December 21 : Buckhurst Meadow, Wokingham

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!

A highly unusual end, to a fun morning’s caching!

November 6 : Ockwells Park : puddles and tanks

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Ockwells Manor … plus tank!

Finally the sun came out.  But it had rained on each of the last 13 days – a total of 78.6 mm or 3 inches – and everywhere was waterlogged.   Where could we go, and have a chance of staying mainly dry?   We chose Ockwells Park which lies to the west of Maidenhead, just north of the M4 and just west of the A404M.  Some of the park was once part of the Ockwells Manor Estate, and the manor house can be seen to the west of the park.   The park opened to the public in the 1980s and now includes a café, a large play area and sports pitches for softball and baseball. And for us, our research also showed that it had well-maintained tracks and paths, a large free car park, and lots of parkland / woodland / nature reserve where a set of geocaches could be found.

Our first geocache the Ockwells Park Mystery geocache, lay just outside the park.   We’d done the vaguely literary puzzle beforehand and we duly found the cache.  But oh dear, the log was really wet. Mr Hg137 suggested drying the wet log in the warm geocar, and we would replace it later. We left a small piece of paper in the cache as a temporary log.

Ockwells Park play area

Back in the park, we set off on our geocaching route.  We started off near the café and play area, then walked further on into the wilder area which is a nature reserve.  After walking along firm tracks, we ventured into waterlogged fields and then onto a puddly track which led close to Ockwells Manor.  The original Manor House was built in the 15th century using wood from oak trees grown in Windsor Forest, which at the time stretched as far as the park; it was offered to the National Trust in the 1940s, but they turned it down.   Walking up the track, we paused to look at the manor, in the middle distance past a field with grazing horses.   And a tank.   A full-size military tank.  “What about the tank?”  I asked Mr Hg137.  “What tank … oooh!” he replied.  He hadn’t spotted it!

We left the incongruous metal object behind us, and moved on.  We were doing well, but we had slight worries about the next geocache, Hang tough!   One of us is old enough to remember watching (the original) ‘Gladiators’ on TV and was nervous that something like the ‘Hang Tough’ round in that game would be needed.  Fortunately no dangling from anything needed for us today!  Our walking pole was enough to lift down and replace the cache – no swinging in trees needed.

Birdbox? Or Geocache?

We made a brief foray south, over the M4, to look for more caches along a footpath between some very posh houses.  One was in a fake birdbox – well, we weren’t absolutely certain it was fake, so opened it very, very carefully – but no bird had ever used this (phew).  Then back across the motorway, and into Little Thrift Wood at the southern end of the park, where our route led us along a path just a fence away from the motorway (and actually not very noisy).   After looking for two more caches we walked back into the park area.

It was wetter at this end of the park, and had probably been underwater only a day or two before.  We ended the walk with dry feet, but muddy trousers, having explored a little area of parkland and open country that we’d never even heard of before, let alone planned to visit. And what of the soggy geocache log from the start of the day?  It had spent the day in the sunshine inside the car, and was dry when we returned.   We revisited the cache and replaced the official log, now dry (and no-one had signed our temporary log while we were away!).

Here is just one of the caches we found:

December 10 : Lightwater Country Park

Lightwater Country Park is a heath parkland area sandwiched between the main town of Lightwater and the M3 motorway. We had cached in the park once before, way back in early 2014. The park is situated at the end of a narrow residential street, and is next to Lightwater Sports Centre.

Icy Lake at Lightwater Country Park

The morning was cold, very cold. We parked up near one of the many frozen lakes, and watched gulls awkwardly moving on the ice.

We wandered through woodland, predominantly pines on the sandy heath soil, arriving near some rhododendrons. The cache was hidden at the base of a birch near two of these rhododendron bushes. The bushes were quite big, but there was only one birch between the bushes at Ground Zero. Sadly for us, there was a large root hole, but no container to be seen.  We scouted around further, but it looked to us as if the cache had been muggled, and we had a DNF to start our walk.

