
There were lots of hiding places, but it was only after reading many of the logs did we realise the cache was hidden some way behind a large bramble bush. We couldn’t see it at all, and it was only after Mr Hg137 climbed over a fence (tsk, tsk) that we located the cache, signed the log, and replaced the cache in a slightly more favourable position for the next cacher.
We had one other village outlier cache and we headed there. This again took longer than expected as the ‘magnetic’ cache was no longer a magnet and was hidden deep in grass vegetation. The hiding place was adjacent to a field of sheep, and throughout our searching we were aware of being stared at!
Onto the village, and its retail hub : two shops, a letter box and a phone box being used as a library. The village shop, a charcuterie, was bulging with all sorts of Christmas fare. A constant stream of people were arriving at the shop. The letter box and the phone box were our targets, as the numbers on them were used to derive the final coordinates for a cache in the ‘Fine Pair’ series. We were disappointed to see we couldn’t access the book portion of the phone box, as we needed a key and a book to swap!
The Fine Pair cache was a little walk away, hidden on a road junction sign. Our easiest find of the morning. We then picked up a footpath which skirted the North of the village, until we arrived at a cache called ‘Perfect Vision’. We weren’t quite sure what to find here, and a combination lock cache wasn’t high on our list. This was a standard cache, so we hadn’t had to solve a puzzle, or work out coordinates from elsewhere. We just had a lock to open…but we didn’t know the code. Or did we ? The cache title gave us a very strong clue.
As we walked further away from the village, the dirt track gave way to a muddy footpath. West Horsley is situated between the North and South Downs, in an area known as the Wield. This gets very muddy after heavy rain, and today was no exception.
Close to where 4 footpaths met, was another cache – an easy find in a tree bole. We just finishing putting the cache away when a lady dog walker appeared. We chatted, and her 14-year old dog decided it was rest time. Despite the lady’s best efforts, the dog remained still. We chatted some more, and she pointed out that the footpath we required was temporarily closed because there were sheep in the field. We decided to adjust our cache route, and set off. This was great encouragement for her dog, and the dog and owner slowly followed.
The path led us close to the outer boundaries of West Horsley Place – a mediaeval house rebuilt at various times during the 16th and 18th centuries. The house is striking, and since 2014 has become more well known. The Duchess of Roxburghe owned the house until her death in 2014. With no offspring, the building was passed to her half-sister’s grandson, University Challenge’s Bamber Gascoigne. He had no idea about the house or why he was the sole beneficiary of the house, given that other grandchildren existed. He developed plans to develop into an arts centre, and work is well underway building an opera house at the rear of the building.
The building though has become much famous as a TV and film location. It has appeared in The Crown, Enola Holmes, and My Cousin Rachel. But it was as Button House in BBC’s Ghosts, where fiction and life have become entwined. In the first episode of Ghosts one of the characters, Alison, inherits the house from an unknown relative (like Bamber Gascoigne). Unlike Bamber Gascoigne, Alison suffers a near death experience and is able to see the ghosts of previous people that died there. The series ran from 2019 until 2023.
There are caches on the paths which surround West Horsley Place and we attempted “West Horsley Place” first. Although the cache had been found a few days before our visit, we couldn’t find it. This was disappointing as it was placed with the best view of the house. We concluded that, like the TV series Ghosts, only people with special powers can see the cache.
Rather than locate the remaining three perimeter caches, we took a small diversion to the nearby church (St Mary’s, West Horsley). Here there was an easily found church micro cache (and annoyingly some plentiful parking). Churches, and their churchyards have seats, and we paused for lunch before returning the West Horsley Place.
A one-way system directs cars into West Horsley Place’s car park – and we noted free to access. There were lots of people going in. We discovered that the Place runs Ghosts tours, as well as standard historical tours. Today though was ‘Meet Father Christmas Day’ and young children were appearing at regular intervals armed with balloons and small gifts.
The three caches around the perimeter were easy to find. All reasonable sizes, and we were able place two trackables in the caches, and retrieve another, Gin Tonic Rabbit. We saw the building works of the Opera House. Indeed one cache as placed nearby and the cache owner requested a picture be taken of the cache and opera house to show the ongoing progress. We did this, but in trying to find the best spot for the photo we forgot to undertake one very important task….
The last cache we found was on a different side from the main buildings, hidden in a small root hole. We then arrived back at the “West Horsley Place” cache and had a second look for the cache. This particular footpath was relatively busy and quite exposed, and after a while searching became quite difficult so we recorded it as a Did Not Find.
