October 20 Day 295 Caches Found 5 Cumulative Total 379 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

 

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

It was our last day in Milton Keynes and we decided to take in some of the sights before returning home.

First up was an iconic location in MK.  And there was a cache nearby – ‘GC10: The Concrete Cows’.   It also seemed a most suitable place to drop off our Geokret, ‘Der Champion’. 

The Concrete Cows

The GC10 series was placed to commemorate 10 years of geocaching and includes 10 iconic locations, such as the Giant’s Causeway, White Cliffs of Dover, Edinburgh Castle, and … the cows!   Well, we found the cows easily enough, and then we searched for the cache, and searched, searched, and searched again.  We couldn’t find it.  Curses.  (Addendum: the cache was indeed missing and has since been temporarily disabled.)

Oh well, on to the next cache. 

Once again we searched, searched, and searched again.  And we couldn’t find it, again.  And the rain was beginning to fall.  We hardly ever fail to find two caches in a row, and this was not going well.  Perhaps we just hadn’t engaged our caching brains? 

We moved on again, to the remains of a Roman villa (we didn’t know there was one in MK, but a friendly muggle dog walker had mentioned  it) and to another cache.  This became a ‘Did Not Attempt’ rather than a failure, as we didn’t fancy a tree climb and a walk through a nettle-field, but time was passing, the weather was not so good, and we hadn’t laid hands on a single cache.

Roman Villa Remains

We decided on a change of scene: it must get better (mustn’t it?). 

Off we went to central MK, where there are a number of public artworks, along with nearby caches.  Our luck changed, and the rain eased.  We found three caches very quickly and easily and one was a suitable sized container that could take the Geokret.  A laurel hedge was not quite the iconic location we had in mind… but it’s on the road, travelling again.

MK Artworks I

The last cache we found was close to Milton Keynes station, so we diverted slightly and grabbed one of the ‘Sidetracked’ series that are spread around the country near stations.

Besides, the rain was threatening again and thunder was rumbling in the distance … It was time to stop.  We’d seen some varied sights after a disastrous start and it was time to stop while we were (just) ahead. 

MK Artworks II

October 19 Day 292 Caches Found 2 Cumulative Total 374 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Our second day in and around Milton Keynes was to include a visit to Bletchley Park, and to the National Museum of Computing.  We’ve both worked in IT and we both like codes and puzzles, so this place had been on the bucket list for a long time.  Hence we’d prepared just two caches for the day.  The first was a simple cache and dash very close to Bletchley Station.

The Mansion, Bletchley Park

The second was in honour of the occasion; Bletchley Park was the home of British code breaking operations in World War II.   The cache, ‘Station X’, was a difficulty 5 cache (the hardest, and also the first we had attempted) which required the deciphering of a chunk of text to find the cache location.  We’d both spent a while trying to find the key to the code, but without success.    Then I spent a couple of hours reading up on methods of enciphering text, and another hour or so repeating what I’d read to Mr Hg137.  He retired to the bath with a copy of the code … a while later there was a shout of triumph … he’d cracked it!  I spent the rest of the evening deciphering the message … and the cache was really easy to find once that was done.  We picked up three trackables from the cache, then spent the rest of the day being tourists.

A real Enigma machine!

Colossus – well, part of it

Bletchley Park is a fascinating place, well worth a trip. You can see a real Enigma machine, visit the huts where the codes were cracked, and look around the Mansion House and grounds.  The National Museum of Computing occupies the same site and we spent a couple of hours here very easily. You can see the first ever electronic computer in the world (Colossus); this was running on the day we visited and is fascinating, but so unlike today’s computers – and crikey, all those valves give off so much heat!  If you’ve ever played computer games, there are plenty of historic examples – BBC micros, ZX81s, etc, etc, on which you can revisit your skills.  And there’s a computer room where some of the larger computers are running.  It was here that Mr Hg137 had a real surprise; one of the techies stepped out from behind a computer and hailed him by name; they knew each other way back, over 20 years ago.

It’s a great day out and we’d recommend it.

October 12 Day 285 Caches Found 6 Cumulative Total 368 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

Swinley Forest

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Today was to be an auspicious caching day. We could pass our target of 365 caches for the year – one a day. This called for something special to match the occasion.

