Two days before Christmas … the turkey was defrosting, the homemade Christmas pudding had been checked (a year old but fine), and all was pretty much under control, Christmas-wise. On a dry, bright morning we made our way to Kingsclere in north Hampshire for some geocaching in the countryside around the village. We planned to find the caches in the Kingsclere Kaper series, and maybe add in a few others as we went.
From the Fieldgate Centre on the edge of the village, we made our way uphill along a country lane and into the bare, wintry country, hearing the bangs of guns from a distant shoot ahead of us (luckily, not on our route, we don’t like being shot at). Just before turning onto a bridleway, we were hailed by an elderly countryman, and stopped to pass the time of day. He said he was on his way home – from where? no idea. He was also clutching a laden carrier bag – we had suspicions that it contained pheasant(s) “obtained” from the shoot going on a little way ahead of us – but we can’t prove that!
Once off the tarmac, it was damper underfoot, but a lovely walk through trees, part of the Brenda Parker Way, a long-distance footpath. We skirted a fishery, crossed a little bridge – there are lots of small footbridges on this route – and emerged onto fields. Other people had the same idea as us and were out for a pre-Christmas walk: most were very clean and tidy and we wondered if that would still be so once they’d negotiated the muddy path! Geocaching-wise, we were doing well, we’d already found eight caches, all but one from the Kaper series, and were making steady progress.
We emerged onto the A339, the main road between Basingstoke and Newbury. At the Star Inn, we saw that, again, other people were out for a pre-Christmas meal … but they weren’t watching us as we stopped to find a cache.
From here, we followed paths and field edges and made our way through the edge of the village. It was lunchtime, so we found a seat in a quiet spot for a picnic. (As an aside, this was one of our better lunch spots, overlooking the playground and allotments: we’ve previously had lunch in leaky bus shelters, industrial estates, graveyards …) Afterwards, we walked back out into the country, passing the community orchard : much better seats here, we shouldn’t have stopped so soon!
We walked in a loop through the countryside to the north, crossing a few more of those little bridges on the way. A brief furtle for a cache behind the postbox, then we made our way to the end of our walk along the delightfully named Frog’s Hole, following a little stream back up the hill; and a chance to cross yet more of those ‘little bridges’ that abound in Kingsclere.
Here are just a few of the many interesting caches we found:
A morning of reminiscing for Mr Hg137 who used to live about a mile or so from Buckhurst Meadow, on the outskirts of Wokingham. Back then the area was known as Buckhurst Farm and in the late 90s, the area could have been made the stadium for Wokingham Town FC. Instead local residents complained, the football club move was vetoed, and an estate of 620 houses was built.
As well as the housing estate much of the farmland has been turned into a 30-acre country park ideal for walking around and of course geocaching!
Normally our diaries are quite busy on a Thursday, but today, a few days before Christmas, our bookings had been cancelled – do we need a better excuse to go geocaching ?
Well the weather could have been better ! A misty, murky day greeted us as we set out. The December rain had made much of the grass very wet, but the paths otherwise were more or less good. Occasionally we stepped away from the path to find a cache.
The first cache brought back memories of the first cache we found just 5 days previously. Tucked near a post, behind a bramble bush. Fortunately this time the bush was relatively easy to lean over, yielding us a quick find.
Most of the caches we were looking for were set by local cacher, Mikes54, who gives very specific hints. We were grateful of this at the next cache where we had to find a cache at the base of a tree – the hint made sure we looked at the correct one from a choice of 4! We couldn’t grab this cache immediately as the tree was close to an intersection of footpaths, and a constant series of dogwalkers!
Fortunately our next cache took us away from the dog-friendly footpaths and into a hazel coppice. Here we had not only had to find a ‘knobbly tree’ but then count coppiced hazels to find the cache. We were grateful we hidden from prying eyes when we did this.
The Mikes54 caches had all been placed barely a month before our visit, but our next cache was much older having been placed in 2009. This was deep in area called ‘Big Wood’ which straddles the Wokingham and Bracknell boundary. We found some caches in the Bracknell side of Big Wood back in September 2022. The 2009 Wokingham cache was a quite easy find, albeit the GPS was 30 feet out. (We do find that the older the cache, the less accurate the GPS is – any ideas why ?)