We headed back to the car, mainly on pavements avoiding the worst of Wielden Mud. We arrived at the car, took our walking boots off, and as we put our walking notes in the car… we saw the log book from the ‘Opera House’ cache! We took the photo as requested by the cache owner, but failed to replace the log book! We had no other option but to drive to West Horsley Place, park up, boot up and walk back to the cache.
A slightly frustrating end to a great day’s caching.
The trackable is in the form of a pseudo-ticket for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. The steam railway runs for 13.5 miles along the Kent coastline to Dungeness. The locomotives and carriages are 1/3 actual size… so its a bit of a squeeze! We travelled on the railway in June 2010 (in our pre-geocaching days).
Back in 2018, a German geocacher was so impressed by the railway, they purchased the pseudo-ticket (from presumably a gift shop), attached it to a trackable tag and sent it on its way. In reality the gecoacher placed it in a cache near Dungeness Power Station, retrieved it seconds later and took the tag to Germany.
For the next 5 years it visited many caches in a narrow-ish band between Eastern France, Belgium, Germany and Austria. It had brief visits to Finland and America, but primarily stayed in Europe.
Its mission was to return to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway and in late August 2023 the trackable finally arrived back in UK. After a month or two it was placed in one of the Binfield caches, where we picked it up. We will move it closer to Kent in a few weeks. Thank you trackable – you brought happy memories of our visit to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway!
This trackable set off from a spot near Loch Fyne in Scotland, in November 2019.
Its mission: I would like to return to where I was born – East Ham, London. (presumably that refers to the owner, Beachcomber75, not the trackable!)
There was near disaster after only 3 months when a log entry read … “Hi accidentally dropped this when caching” … but the next log, a month later, said …” Found it in my car will drop off soon” … After 6 months in a remote cache, it moved south to Glasgow, and by the end of 2020 it had reached southern Scotland. By mid-2022 it was still going hither and thither around Scotland, not especially heading for London, and there was then a brief trip to Stockholm. On its return, it was placed in a Travel Bug Hotel (FYI: a larger geocache intended to allow the easy swapping of trackables/travel bugs) near Edinburgh Airport and within a few days it had travelled to Auckland, New Zealand. Hmm, this ‘go to London’ thing isn’t working so well! Luckily, it was back in Scotland quite soon, and by the end of 2022 it had been dropped in Sussex (phew, England, getting closer to London now). It spent the summer of 2023 touring the south coast of England, and finally, in October 2023, was dropped off in Berkshire (the end nearer London), where we found it. The trackable is now as close to London as it has (probably) ever been, so we will devise a way of moving it closer still.
Binfield is a small village/town, a little like Sandhurst, which is part of Bracknell. A new-ish series had been placed on the footpaths and tracks to the North of the Village. The series owner, GilDean, lives in Binfield, hence the name ‘Home Turf’. But, this was a puzzle series too.
Every cache name was an anagram of a film star, some current, some from former times. Not being film buffs, we had to work hard at each anagram as the brief film role biography was occasionally alien to us. Examples of the anagrams included BARRELED TRUG, YUMA RECALLING and MONKS HAT (Answers at the end of the blog). Having solved the anagram we then had to ascertain a key date in that person’s life, and use the digits from the date to derive coordinates. There were 21 caches in the series, so quite a lot of anagramming and googling before we even found a geocache.
Parking in Binfield is limited, so we parked in a residential street, and were greeted by… Mr Potato Head!
Apparently over the next week, Binfield would host a scarecrow competition/walking trail. Residents were invited to place a decorated scarecrow, near their property. We saw a couple of scarecrows as we left the car, several others as we approached the centre of Binfield, and also when we returned to the car much later. A lot of ingenuity and fun – well done Binfield.
As for the caching we found cache 1, quite easily, though there were several metallic places a ‘magnetic’ item could have been placed. We took a short diversion to the village centre to find our only non-‘Home-Turf cache of the day, before resuming the film star series.
Saturday morning is clearly dog walking time, and the first few caches were placed near a popular dog-walking route. Stealth was definitely needed as we retrieved magnet caches from signs. hanging bison-caches from trees, and one we never did retrieve as it was wedged behind some broken concrete. When we mentioned this to the cache owner he granted us the find, as the cache was impossible to retrieve, mainly due to the over-zealous placing by a previous finder. There was one other cache we couldn’t find, and this was due to a footpath gate being temporarily closed and access to the cache was impossible. Again the cache owner granted us a find. Thank you GilDean!
