August 15 : Playing detective in Finchampstead (part 3)

The Puzzle Detectives series near Finchampstead was divided into 3 mini-routes of 6 caches. The 6 caches we had left to find were on the Finchampstead/Barkham border. The weather had got very, very hot, and just leaving the house was unbearable, so we waited a few days until the temperature had dropped to a tolerable level.

Like the original puzzles we had to answer simple questions about detective series to ascertain numbers to yield coordinates.

Today’s caches were hidden mainly in an area known as Rook’s Nest Wood and Country Park. The agricultural land was taken over by Wokingham District Council as a SANG (Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace) in 2011 and boasts a myriad of paths, some streams and a pond.

We parked at the car park. One of the caches was near the car park and, with a very specific hint, we knew exactly where to search. Our quick inspection yielded nothing. We couldn’t search for longer as a dog walker returned with her two dogs and was half watching our antics. We left the cache for later.

After some discussion, we chose this path… it was wrong!

Several paths led away from the car park, and we had a minor dispute as to the correct one (we went with Mr Hg137s suggestion, but we later discovered Mrs Hg137 was correct!). As a result we took a slightly longer route than necessary to our next cache. As with all Mikes54 caches, the hints are very exact. All we had to do was find a silver birch and a beech tree and a mini birdbox would be the cache. Silver birches and beeches are easy to spot, but it still took us a bit a time, and the bird box was very small ! We extracted the log, signed it and moved on.

Shady woodland

We walked through woodland which provided some cool cover. Back in the open we followed a stream line, to a ‘lonely post’. Even though there had been little rain, the stream had orange traces, and we wondered why. The cache was attached to the ‘lonely post’, and a quick find.

Why is the stream and pond orange ?

We were heading in the direction of Barkham church, and just before we reached it, we turned through 90 degrees onto another footpath. The path narrowed, and just before a stile a large tree and excellent barkoflage provide the hiding place for our third find of the morning.

Barkham Church

Unfortunately the route is not circular so we returned the same way, taking a minor diversion for some sustenance in the churchyard.

Through the wood again, but this we exited in a different direction. We had two caches to find before reaching the car park. Mr Hg137 had loaded the coordinates in the GPS but had mislabelled the map. We thought we were walking to one cache, but in fact the GPS was saying another was much nearer ! Oops !

So after a quick recalibration of our thoughts, we found the ‘nearer’ cache ! Another bird box ! This one covered in false ivy. A very good hide.

So one more cache before returning to the car park. As we strode on, passing a lake, presumably used by cattle, we were aware of 2 people with dogs behind us. We arrived close to GZ, and pulled out our water bottles. It was beginning to get hot, so this action was not too suspicious. We waited for the dog walkers to go out of sight, before finding the cache.

We crossed a couple of bridges on the way to the Car Park discovering why the streams were an orange colour.

The Car Park was empty, and we had another attempt to find the first cache. This time we widened our search and found the cache quite quickly. We had solved the puzzle some time ago, and the hint had changed, so we had out of date information which explained why we struggled earlier..

So all 18 of the Finchampstead Detective series found over 3 attempts including some clever hides.

A couple of the caches we found included :

August 6 : Playing detective in Finchampstead (part 2)

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Saturday, and it was going to be hot again. But we had a plan: a new cache series, The Detectives (Again) had appeared a few days before.   We’d been out earlier in the week in an unsuccessful attempt to be the first to find some of them.   This time we were going out early, while it was still relatively cool, to try to complete the rest of the series.

As before, we parked near Finchampstead church.  Our first cache was one of the oldest in the area, the Royal Oaks (Queens Oak II), with clues based upon the various oaks, which are of different sizes and sub-species and which were planted to mark various royal jubilees.   The oaks are also commemorated in the Queen’s Oak pub across the green, the only pub in the country with that name.

We then moved on to a cache from the Counting Vowels series.   For these, we needed to locate various words and phrases on gates/signs/notices, total the various vowels and turn the numbers into coordinates.    We’re big fans of this series and have been seeking them out since the first one appeared in autumn 2017.    We worked our way steadily through the waypoints, along paths we’ve often walked before (and have cached long before, very very early in our caching career). After a few sums we were off to the final location, where the cache was speedily found.  It was very busy with dog-walking muggles here, like us, out early on a hot summer’s day.