We returned to Buckhurst Meadows and we should really have read the cache notes before we headed for cache 4 in the series. It advised, that after heavy rain, from cache 3 we should walk into the centre of the park via the central butterfly statue and take a different path to cache 4. We didn’t, and soon discovered the perimeter path was underwater. We waded through and around the puddle-cum-lake to arrive at a seat near Ground Zero. We gave a quick search for the cache but couldn’t find it. We saw a ‘cache-size hole’ at the front of a tree, and assumed the cache was missing. Then in the gloom, 300 yards away we saw a dog-walker approaching. Should we move on ? Continue searching ? The man turned away, and we resumed our search, and after few more minutes we had the cache in hand.
Our final cache in the Buckhurst Meadows series was closer to the car, so we took a path out of the meadows, passing a playground, a school and a pond. We arrived at Clay Lane – an enclosed wooded footpath Mr Hg137 remembered well as he sometimes walked their family dog there. Unsurprisingly, the lane had altered slightly in 40 years, many of the saplings had grown, the new estate provided less tree-cover on one side. On the other many of the gardens set back from the tree-line now had gates giving access to Clay Lane and Buckhurst Meadows.
In those intervening years, fairies have visited Clay Lane too. Their tiny houses nestled at the base of trees. We were admiring many of them… and walked by a cache. After walking a few yards, we retraced our steps, and after quite a lengthy search -found the cache. Another old cache as it placed in 2008!
We returned to Buckhurst Meadows and found the last cache snugly hidden behind a lifebuoy post, again near a junction of footpaths – so stealth was needed.
Close to Buckhurst Meadows were 2 more caches – both near the busy A329M. The first in a cul-de-sac that led to a hotel (in Mr Hg137’s time, the hotel was a nunnery!). The GPS wavered here but we soon found the tree the cache had been placed behind.
We crossed the A329 to find a most unusual cache called “It’s a Letterbox”. Letterbox caches, are named, after the ‘letterboxes’ found on Dartmoor. Geocaches of this type tend to have an ink stamp inside. The size of letterbox caches tends to be slightly larger than average, to accommodate the ink stamp, but the size of this cache caught us by surprise!
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.
After a cold, wet start to the month, Friday dawned bright and sunny. We headed off to Aldershot for a morning’s caching on dry (we hoped) pavements.
We found a parking space in a quiet suburban road, and strolled along to our first cache, hidden close to St. Mary’s, the first of four Church Micro caches we would attempt today (Church Micro, or CM geocaches are hidden near churches / chapels / cathedrals, active or redundant. There are just over 15000 in the series, making it the largest geocache series in the world.)
From there, we made our way down the hill towards Aldershot Town FC, catching a brief glimpse of the hallowed turf as we went. In front of the entrance we assembled coordinates to find the cache associated with the club. (Editor’s question: why is turf hallowed, especially football turf?)
Aldershot Town FC
Next it was time for a walk in the park and another cache, in Manor Park. What a popular and busy place on a sparkling morning! Dog walkers, runners, mothers and small children, and folk simply taking the air. After a coffee break, watching the ducks and seagulls going about their lives in the pond, we moved on to visit a curry house – not literally, as Mr Hg137 isn’t a curry fan (but I am!) – but instead, to work out the coordinates for yet another cache. This one is part of the Curry Micro series, which started in Brighton and is now spreading across the South of England and beyond.
Incy Wincy Spider, hiding in a hole
We moved on to the most inventive cache of the day, named Incy Wincy Spider. Part way there, we read the cache description and realised we hadn’t got the correct equipment, for this one required us to pour water into a container to make the cache float to the top, and we had no water with us … oops. Fortuitously, we passed an abandoned, half-drunk bottle of water, and took it with us. It turned out not to be enough water … oops again. Plan B – a thin stick – was deployed, and the cache extracted. It was a fun few minutes of problem-solving; luckily we were tucked away along a quiet path between hedges and no-one was watching our efforts.