Accordingly, Mr Hg137 did a little research and found a series of six caches not too far away, called ‘Summer Holiday’. This is a short series of child-friendly caches spread over about a mile’s walk.

None of the caches have hints; all the information needed is/should be in the cache name, and all of them are slightly different from the usual cache, which is quite often a 35mm film container. There’s nothing wrong with those; they are cheap, small, and easy to hide, but we wanted something slightly special for this trip.

Off we went to Swinley Forest, parked close to a timber yard, and set off into the woods. The first cache was not too far away and we found it quite quickly; it was advertised as being ‘a home for a tree elf in the ivy’ but it seemed that the elves were out when we visited… On we went, nabbing the ‘firewood’ cache and then on to ‘all tied up’.

This was THE cache that reached our target. It was an interesting cache, a little different from the normal, and contained a trackable, ‘Der Champion’ from a site we hadn’t met before, www.geokrety.org ; we will move it (him, he’s a small model workman) on just as soon as we work out how to log him.

Pusey searches for a bear in the woods …

The final three caches in the series were ‘we’re going on a bear hunt’, ‘you’re sitting on it’ and ‘nice slice’, all of which describe the caches nicely. We had a travel bug with us, Pudsey Bear (more correctly ‘Hamina Tattoo’) and he was thrilled to meet another bear, but, sadly, he just wouldn’t fit in that cache. We left him nearby in the last cache in the series and hope he moves on soon – it shouldn’t take too long as this is, understandably, a popular series.

So … we’ve managed to find just over 365 caches already, and the year is not yet done. Geocaching has taken us to places near and far, that we would not otherwise have visited., and have learnt so many things while doing so (history, geography, geology …). We’ve placed our own geocache, sent off our own trackable, contributed to cacher’s magazines ( www.ukcachemag.com ) and met the wider cacher community at social events and the UK Mega. Just a few times we’ve found cachers when out on the caching trail; they’ve been a varied bunch, and all have been friendly. And we’ve converted a few of our friends and work colleagues into being cachers themselves. Has it been worth doing. You bet it has!

October 5 – Hamina Tattoo 20 years

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. It seems to be me that does the posts about trackables!

When we dropped off the ‘Year of the Snake Coins’ geocoin, we picked up another trackable, ‘Hamina Tattoo 20 Years’, which started off in Finland at the end of 2010 and ‘wants to visit as many tattoo events in Europe, such as Germany, Hungary, England and Italy’. There’s a link with the description of the trackable but it leads, puzzlingly, to a Russian garage website so I’m not clear whether the trackable is looking for tattoos as in ‘body art’, or tattoos as in ‘Edinburgh Military Tattooo’, or something else.

More puzzling, and not in tune with the stated mission, is that the trackable is attached to a small Pudsey Bear. Why? Does Pudsey like tattoos? All was revealed by reading about the trackable’s recent wanderings – the tag was discovered all alone, not attached to anything and was joined up with Pudsey so it didn’t get mislaid (we know that happens, as one of our trackables disappeared).

We will drop off the trackable soon so it can continue on its way. It has travelled 4123 miles so far and has been round much of Europe – but not to Italy (yet). Maybe that is where it needs to go next?

October 5 Day 278 Caches Found 23 Cumulative Total 362 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

When a new series of caches is published, lots of cachers flock to it. This series, as the day turned out, was no different.

The series – Westoros Walk – was of 22 caches, with every cache named after places from the Game of Thrones series (No – it meant nothing to us either!). We also included a multi-cache which was on our route.

What was odd about this series was that the first 2 caches and final cache were very remote (walking-wise) from the main route. We therefore walked from cache 3 to cache 21 and then drove and cached and dashed to the remaining three.

The cache quality was excellent throughout, although the GPS co-ordinates were a few feet off on a number of occasions. Our ability to find these caches was helped by the 10 or so cachers who had already undertaken the trail in the first week.

Many of the caches were plastic boxes, generally very well camouflaged as well
as a few very small caches embedded in sticks and some others we won’t mention !

One of the smaller caches

Is this a cache ? Or was our GPS wrong ?