We moved on to ten caches in the Detectives (Again) series.  We’d solved the puzzles a few days before, and had come up with locations and an approximate route.  For each cache:

• the cache title gave the initial letter of a detective or police series
• the cache description gave a brief synopsis of the plot, location or key characters
• there were several questions about the series, and all the answers were on Wikipedia

We had a lovely walk in the country, along quiet lanes and field paths, and through wooded areas – these became ever more attractive as the morning warmed!   We saw horses and cattle, grazing the sun-parched fields, and spotted a red kite and a buzzard, one hunting, one circling lazily on a thermal.

At one point, a muggle couple came by. The lady was wearing a Commonwealth Games 2022 T-shirt, while Mr Hg137 was wearing his London 2012 T-shirt. Much discussion ensued about the relative price of tickets and the standard of the gymnastics events across the two venues (price and standard fairly equal, we decided).   And, on our way to the very next cache … we spotted four muggles coming in the opposite direction. One of them stopped us and asked ‘are you doing what we think you’re doing?’ Yes – we admitted to being geocachers. One of those muggles was also a geocacher – hello to dz260! He mentioned that he’d not been able to find the cache we were aiming for, so we approached in hope, and spotted the cache.   (We have read other logs and know that dz260 came back for a second try and was successful next time round.)

Passing through a nature reserve in a small patch of woodland at Shepperlands Farm, we gradually climbed back up the hill and returned to our starting point.   We’d hoped to find one more Counting Vowels cache near here, but we were thwarted: a wedding was about to start, and crowds of well-dressed folk were walking up to the church.   Never mind, that cache can wait: it was very hot by now and we went home to find some welcome shade.

Here are some of the caches we found:

August 1 Playing Detective in Finchampstead (part 1 – First to Find attempt)

We have remarked on this blog before that we are not First-to-Find hounds. We do not have our phones, our GPS or our laptops set so that they bleep at us every time a cache has been planted within a 10 mile radius.

So it was odd, that mid-morning on August 1, Mr Hg137 pressed the ‘newest caches’ button on http://www.geocaching.com. There were 18 puzzles caches newly published! And none had been found !

The cache owner, Mikes54, had created 3 mini-routes of 6 caches each, two routes broadly in Finchampstead and one in Barkham. The puzzles were of the same type as ones we had recently solved in the Blackwater Valley area :

• the cache title gave the initial letter of a detective or police series
• the cache description gave a broad synopsis of the series plot, location or key characters
• there were 3 or 4 questions about the series, all the answers could be found on wikipedia

The TV series ‘Butterflies’ is not one of the answers!

Each of the puzzles had a ‘geochecker’ so the calculated final coordinates could be verified. Several people had been through the checker with the correct coordinates. Had they already left home to find the caches ?

We decided to solve two of the puzzles. We chose puzzles 8 and 9 in the series (working on the assumption cachers would start their walk from either cache 1 (and go forwards) or from cache 18 (and go backwards).

Cache 8 (letter ‘I’ ) was based based on a 1970s American series, we both remembered being on TV, Cache 9 (‘L’) was far more contemporary, even though we hadn’t seen it.

We had our answers checked… and more importantly no finds had been logged against either cache – so we set off. 2 minutes down the road we realised we had left a couple of garden doors open…whoops!

We parked close to Finchampstead Church. There was one other car nearby… did it belong to a cacher ?

Dog walkers.. or cachers ?

We walked purposefully down a road looking out for other cachers. There were none, just dog walkers disappearing into the distance. The road became a track and shortly we arrived at Ground Zero. The cache owner, gives very specific hints, so we could reach down and locate the cache with little fuss.

First cache we found… but were we the first to find ?

We opened the container, unrolled the log … hoping to find an empty log sheet…but no.. someone had beaten us to it! We are not sure what time they arrived, but we signed the log at 1142 ! Not bad considering we only saw the cache had been published barely an hour earlier!

We walked to the second of the caches we had solved. Again an easy find, and another Second-To-Find!

Second cache… second to find !

We retired back to the car, annoyed we didn’t secure a First-to-Find, but the adrenalin from the ‘hunt’ was pulsing through our veins for a while afterwards.

With hindsight, we might have got a first-to-find if we had solved caches 17 and 18, as only one cacher was finding the new caches that morning … and they started at cache 1!

As for the other 16 caches in the series…. watch this space!

Are the other 16 caches down this path ?

July 10 : Simon’s Wood

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Today we were caching in Simon’s Wood, an area of woodland, heath, and ponds, owned by the National Trust, and popular with walkers.   And who was Simon?  Mr CGH Simon gave part of the woods to the National Trust in 1913, one of their earliest acquisitions.