Should the cache have been here ?

The were five caches around the park for us to find, and for some reason the numbers didn’t run consecutively, as after cache 1, we arrived at cache 3. Again a large rhododendron stood guard. Here the hint mentioned ‘a dip’. Initially we couldn’t see the dip, but Mr Hg137 ploughed into the bush, and arrived triumphant at the other side, right next to a dip. Mrs Hg137 did the clever stuff… and walked around the bush.

Then the hunt started. After a few minutes of us saying ‘where would we hide the cache?’ we turned around and glanced in a direction we know we had glanced at before and found the cache – a small clip lock box.

We were quite close to the M3, and the motorway noise drowned other noises from the park (and our conversation too). As a result we overshot the next cache hiding place by a couple  of yards. In fairness we were sidetracked by the plethora of dog walkers. This was clearly the time when Lightwater dogs got exercised. We were at a junction of footpaths, and with some careful looking we found the cache, and replaced it without any of the dog walkers noticing.

Our fourth cache (numbered cache 2 in the series), had a curious hint ‘After Life, find a sleeper bordered hole.’. We didn’t understand the hint, but on arrival by a pond there was a bench with the inscription. Nearby was the cache, and a straightforward find. This was fortunate as a young family were nearby at the frozen lake. They had thrown a ball to their dog, Monty, and it had ‘bounced’ and rolled a considerable distance on the ice until it reached an ‘island’ about 20 yards away. The dog was trying to reach it on the ice, but the owners were calling it back… all very chaotic.

We tried not to be interested in the young family, and the capers of the dog, and paid more attention to the bench and noticed various inscriptions on the bench.

We have subsequently found out more about the bench, and the relevance of the clue ‘After Life’. ‘After Life‘ is Netflix series starring Ricky Gervais, is summarised on Wikipedia as follows :

Set in the fictional town of Tambury, After Life follows newspaper writer Tony Johnson, whose life is turned upside down after his wife dies from breast cancer. He contemplates suicide, but instead decides to spend his life punishing the world for his wife’s death by saying and doing whatever he wants regardless of how it makes other people feel. Although he thinks of this as his “superpower”, his plan is undermined when everyone around him pities him and tries to make him a better person.

One of the features of the series is the interaction of Ricky Gervais’ character with the character played by Penelope Wilton as they sit on a bench. On the basis of these conversations, Netflix have placed 25 similar benches across the UK. The bench in Lightwater Country Park is one of them. It is always good when a cache owner has hidden a cache near a place of significance. Well done!

Netflix has collaborated with suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) in a mental health initiative installing park benches all about the UK.

The iconic bench is the setting across all three series where Anne, played by Penelope Wilton, sits beside Gervais’ character Tony for empathy inspired conversations.

Our final cache, (numbered 4). was closer to the Lightwater Sports Centre. The centre appeared to be busy, as we walked by and into more pine woods. Here the clue was very specific – large tree to the right, and there it was.

5 caches attempted, 4 found and 2 very cold cachers.

All containers were the same like these :

September 17 : Jennett’s Park : Peacock Meadows and Big Wood

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

We hadn’t been out caching for two whole weeks, or anywhere else, either (we caught Covid). But it was a beautiful bright, clear September morning and we thought we could fit a short, local caching trip in around the other stuff we needed to catch up on.   We decided on Peacock Meadows, an area of green space between Wokingham and Bracknell.  We’ve driven past here often enough, on our way to the motorway or elsewhere, and hadn’t given this patch of green very much thought at all.

We parked in Tawny Owl square, and walked along Sparrowhawk Way, passing (among others) Goldfinch Crescent and Osprey Avenue.  We reached Peacock Lane.   Why is everything named after birds?  Well, Jennett’s Park housing estate is built on what used to be Peacock Farm and all the streets were given bird names to keep up the theme.  The old farmhouse is now a pub, the Peacock.