We circled suburban southern Aldershot, completing the morning’s walk with three more Church Micro caches. Two of the churches supplied us with the coordinates for geocaches, but the third didn’t (it hadn’t been found for a while and is now awaiting attention from the owner). And by now, it was nearly lunchtime and we’d made our way back to the geocar in the sunshine, having visited many a place to pass the time – football grounds, parks, restaurants, and a goodly selection of places of worship – something to satisfy both body and soul!
Normally we drive to our caching venue for the day, very occasionally train – but never by bus.
We noticed that every Saturday during December 2023 the buses in Bracknell were free, so we travelled by bus. We must have been the only travellers who knew the fares were free, as several people boarded the bus on our 30 minute journey offering money!
We had chosen a few caches on the borders between two of Bracknell’s housing estates, Great Hollands (where the bus route went!), and Jennetts Park.
Our first cache though commemorated when Bracknell was predominately woodland. “What’s Left of the Waterhams” was hidden in a small copse separating the two housing estates. Although Bracknell still has a high concentration of trees, before it was designated a New Town in the 1950s/1960s, much of what is now Bracknell was a large wooded area. Waterhams Wood was part of that area.
The Waterhams Wood cache was placed in 2020 and took a bit of finding. We had to cross a small ditch, covered by end-of-season brambles, and search the roots of various trees. The GPS wouldn’t quite settle and we spent some time peering at various roots, where we thought a cache would have been placed. The cache was nestled in a very small roothole, but in the six months since the cache had been last found, it had become encased in mud, now stiff by the overnight frost, and was tricky to remove. It took some effort, and three or four sticks to eventually retrieve the cache!
Pleased with our efforts, we headed away from Great Hollands and into Jennetts Park. We have cached in Jennetts Park before, but never from this direction. After walking past an interesting flower sculpture we arrived at a different copse, Tarmans Copse. Here we stepped away from the path, and searched some ivy for a simple hanging cache. We dislike ivy, but this cache was relatively easy to find.
As we stood behind the tree, away from the footpath, a father and young boy scuttled by. They entered the bushes away from us on the opposite side of the path. We signed the cache log and replaced the cache unseen. Then a mother and daughter appeared, the father and son lurched out of the undergrowth as a ‘surprise’! Great family fun – we watched as the family were reunited. It was then the father caught our eye, and he realised we had seen the whole childish episode!
If that cache had fun, the next cache had jeopardy. The footpath from Tarmans Copse continued through more woodland. Houses could be seen through the trees, and in the distance the sound of chain saws. A working party from the Hedgerow and Woodland Conservation Society were pollarding trees, and creating hedge structures from the branches – fantastic for nature – not so fantastic for caches. The cache was positioned a few yards from the hedgerow group, but an hour later the cache would have been unfindable.
(Postscript : Despite informing the Hedgerow group of the cache, showing them the cache, and asking them to preserve the hiding place, the area around the cache has significantly altered and the cache has been lost).
Our final two caches were incident-free. Only our ineptitude at finding the correct host in both cases prevented a quick find. The first was hidden in some large tree roots, a relatively large space, and the small film pot was well wedged in a corner. The last cache was hidden in an 8-trunked tree. We were initially confused as we walked by the tree, discounting it as the host as it had 9 trunks! Once we had returned to the tree – the cache was a very quick find.
All we had to do was head back to Great Hollands for the next bus home!
An enjoyable caching trip, with a bus journey as an added feature!
Kingsclere : as described by a local resident and fellow geocacher, TadleyTrailblazers:
Kingsclere has a Post Office, three pubs, two local stores, a library, hairdresser, butchers, and art gallery, everything a small community could want in this north Hampshire village. A bustling parish with strong community ties and a unique, friendly atmosphere, Kingsclere is a fantastic place to sample the surrounding views and neighbouring villages. This area inspired the novelist Richard Adams to create the world-famous story of Watership Down. ‘Clere’ is thought to have derived from the Saxon and may possibly mean ‘bright’ or ‘clearing’; there is evidence to suggest that Kingsclere belonged to King Alfred between the years of 872 to 888 with the full name being referenced in a chart.