The dog-walkers became scarcer as we headed further away from the village, climbing slowly up a muddy track. Caches were placed at regular intervals and one was placed near to a seat, exactly half-way round the route. How convenient and thoughtful!
Most of the caches were quite small, but a couple of the caches were big enough for trackables, and we dropped off two, Ezra the Eagle and Polly the Parrot and found another two to replace them.
Most of the caching trail was on footpaths or tracks, but there was a short section of road, with a surprising amount of traffic. There were caches on this section too, and stepping away from the traffic to hunt for a cache behind a tree, provided welcome respite.
As we turned away from the major road, and onto a minor road, two horses went by. We were accused of startling the horses! We still don’t know why ! The minor road was close to Billingbear Polo Club and it was here a polo ball had been used as a cache container. (About a year previously we had undertaken the Oh Balls series, by the same setter, and we suspect this cache container may have been left over from that route). Mr Hg137 jumped over a ditch, collected the cache, and threw the ball to Mrs Hg137 to sign the log.
The hint for this cache had specifically stated ‘Be Stealthy and Careful’. A van was parked opposite, with its engine running but had no-one in the cab, we were in in the clear….except….just as Mr Hg137 threw the ball across the ditch, a group of 8 walkers strode round the nearby bend in the road. We nodded to the first seven of the them, giving the appearance that ditch jumping whilst holding a polo ball is a natural thing to do. But the 8th person, said ‘What are you doing here?’ It was our neighbour from home, and we were standing closer to her, than our houses are! Fortunately her walking group had now pulled away, and we never did explain about the ditch, the polo ball and the tiny sheet of paper inside.
Polo Ball Cache
Our route now took us back towards Binfield, crossing fields, and passing isolated houses. A small smattering of caches to find, as this part of the route coincides with another puzzle series and the minimum distance between caches (1/10th of a mile) was being strictly adhered to.
As we skirted round a field, we approached probably the best cache on the circuit. It required more ditch jumping by Mr Hg137 – a bit wider and far more slippery than the polo ball cache, and then a search. We were advised it should have been visible from the field-side, but we couldn’t see it. Eventually Mrs Hg137 crossed over too, and we wandered between trees, looking for the cache. Then we saw it, one of our favourite types, a ‘pulley’ cache. We had to lower some rope to lower the cache. Sign the log, and return the log to its lofty position. Easily done… we even survived the second ditch crossing too!
Pulley Cache
After a cache hide that we really enjoy, came a cache hide we really hate. In ivy. Normally ivy hides take ages, but Mr Hg137 found the cache in what for us was a record time (less than 2 minutes!).
A short walk led us back to the car, pausing to search for our last caches of the day.
A very good route, a great variety of containers, and a little brain exercise beforehand to balance the 4 mile walk in Berkshire Countryside. Thoroughly recommended. Here are a few of the standard caches we found :
PS Did you work out the film star anagrams ? Here are the answers : GERARD BUTLER, CAREY MULLIGAN, TOM HANKS.
We found the Merit Badge trackable in England’s oldest geocache, View from Coombe Hill, while walking the Ridgeway Long Distance Path.
The Merit Badge trackable set off from a geocaching event run by the owners, THEINCREDIBLE4, near Denver, Colorado, in spring 2016. The mission for the trackable was:
… “THIS TB HAS ONE GOAL …. TO GET BACK TO DENVER COLORADO When we travel as a family we drop TB’s as we go with one goal, and that is to return home. Our kids want to see their TB’s again and then make new ones for the next trip we take. Thank you and happy Caching. TheIncredible4 “ …
The trackable has now notched up 28000 miles, mostly not very close to home … Up until July 2016 it travelled around the western USA – California, Nevada, Salt Lake City. After a 2-year pause it was back in Denver for Christmas 2018. After being dropped off at a New Year 2019 caching event, it went to Hawaii in February 2019, then back to Barcelona a few weeks later – 8,500 miles travelled in 10 days!.
The travels of a geocaching trackable!
Things went quiet again for almost 3 years through the pandemic, then the trackable was on the move again, this time to London for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2022. After a quick tour of the city, with lots of trackable selfies, it was off to Finland in August 2022. Apart from a short holiday in Nepal and Vietnam (another 8,000 miles added there), it stayed in Finland till August 2023, then travelled to Copenhagen on its way to England. It arrived there in September 2023, was picked up by explorer_olway (who walked the Ridgeway just ahead of us) and who dropped off the trackable there for us to find. Well travelled!