Once across Peacock Lane, we went through an unobtrusive gate in a hedge and were immediately in a large field.  What a contrast!   We’d gone from suburbia to the countryside in just a few paces.  This was Peacock Meadows (North) and we were here to look for a Counting Vowels Multicache, plus four other caches, Big Wood #1-#4, located in and around the wood of the same name (FYI Big Wood is a reasonable size, but it’s not … enormous!)

We started off with the Counting Vowels cache, which conveniently started close to the gate, and walk through the field, collecting clues as we went.   Ahead of us was a tunnel under the A329.  How many times had we driven over that without noticing?  Between us, several thousand …   Of course we went through the tunnel to see if there was anything exciting on the other side, but we didn’t spot anything, not close to the tunnel entrance anyway.

Anyway, back to the main event, the geocaching.  We assembled the remaining coordinates for the Counting Vowels cache very quickly, then a short walk to the cache container.   Yay!  A success to get us started.

After that, we moved on to the four caches of the ‘Big Wood’ series.  Like the rest of Peacock Meadows, the area has been tidied up, with gates, signs and nicely laid paths, so it’s a pleasant short walk out for people living in Jennett’s Park.  Or from elsewhere, like us.

There are two caches in the wood itself, both hidden some way from the path, to keep them from being accidentally discovered, and, in addition, also well concealed.   One cache was in a hole in a tree, well past elbow length, and the other was just as hard to spot. After those two, we emerged into the fields again, to find the remaining caches hidden around the edge of the field; many scratches and much cursing ensued before they were safely found.

An enjoyable little series, in an area we drive past often, without realising the great little area that lies behind the hedges.

And here is just one of the caches we found:

July 24 : Hartland Country Park – SANG

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

What is a SANG?  Here’s some info:

SANG = Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace, an area such as a country park located adjacent to new housing developments (in this case Hartland Village) to provide a recreational space for the residents.  There are some rules: the open space must be at a ratio of 1 hectare or more per 125 residents, and there must be enough space to allow a circular footpath of at least 2.3km.    It seems to be an idea which started in south-east England, though it’s now spreading, and, around Hampshire / Berkshire / Surrey it seems to involve mostly ex-MOD land.   And, for geocachers, these areas also provide nice accessible countryside ideally suited to the placement of geocaches.

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We decided to attempt the nine caches scattered around Hartland Country Park, so we arrived and were quickly on our way to our first cache, ‘Quarter of a pine’.   Which quarter, we wondered?  Answer: the bottom quarter! – the rest has gone missing.  Things started badly, and we couldn’t find the cache; we did find a biro, a large selection of sticks, and a very, very surprised slow-worm!

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  (Bottom) quarter of a pine

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  Slow-worm!

Our next cache, ‘Key to the Door’, was just outside the country park.  It’s a challenge cache,  with the requirement that the finder should also have found other caches containing the words/numbers 1,2,3 … 21.   We had stirred a lot of happy memories while trawling through our past logs, and decided we qualified.  Taking a short-cut through the fence, the cache was easy to find.  Hooray, off the mark.   (FYI: For challenge caches, some finders sign the cache log and then register the find online later on if/when they meet the challenge qualification; we did the checking first so we could sign the log and register the find at the same time.)

Next, over the road to Fleet Spurs football ground.   There was a match in progress – the season has either started early, or finished late – but it meant that no-one was watching us as we sneaked around the edge of the ground to find the cache hidden there.

Feeling more confident (we had found some caches now!), we returned to the country park and set about finding the remaining eight caches hidden there.   Overall, we did pretty well (we thought), finding seven of the nine caches hidden around the park.  The caches were dotted around the park, some close to intriguing ruined structures.

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For us, these places were the real interest of the caching session, and we didn’t know what these things might be.   At the time, we speculated on all kinds of things, including that they were a training area for trench warfare (they weren’t).   Afterwards, we did some did some research.  These are the remnants of the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE).  All sorts of engines were tested here, including those for Concorde (it must have been very noisy indeed at times!).   The ruined structures are striking, and spooky; they were even more of a sight before they were demolished (see these photos)

After a couple of hours, we were done: we’d exercised our thinking and finding skills on the caches, stirred our memories while working out our qualification for the challenge cache, had a good walk around the wooded country park, and seen some unexpected recent history, too.   A well-rounded afternoon out!