We failed to find our first cache, ‘Christmas at Simon’s’, close to where we had parked.    Disappointed at this – the first cache often sets the tone for the rest of the session – we moved on to a puzzle cache from the ‘Famous Berkshire Residents’ series.  Again, we failed.   The GPS pointed fixedly past a boundary we couldn’t cross, and we spent a while examining every likely item nearby.   But the vegetation is lush at this time of year, and we realised after a while we weren’t going to find it, gave up and moved on.   Oh dear, not a good start at all.

Impenetrable boundary

Reaching Heath Ride, we walked on through the woods, past the high gates of the Heritage Club, to look for two caches in a (very) short series called ‘Camel 1’ and ‘Camel 2’.   Why?  All became clear as we approached the first cache.   And, after that, the second cache in the mini-series was a quick find, too.  We felt happier now – we’d found something! – and soon found a third cache too, ‘Broken Fence’.   This cache was just beyond the edge of the National Trust land, and it was obvious when we passed the boundary – the track suddenly became soft and muddy. (Well done to the NT for their maintenance!)

One hump or two?

We followed the old Roman road from London to Silchester, now a track, arriving at Heath Pond. This is one of the most open areas in the woods, and always a good spot to pause and watch life going on around the water.  Today, there were lots of ducks, coots and geese, dog walkers, and folk out for a walk or just a seat on a bench overlooking the water.  

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Heath Pond

We had planned to find a cache from the ‘Counting Vowels’ series, with many of the clues based around the pond; we needed numbers from five waypoints. Unfortunately for us, a muggle was sat firmly upon one of the waypoints, watching the ducks, and showed no signs of moving.  We found the rest of the clues in a random order, doing several circuits of the pond, then returned, and the muggle had now moved on.  Having got the final number, we sat where the muggle had sat, and assembled some coordinates.   The appointed place was a little way away; we arrived, and contemplated the hint.  It was complex:

…”In the hole of the remains of a very small mossy small stump, covered by bark. From the stone NT marker, it is approximately 25 paces south east, on a bearing of 120 degrees, into the trees. Close to a thin tree, and a knobbly tree”…

Well, we looked for stone markers, followed the GPS to the location, counted paces, took bearings, and examined stumps and trees of all sizes (but it’s a wood, and full of bark, trees and stumps).  After some time, we found the cache!

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Christmas at Simon’s – it’s somewhere here!

And finally – ‘Christmas at Simon’s’ – again.  It was, sort of, on the way back to the car park.  We got ourselves reasonably close to the likely location (again), then spent a while examining every likely spot (again) before eventually happening upon the correct one.

And here are some of the caches we found:

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August 8 : Finchampstead Ridges

Finchampstead Ridges lies on the south-facing scarp of the Blackwater Valley, with impressive views of the neighbouring counties of Hampshire and Surrey. The upper slopes are heather clad with pine clumps, while on the wetter lower slopes there are oak and holly.

Finchampstead Ridges also hosts 4 geocaches, and we set off early, ahead of a forecast 30 degree heat, to find them. Two of the caches were multis and two were traditional.

We parked at the top of the Ridges near to one of the waypoints for one of the multis. We extracted some information from the toposcope (our third toposcope in a week !), and proceeded towards the valley bottom.

Near to the toposcope a young couple were decorating a tent with balloons. Apparently it was their daughter’s first birthday and there would a socially distanced outdoor event later.

Fine views through the trees looking into Hampshire

Partway to the second waypoint of the multi we headed for one of the traditional caches. And a very old cache too. It was hidden in February 2003 and over that time much of the undergrowth has changed. Ferns have sprung up, trees fallen over and the hint ‘under the roots of a fallen silver birch’ could have applied to many locations. We searched several and found nothing. Then we remembered the cache was an ammo box. These are not small items. We changed our search criteria to areas that could hide such a box. Eventually, after widening our search for a third time we found the cache. A slightly wet log book, after 17 years not unreasonable! This was we discovered afterwards the 15th oldest cache we have found!

A very old cache…

…and its log book

We returned to the multi and walked to an area called Spout Pond. The dry weather had taken its toll as there was barely any water (or mud) to see. We collected some numbers for our multi and walked along the Southern edge of the Ridges to collect our final set of numbers. We now had the information to find the cache, this entailed climbing back up the hill, and zigzagging our way from footpath to footpath. Fortunately a quick find at Ground Zero.

What a great den!

Nearby was the second traditional cache. Sadly for us, a tree climb. It took us some time to even locate the correct tree, and then realising there was no useful branch below 6 feet, we walked away. The day was already becoming hotter, and too much precious energy would be lost climbing.

Tree climb ? Let’s leave it!