We began our visit to the village with an AdLab cache, which gave us a guided tour of the highlights of the older part of the village. We inspected the Old House (once an impressive solicitor’s office), then, closer to the village centre, two locations linked with brewing, the Malt House, and Popes Mill, and two more associated with drinking, the Golden Falcon and the Crown Inn (all, except the last, are now private houses).
A few doors from the pub was a Methodist chapel, and opposite was the village church, St Mary’s. Crossing the road, we passed toilets, a coffee shop, a convenience store and the local butchers, then went into the churchyard, musing to ourselves that almost all of our spiritual and physical needs were provided for in this small area! Our thoughts were interrupted as it began to rain, hard and cold – this hadn’t been in the weather forecast! We took refuge in the church, had a warming cup of coffee, then headed outside again, where it was no longer raining, but noticeably colder.
A short walk took us past yet another, now unused church, so now we had coordinates for three Church Micro caches to find later on. Next we followed a track uphill to the Recreation Ground, which has a hilltop view over the village, and towards Watership Down in the other direction. After finding two geocaches around the edges of the field, we descended a steep flight of steps to Hollowshot Lane, a straight track running roughly east-west. We had quickly gone from village to countryside, and the sunshine was returning.
Here we had a dilemma: a geoache lay some hundreds of yards away to the east, off our route, so an out-and-back diversion would be needed. AND – said cache hadn’t been found for 5 months, so we could have a long detour for something that was no longer there. After consideration, we decided to try to find it anyway. Once there, we spent some while peering around fruitlessly, then leant on a nearby gate to read previous logs … looking down … we spotted something lying out in the open. Aha! Found it at last. That made the return trip much happier.
Park House Stables gallops
Reaching the road at the end of the track, we made our way back towards the village. We had more detours and diversions to make, this time to look for the cache containers associated with those churches we had passed earlier. In no particular order – one was along a woodland path, one tucked into a concrete post, and the third was in a delightful spot along a stream running through the village.
Park House Stables and their immaculate gallops lay to our left – no racehorses visible today: wrong time of year, wrong time of day.
Our walk concluded along the same clear chalk stream. The rain was gone now, and we finished the day in clear, cold sunshine.
PS And the butchers , which we passed earlier … we went back, went in and bought some lovely venison sausages. Not cheap, but delicious!
The rain had subsided. The roads were less flooded. It seemed a good day to complete the Yateley Lakes series that we had started 4 days previously.
We had 3 Yateley Lakes caches to find, a couple of stages from a 5-stage ad lab, and one other cache part of the 50+ cache Drive By series. We could have driven to this cache ourselves, but it was only a short walk from one of the Yateley Lake caches, so we decided to include it in our morning’s walk.
We parked the car in an almost identical spot to our previous visit, and Mrs Hg137 set about getting the ad lab started on her phone. For some inexplicable reason the ad lab wouldn’t load, so she resorted to the standard IT maxim ‘ turn it off, and on again’. While this process was happening, we took the liberty of locating a Yateley Lake cache positioned just outside the car park. We stood where there had been 2-3 inches of water a few days ago and picked up various items. Remembering that the caches were set by VR7, the cache could have been anything – and eventually we realised we had the cache container in our hand, more by luck than skilful searching.
We hastily replaced the cache, as a car swung by us, and drove into the car park.
By now Mrs Hg137’s phone had come alive, and the ad lab application was good-to-go. As we walked back into the car park, and neared the ad lab question location, the driver of the car shouted at us “I know what you are doing!”. Yikes ! We had been rumbled!
But no, it was another geocacher, fennyflip, awaiting a friend, who he was going to introduce to geocaching. We chatted awhile, until his friend arrived. They set off following the lake one direction, and we left in the other. We admired the ‘watersports’ section of the lake – no foolhardy watersports enthusiasts today – and completed our final ad lab stage, and headed for our penultimate Yateley Lakes cache.
This one was hidden near a footpath crossroads, and it was quite busy. We initially searched the wrong side of the footpath, and paused for several minutes while various dog-walkers went by. After a few minutes we spotted a likely hiding place which required us to undertake some determined effort to release the cache. Our determination couldn’t have been that great, as we failed to release the cache, and we assumed our thoughts were wrong. After a few more minutes fruitless searching, we re-tried the hiding place, and this time we were successful. Log signed, we headed off, uphill, to the ‘Drive By’ cache..