And here are some of the caches we found:

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October 10 : Yateley Common

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Wyndham’s Pool, Yateley Common

It was a bit-below-average-weather Saturday, and we had an appointment later on. We decided to fill the time beforehand with a short and local caching trip, that way we could always go home if the weather turned further-below-average. We chose Yateley Common, a place we last visited as lockdown was easing but caching wasn’t then happening. Much more autumnal today, not nearly as warm and sunny …

We parked in the little car park at Wyndham’s Pool and immediately started our first cache, one from the ‘Counting Vowels’ series (to solve these, you visit several locations, make a note of word(s), total the various vowels in the words, then use those numbers to derive the cache coordinates). We did the clues for this cache in a random order, ending up near the final location. A quick diversion into the autumnal undergrowth showed us a spot which would have looked completely natural to a passing muggle (assuming they were passing that particular bit of autumnal undergrowth, which would be fairly unlikely) but which shouted CACHE! to a cacher. And there it was, a nice cache, colourful interior container, success!


Our next cache, a trackable hotel, lay across the common. (Editor’s note: trackable hotels are fairly large caches, usually easy to find, which act as drop off and collection points for trackables, though these can be placed in any cache large enough to hold them.) The small lane near the cache was busy with dog walkers, horse riders, runners, cyclists and walkers, all out for a morning’s exercise. First, we ventured along an obvious – but wrong – path, could see the likely target, but couldn’t reach it, so backtracked and went round a different way. The cache was an easy find and replace and we left a trackable – good luck to Bernadette the Black bear on her travels.


About now, the phone rang. Oh dear: our appointment had just been moved forward by about four hours and we no longer had time to find all the caches we had planned. But two were on our route back to the car park, so, surely, no harm in finding those? We turned around and set off, back across the heath. As we neared the likely location, two muggles plus dogs were approaching. We passed them by, also the cache, so we didn’t look too suspicious. Then we turned around and retraced our steps, oh so slowly, till we got back to the cache location and could do a proper search. We spotted the cache, out of my reach, but gained with a stretch by Mr Hg137.

A rather wet path!

A few minutes more walking brought us back to Wyndham’s Pool, and we took the long way round to reach our final cache, avoiding the soggy paths at one end of the pond. All was quiet, even the fishermen on the far bank, save for the occasional very loud SPLOSH. We thought it might be a large fish (or a small crocodile) but we watched for a little while and saw that it was acorns, falling into the water from a height. After a short walk poolside, we found the cache quickly – yay, all found! – then returned to the geocar for a quick dash homeward.

Here are some of the caches we found:

June 28 – Southwood Country Park

Southwood Country Park is based on the grounds of the former Southwood Golf Course, just South of Farnborough. The Golf Course closed a couple of years ago, and the area was made into a country park shortly after. Well maintained paths surround and criss-cross the park and traces of the former golf course still remain.

10 caches have been placed around the park in a series entitled ‘Southwood Lost Links’. Many of the caches had ‘golfing names’ e.g T off, Water Hole, In the Rough etc..

Seven of the caches were traditional but there were three other cache types. The first a puzzle cache, where a jigsaw of the former golf course had to be solved, to reveal the final coordinates. Another cache was a straightforward multi, which we managed to work out the coordinates before we left home.

The third non-traditional cache type was a ‘letter box’ cache where there is an ink-stamp inside. This was also a ‘multi’ which we didn’t fully realise until we read the full cache description. (Actually the hint ‘tree roots’ made no sense when we were standing in front of a memorial bench!)

The walk around the park was very rural, we saw few houses, and nearby roads were surprisingly quiet. We were only a mile or so from Farnborough Airport, and occasional planes were taking off and landing. Between the trees we espied the Frank Whittle Monument, placed outside the parkland.