We arrived back at the family gathering to start our final cache, a Counting Vowels multi. By now a gazebo, a rug, a cool box, and many more balloons had appeared. The Counting Vowels multi involved finding words on benches and signs and counting the appropriate number of As, Es,Is, Os and Us. This seemed straightforward, but the first sign was almost overgrown with vegetation, the first memorial bench was being used and we waited patiently on another slurping the now much-needed water.

The bench was vacated and Mr Hg137 dived across to read the memorial plaque. As he did so someone else arrived hoping to use the bench. Mr Hg137 explained we just wanted to see the plaque for a ‘treasure hunt’ game. However this seemed distinctly banal as the passer-by had known the person concerned and gave a 2 minute history of that person’s splendid works as a local Councillor!

Another memorial bench!

We had one more bench to find (passing the young family and their growing entourage again), and then onto the final. By now the day was getting very hot and we were grateful for a very quick find.

Back to the car, passing the young family yet again (by now we thought we should have been offered some birthday cake) and home to cool off.

A great little morning’s caching!

November 3 : Sandhurst (Gloucs) to Sandhurst : Swallowfield to Sandhurst

The final day of our epic walk from Sandhurst (Gloucs) to Sandhurst (Berks); this section completed the line between all 3 Sandhursts – as last year we walked from Berkshire to Sandhurst in Kent.

Eversley Ford

Today’s 13 mile route would take us over very familiar territory.

We have been caching for over 6 years and we, like most cachers we guess, have found most of our caches close to home. Today’s route would pass through several series we had previously undertaken. It was therefore a little surprising we managed to attempt 13 caches that we had never attempted before!

As we left Swallowfield we noted that the village Firework Fiesta would be happening that evening. Our car was parked close to the main event… we needed to be finish our walk and return with our other car well before the fireworks started – otherwise we would be stuck in traffic!

Our first three caches were all on the Swallowfield boundary. The first, intriguingly titled ‘Twists, Turns and Flow’ and was under a bridge over the River Broadwater. With such a scary title we were a little concerned we may get wet, but a close examination of the bridge from the side, meant the retrieval was easy and dry!

Don’t drop the cache!

The River Broadwater is a small river and has two tributaries, the Whitewater and the Blackwater. Today’s walk would be following the River Blackwater all the way to Sandhurst.

Our next cache was a Church Micro at the nearby Swallowfield Church. The previous cacher had logged a DNF, but we found the cache quite easily. A small clip box, with a fine view of the Church. Our last cache in Swallowfield was adjacent to a large oak tree – another easy find.

Swallowfield Church

Pleased with our early successes we then had a 2-3 mile walk to another set of caches close to Eversley Ford.

On the way our path initially followed the River Broadwater quite closely, yet we somehow missed where the Blackwater and Whitewater merged, as we were too busy watching a horse and trap being exercised in an adjacent field!

Prior to Eversley Ford we arrived at Farley Ford. We had been to this spot twice before, once when we undertook the Hampshire Drive series (November 2016), and once when completed the Farley Forage series (August 2017). We desperately tried to remember some of the hides in the Farley Forage series, but we failed to re-find any of the caches based on our recall of the circuit.

Farley Ford…visited for the THIRD time on our caching travels!

We left the Farley Forage series, walked through several fields with horses until we arrived at lane leading to our next cache. Here the hint mentioned a ditch crossing. Once we found the correct ditch (fortunately dry), it was easy to locate the cache. In fact, it hadn’t been hidden that well, so we hid it slightly better.

Our walk so far had been North of the River Blackwater in Berkshire, At Eversley Ford we crossed into Hampshire, where an old county marker hosts a cache. The cache owner requests that the cache is moved ‘to the other county’ after each find. We moved it back to its proper place.. into the Royal County of Berkshire.

The Ford itself was busy – we paused for coffee. During our short stop we saw many a dog-walker, cyclist and rambler use the foot-crossing by the ford. The nearby Eversley Mill was a restaurant until a few years ago – sadly now closed.

After a short while the Hampshire footpath took us into the village of Eversley where a bus stop provided us with a straightforward find. (Readers may remember we struggled with the Silchester Bus Stop cache, so we really grateful for very explicit hint here !)

Our brief sortie into Hampshire was over and we re-crossed the river back into Berkshire, and followed in reverse the Finchampstead Undulations series. This stretch brought back happy memories as it was one of the first series we undertook way back in January 2013 (and one of our first blog entries too!). Of course we couldn’t remember where these caches were either, but we did recall having to jump across a stream to find a cache, but this looked impossible now as there was a wire-fence on the far side of the ditch.