The paths were great throughout, and it was very pleasing to arrive at a point called ‘Five Ways’ , which we had passed through 3 years ago when we walked the Three Castles Path (Windsor to Winchester via Odiham). We spent some time here remembering the great walk we’d had on that occasion.

Five Ways

When we paused for lunch about halfway round, we remarked that we hadn’t seen many cachers, which we found surprising given the newness of the series. We spoke too soon!

Shortly after we arrived at cache 15, we saw another cacher (Adrian, Alivemore) at cache 14. We realised we’d left a hat near that GZ so we split up and jointly searched for the hat and the cache. The hat search was successful, the cache less so, and even with the assistance of Adrian we spent 20 minutes searching for cache 15.

Adrian, on his bike, pedalled off but we caught up with him again at the next cache where we saw 2 other cachers, Tadley Trailblazers and Minesweepers. It transpired Tadley Trailblazers had undertaken some of the caches when they were first published, and he was completing the series.

As we continued we saw our fourth cacher of the day, Danes Hunter who was also completing the series.

Our walking route finished at cache 21, something a bit different, where coincidentally Danes Hunter, Tadley Trailblazers and Minesweepers met again and compared notes on a great caching day out!

Fruits and Berries 1

Fruits and Berries 2

Fruits and Berries 3

It’s almost a year since our first geocache find

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

In a few days it will be a year since our first geocache find.

Our first few finds were made on a sunny Saturday in the Chilterns, while we were walking the Ridgeway. They included the oldest cache in England ‘View from Coombe Hill’ GC171 http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC171_view-from-coombe-hill?guid=6a867976-2515-4193-9b8c-ef2d8eb4cf88 – we didn’t realise the significance of that back then. And we also made a complete failure of finding a multicache because we didn’t understand what to do. Not much has changed there: we’re still not good at multicaches, or caches that aren’t on the ground, or anything involving ivy …

And, over the past year, we’ve collected 363 caches, including our two cachers meets, but not including the extra cache, which is recorded on another site. Sooooo … we’ve found 361 caches using http://www.geocaching.com … and that’s awfully close to 365 and all of a sudden we sort of feel we should maybe try for at least 365 in our first year. We’re thinking about it: should we do it? Should we do something memorable? Something easy, to make sure we reach the target? Do we need any extras in case we can’t find the caches? Or are we just obsessed by statistics?

August 25 Day 237 Caches Found 2 Cumulative Total 320 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

We spent the Bank Holiday Weekend playing in the British Matchplay Scrabble Championships at Yarnfield (near Stone/Stafford). With 21 games over 3 days we didn’t really have time for much caching (not to mention the mental tiredness), so we attempted 3.

The first cache we found before the tournamentm was a fairly one on Yarnfield Green.
The other 2 we attempted, with a non-cacher(muggle) in an extended lunch break. Both caches were in a lovely wooded track about a 1/4 of a mile from our venue the Yarnfield Conference Centre.

One was fairly easy, at a metal gate, the other was a black film canister hidden in ivy.

Signing the log

We’ve blogged before about the difficulty of these caches, and today was no exception. With three pairs of eyes we failed to find it! Still 2 out of 3 isn’t bad considering we were trying to play Scrabble!

PS Mr HG137 finished 7th in Division B (13 games out of 21); and Mrs HG137 finished a prize-winning 4th in the same Division (14/21). Well done to her!

PPS The ivy covered cache was found on Bank Holiday Monday, so it was there !

August 18 Day 230 Caches Found 13 Cumulative Total 290 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

With any hobby and pastime, there are good days and bad days. This day was not one of our best.

We’d loaded 16 caches (or so we thought) into our GPS and then noticed one of them had been DNF’ed for the last 6 months. We enquired of the cache owner whether this cache was still there, and we were told it was unlikely but due to ill-health was unable to be checked. We were advised where the cache would be, and given instructions to check it.

We put this cache towards the end of our list for the day, starting with a similar cache based in Mytchett. (We thought if we could master a similar cache then trying to find the DNF should be a doddle).

Our route started in Mytchett town centre and then a short car ride to Frimley Park, where we should have found our first multi-cache of the day. Somehow the details of this cache were not in the GPS (yet another mistake from HG137 in a week) so we couldn’t attempt it.