Our route took us away from the semi-gravel track around the lake, to a grassy slope. After the rain, the grass was muddy, and there occasional ‘marshy’ sections we had to walk around. We passed a couple of people on the way up the slope, and we exchanged pleasantries and swapped advice on how to avoid the mud!We arrived at a road – quite handy as we were looking for a Drive By cache, and spotted a tree, the host, a few yards away. However as we made our way to the tree, a gentleman with a dog came out of the adjacent cottage. We stared at us suspiciously. We decided to feign a navigational error, paused, consulted phones and maps and walked the other way – all the time being watched by the gentleman and his dog. He walked away, and after a while, we saw the gentleman disappearing round a bend in the road, giving us a ideal opportunity to grab the simple cache.
We walked back down the muddy slope, this time aware of all the muddy sections, and found a simple footpath to our final Yateley Lakes cache. Again a sneaky hide, but visible in plain sight.
It was a shame we broke the series into two trips, but given the volumes of water still lying close to the footpaths, we knew we would have got very wet had we continued on our first visit.
If you want to find some clever hides, hidden in tranquil scenery, do attempt the Yateley Lakes – but do visit when the weather is dry!
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.
One of the drier road sections!
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.
View from inside a bird hide
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.
Lots of information boards – useful for ad lab stages
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.
After a very wet few weeks, a countryside geocaching trip was not really an option (way too muddy!). As an alternative, to find a 5-stage Adventure Lab (AdLab) cache based around Sandhurst Memorial Park and Shepherd Meadows. We hoped we would stay dry!
How AdLab caches work: Using your mobile as a GPS, you find your way to various locations, then answer a question which your phone reveals once you are there. After visiting all the locations, that completes the AdLab cache. It’s similar to a multicache, which offers up clues and numbers at each stage. But … why can’t you cheat? And find out the information without being there? Well, the question isn’t unlocked until you are very close indeed to each location, and they are usually about things only visible once standing on the spot.
Shepherd Meadows and Sandhurst Memorial Park cover 68 hectares (169 acres) of wet meadows (not too wet, we hoped!), woodland and recreational green spaces. We decided to start the AdLab in the Memorial Park, then work our way into Shepherd Meadows, and along the River Blackwater.
Sandhurst War Memorial
Our first stop was the War Memorial, where we needed to answer our first question. Today was Remembrance Day, and all was tidy and quiet. It would be much, much busier the next day, Sunday, when the Remembrance service would take place. As Sandhurst is the home of the Royal Military Academy, this event is always well arranged and well attended.
Heave-ho! Tug of War practice weights
Passing the Community Hall, we walked on, very gently downhill, along the side of some of the football pitches, heading for the area where Sandhurst Tug of War team practice. The team have been 3 times World Champions, 2 times European Champions and 8 times National Champions! We needed to look at the structure used by the team for training, a metal tower with very heavy weights attached. The uphill end of the fields had been … damp, while the downhill end, nearer the river, was … boggy. We both kept our feet dry, but only just.
Bracknell Town FC, Bottom Meadow
We were right next to the shared ground of Sandhurst Town and Bracknell Town football clubs. They play at the aptly named Bottom Meadow; a match was in progress, and, from the shouts, Bracknell were doing well; we later learned that they beat Chesham United 4-0. Well done to the Robins!
We moved on to the Balancing pond, a small lake used for the temporary storage of excess storm water after periods of heavy rainfall. It was doing its job today, as the path round one side of the pond was underwater. We needed to look at something near the pond for our next location – hmm, it was just visible without paddling; once again, our feet just stayed dry.
From here, we walked out into Shepherd Meadows, crossing the River Blackwater and walking along the Hampshire side of the river (the river is the Berkshire/Hampshire county boundary).
We had one more structure to inspect along the riverbank, then it was out to the main road to inspect the Sandhurst Millennium sign, just as the daylight began to fade. Job done, AdLab completed, and a not too wet walk across a variety of terrain.
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