Sir Frank Whittle Memorial (Gloster Whittle Aircraft)

Many of the caches were very well hidden, and much thought had been given to ensure they weren’t muggled. The park is relatively busy, so a plastic box under a small pile of twigs would soon disappear. We were surprised by many of the caches including a magnetic cache which were expecting to be a small nano… but it was far, far larger! We didn’t find one of the caches – it was the second cache of the day – and a combination of not quite being the the ‘caching zone’ and probably taking the hint too literally meant the cache called ‘Lost Ball!’ wasn’t found by us!

The creative caches involved false tree-logs, and very imaginatively a bug hotel! The pictures below don’t do the caches justice, and of course we are not showing where they are!

December 22 : Buckler’s Park : Crowthorne and the TRL

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

It was the Saturday before Christmas, and we had loads of things we *should* be doing. So – obviously – we found ourselves in Crowthorne, parking the geocar for a morning’s geocaching. As the December days are short, the paths are now muddy, and we had (ahem) loads to do, we chose somewhere local, and likely to have good paths. The venue was Buckler’s Park, a new housing development in progress on the site of the old Transport Research Laboratory http://www.landghomes.com/developments/bucklers-park The houses are/will mostly be on the side of the site where the TRL buildings were, and a large part of the rest of the site, where the test track was, has been turned into a country park. (Editor’s note: The name comes from Buckler’s cars, which were made in Crowthorne in the 1950s-1960s.)

Buckler’s Park

There’s parking here, overlooking the new houses on one side and the park on the other, and we started the morning by finding a puzzle cache based on the history of the TRL, which we had looked up before setting out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Research_Laboratory After reading some well put-together noticeboards telling us about the history of the site (among many other things, part of the film ‘Quadrophenia’ was filmed here), we set off along a well surfaced and unmuddy path into woods.

There are two new cache series here, ‘New Buckler’s Forest TRL Series’ parts 1 and 2, both placed during the autumn of 2018. The caches are set at regular intervals, close to well surfaced paths, and all are made of/hidden in materials derived from the site or chosen to blend in with the places they are hidden; there are no ill-disguised film canisters or out-in-the-open plastic boxes to be found here; I’m trying not to spoil it by giving away exactly what we found, or where. The country park has retained some parts of the old test site, and there are loads and loads of newly planted trees, lots of varieties, several ponds, and streams newly unearthed from being culverted under the concrete. On this morning, at probably at many other times, this park is hugely popular with walkers, runners, cyclists of all speeds, and dogs in all sizes, shapes and muddiness; it’s hard to find a quiet moment to search for a geocache!

The Pan

Hill Start Hill

We walked past the site of ‘The Pan’, which makes for both interesting signposts and some old and obvious jokes, past ‘Hill Start Hill’, and on to a section of old tarmac which must have been an experimental cycle lane junction, complete with road signs (they were tested on this site), and on towards the northern edge of the park.

Out of position road sign?

The trees thinned, and we emerged onto a wide section of tarmac which turned away from us, the ‘Banked Curve’. This is part of the test circuit from the TRL, where cars used to hurtle around at very high speeds. It’s 10m from bottom to top of the banking, and we both tried, and failed to climb it, though, annoyingly, dogs have no problems. Around the edges of the banking are small green boxes (a bit like telecoms boxes), monitoring boxes left over from testing days, and these have all been kept, some re-used as minibeast hotels, some to become mini-museums or libraries.

Banked Curve

Minibeast hotel

Bird box? Bat box?

Turning back towards the car park, we passed the old fire ponds and fire tower, plus a relic of something automotive … a winner’s podium … strange.

No races near here recently!

After a few more minutes we were back at the car park, and two hours had vanished in a flash. Ten caches attempted, ten found, and an interesting country park. It’s good now, though very, very new. Come the spring, with new growth, it’ll be lovely, and even better with a few year’s maturity, a good place to return to as it develops.

And here is just one of the caches we found (but every single one was special):