Our first real cache in Frimley Park was harder than we thought. The co-ordinates led us to the middle of a 50 metres running track, and yet the cache hint was ‘fence post’. Some 20 yards distant, were the nearest fence posts – even then it took us 4 posts to find the right one!
So with a fairly certain DNF to come, a cache not loaded and then some poor co-ordinates we knew it wasn’t going to be our day.

Basingstoke Canal

Our route took us along the Basingstoke Canal where we found a couple of simple caches so were in buoyant mood, as we searched in cache in the roots in a multi-trunk tree. Sadly the notes indicated yet again the co-ordinates were wrong… and there were lots of tree to search. After 15 minutes we gave up…

We went in search of next cache, but this was on THE OTHER SIDE of the Basingstoke Canal and no obvious bridges to cross. (It really is going well isn’t it ?!). We went in search of another cache, and as we were doing so we passed MEGAN’S PLACE. Now we knew there was a cache here… but yet again was not in our GPS. The seat was in memory of Megan, born asleep, and was decorated with flowers. Without a hint… we searched high and low to no avail… and with desperation sat down for a drink on the seat.

In Memory of Megan

The elevenses break really was good for the soul, for, as we just leaving Ground Zero, we espied a likely cache location. Eureka ! Our first bit of luck for the day!

This proved to be the turning point as our successes continued for the rest of the day. Several more caches were found on one side of the Basingstoke Canal, and then returning on the other side, we found the cache we couldn’t get to earlier!

Heath Woodland (on the other side of the canal !)

Heath Woodland (on the other side of the canal!)

We finished by walking via an aqueduct, where the canal went over the railway line, to the centre of Frimley Green where not unexpectedly we DNFed the missing cache.
As short walk back to the car was punctuated by our last cache of the day, a church micro.

We found 13 caches, which considering the start we had was a fair success!

August 16 – we got our cache total wrong!

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.  (Mr Hg137 is too embarrassed to post this .)

We got our cache total wrong.  Oops!  Last Saturday we found 25 caches, not 24, so our total is one higher than we’ve claimed.  We’ll get the total back to the right number next time we blog about our caching.

August 3 Day 215 Caches Found 9 Cumulative Total 252 (+1 bonus, +2 cachers’ meets)

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

We attended the UK Mega Event in Gaydon, Warwickshire. And we did some caching too!

After looking around the UK Mega, and deciding what to buy later and what to see later, we headed outside. A CITO event (Cache In, Trash Out) was happening and we thought about joining in, but so many folk were queuing up to take part that we decided to do some independent caching instead. CITO events are a way of giving something back to the community by tidying it up and removing litter. I think the people of Gaydon must have been surprised at the hordes of geocachers and geodogs (special mention to the geodachshund here) swarming all around, and I don’t expect there was much litter left uncollected afterwards.

A small group of cachers !

In fact our first cache was just before we arrived. We parked in a layby just off the M40 motorway and set off towards the cache. Another car had pulled in just behind us … and a man was sprinting up the verge towards us. Ooh err, problem? But it was the Cache Owner (CO) on his way to the Mega, who had stopped to replace the cache log.

We left the Mega site late morning for some more caching before lunch. After a quick couple of caches along the roadside – easy to find them when you join an orderly queue of waiting cachers – we headed off across the fields. We were overtaken by one of the CITO groups, headed off to collect rubbish from local paths. Then we came across a cache where the log was cunningly hidden in a puzzle box; could we open it (no!) , and more cachers were approaching. We decided to appeal to them for help. Many thanks to Floss from the BottesfordCrew, who had the puzzle opened in seconds.

BottesfordCrew help us with a cache

After leaving the Mega in the afternoon, complete with purchases and trackables, we drove a short distance into Gaydon and collected a few more caches. As before, they were easy to find as they were mostly surrounded by groups of cachers. Gaydon is a very pretty little village (though not exactly quiet on UK Mega day!) in lovely rolling countryside, with caches stashed around in many a hidden corner.

Warwickshire countryside around Gaydon

Then it was back home; we were beginning to flag a little by now. A long but enjoyable day.