Our weekend trip to the Chilterns to finish walking the Ridgeway didn’t start well. We had a 9:30 appointment, waited through a motorway traffic jam, drove round a diversion caused by the HS2 railway construction works, and didn’t start walking till about 11:30, much, much later than usual. And the days are shortening fast at this time of year …
We retraced our steps to where we’d finished the previous walk, just short of Coombe Hill, and set off along the steep ridge overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury. Very soon, it was time for the first geocache of the day, View from Coombe Hill. We’d found this cache before in September 2012, on our very first ever day’s caching. So – we’d already found it – why visit again? It’s the oldest surviving cache in England, placed in January 2001, and has been logged almost 3000 times (and we didn’t realise this when we visited before). It seemed only fitting to revisit it and pay our respects.
England’s oldest geocache
The cache is part way down a very steep slope. We scrambled down; a family was walking along a path lower down the hill; we waited for them to go by … they didn’t, but instead began climbing the slope … we were heading for the same place. We met up at the cache and swapped trackables and stories with them; nice to meet you, GeoHunter170, and we hope the cache lasts for many more years.
HS2 under construction
It’s not far from the geocache to the monument at Coombe Hill, with tremendous views all the way. We spent far too long here, taking pictures, admiring the view, doing other caches, and having lunch. Finally we set off down the long ridge which led to Wendover, which lies in a gap in the Chiltern ridge. From this direction the view has changed, not necessarily for the better. HS2 is being built across the valley with a massive, motorway-style construction site across our route. It definitely wasn’t like this when we were here before!
Wendover
We walked through Wendover town centre and turned onto a path beside a stream which led to the church. The church was busy, bellringing practice was under way, so we wandered round the churchyard, listening to the bells and collecting coordinates for a Church Micro cache. Having worked out the location, we decided it was too far off route: it was now mid-afternoon and we were well behind time. Once out of town, we climbed up a very steep hill, through Wendover Woods and back onto the ridge. We threaded our way across woods and fields – sadly, the earlier views were missing – making our way towards the end of the day’s walk at Wigginton. There weren’t many caches along here, and we couldn’t find a single one that we searched for, not one. Each unsuccessful search took up time: if a cache is found quickly, you can move on quickly, but there is always the temptation to keep looking, keep looking, keep looking if a cache can’t be found. It was now early evening and the light levels were dropping fast.
Having started late, we were now even further behind time; today had NOT gone to plan. As we approached Tring Park, dusk was upon us. We had a choice: a longer walk through the park, likely missing any caches in the gloom, arrive back at the car in the dark, and still have a drive back to get the car at the start point: or we could take a short cut back to Wigginton along a nice straight track (once part of the Ridgeway, now re-routed) and hope to finish a bit earlier. We debated … then chose the short cut … ho hum, we’d have a longer walk the next day.
Reaching the end: now back to our start point to collect the other car, via the several-mile-diversion round the HS2 works. We had another problem: We’d booked an evening meal at our hotel and there was no way we would get there in time. A fraught journey back in the dark, along narrow, unfamiliar roads (including a diversion to the hotel to rearrange the meal), and through roadworks, and we arrived back at Coombe Hill car park in complete darkness. We finally reached our hotel two-and-a-half-hours later than planned, in total darkness, with 15 minutes to go to our meal, and scraped into the restaurant in a state of dishevelment. All in all: a day that started badly and didn’t get better!
The fourth and final trackable we found on August 11, was Ummi’s First Trackable.
Ummi’s First Trackable
Ummi, the trackable owner, set the trackable free to mark their first geocaching find back in 2009. Ummi has only found 3 other caches since then – so not a prolific cacher.
The trackable is a laminated photocopy of a geocoin. Geocoins tend to be quite heavy, and beautiful to look at – qualities a laminated piece of paper lacks. For this reason beautiful geocoins go missing, so maybe using a copy to travel the world is a good thing.
Travelling the world is Ummi’s First Trackable’s mission.
Travel to minimum 25 different countries.
After that send it to a cache in Germany/Hessen near Frankfurt am Main
The trackable started its journey near Frankfurt Airport and mainly travelled around Germany until October 2010. It was then picked up by a cacher…and the trackable’s journey stopped. The same cacher held onto it for 11 years, before placing into another German cache. Its difficult to say whether it had been ‘lost’ in those 11 years, or the ‘holder’ lost interest in geocaching (they only found 70 caches in 10 years). But after 11 years, the trackable started to move once again. It has now visited Spain (Canary Islands) and France, before arriving the UK.
We can’t promise to move it to a foreign country, but we photographed it on a picture of the Sydney Opera House as an incentive!
sandhurstgeocachers 