We also remembered a very muddy path, yet ours was dry and the view the river had changed completely. Instead of a muddy grass field, hundred of trees had been planted. This will be quite a forest in years to come!

Future Forest of Tomorrow

The Finchampstead Undulation series has had a couple of changes over the years, notably the addition of a couple of extra caches. The first cleverly hidden close to the ‘Welcome to Wokingham’ sign, the other less-cleverly hidden in a 45 degree angle fence post.

Up to now, we had been following the river, but now we were in lake territory. Over many years, gravel extraction had taken place and the huge pits have been converted into wildlife lakes. The banks between the lakes form an intricate pattern of paths and it was one of these that we chose to make a small diversion from our route. We almost regretted that decision when it took us 15 minutes to find the cache! It was hidden in a hollow tree-trunk, but the GPS wobbled a lot, we needed to jump (another!) ditch, and fight our way past brambles and thorny branches.

After this ordeal, we noticed a seat and we were in need of sustenance. The seat had been placed facing some bird feeders and we watched blue tits, great tits, robins, blackbirds and magpies all come to feed unaware of our presence.

Yateley Lakes

We proceeded along the lake banks for another mile or so and found the best two caches of the day. The first hanging in plain sight, and the second inside a garden gnome!

We’ve found over 2500 caches, and never seen a cache inside a gnome!

Besides the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst has one really (in)famous landmark, “Happy Christmas” bridge

The Blackwater Valley path deviates from the river as it approaches Sandhurst. There is an area of fishing lakes, and private property, so for a mile we had a section of road walking.

We have found many of the Sandhurst caches on our caching exploits over the last 6 years, and today we added 2 more. The first was well protected by a huge fungus, and the second was a small magnetic nano.

The last cache of the day!

Not the most spectacular cache, but it did mean we found 13 caches out of 13! All we had to do was re-cross the river back into Hampshire, walk along the Blackwater (South side), cross back into Berkshire and finish our grand walk at the Sandhurst sign, where we started our walk to Sandhurst (Kent) nearly 2 years ago.

Phew !

Journey’s End

Then a quick drive back to Swallowfield to retrieve our other car before a firework cordon enveloped it ! Accomplished with ease!

EPILOGUE

Our 85+ mile journey was complete.

We had walked from the Sandhurst (Gloucs), close to River Severn, back home.

We had walked through pretty Cotswold villages, climbed hills, walked along the Ridgeway and by a myriad of rivers and canals.

When we started our walk the paths and fields were flooded following the 2018 ‘Beast from the East’, we had endured the 2018 Summer heat and somehow missed the named Autumn storms by a few miles.

We found 250 caches on our way home in phone boxes, bus stops, and Roman amphitheatres. We also managed to break our daily caching record .. twice!

Most of the route had been on footpaths, some of which we would never have found without the geocaches set on them, so thank you to all the cache owners whose caches we have attempted, as you have helped guide us home!

We hope you have enjoyed reading about this year’s Sandhurst to Sandhurst journey – its been quite varied!

Caches in the final section included :

July 29 Simons Wood, Wokingham

This was week 3 of the Mary Hyde challenge. This week to gain the Mary Hyde souvenir one had to find or deposit a trackable. Finding trackables can often be tricky, as frequently caches are listed as ‘containing a trackable’ but due to various reasons, the trackable is missing. We were therefore grateful we had a trackable in our possession, Annerschter (aka Henry’s Cat). But where to place it ? The weather was forecast to very wet so a short caching trip was planned in Simons Wood on the border of Wokingham/Crowthorne/Finchampstead. Fingers crossed we would finish before it rains!

Simons Wood is owned the National Trust, and is a heavily wooded, and in places heavily rhododendron-ed. The National Trust are slowly removing many of these large invasive plants, but it will still take some time until Simons Wood loses its ‘jungle’ feel.

Is it a jungle or is it Simon’s Wood?

We’ve cached here before – way back in July 2014 when we found one the UK’s oldest geocaches, first hidden in 2003.
Today would be on the other side of the Wood and we would circumnavigate a property known as ‘The Heritage Club’.

Our first find, was well hidden under a fallen tree. We quickly discovered though, it was not a simple find. The cache had been procured from cache maker JJEF, and we had to work out how to open the cache! Like many of JJEF’s caches, it only takes a minute or two..but it gave our ‘little grey cells’ a light work out. As the cache was quite big, it was here placed Annerschter in.

No prizes for guessing where the cache is …

…here!

The second and third caches were harder to find. The hints were ‘near a circular clearing’ and ‘in the roots of a silver birch’. Well, woodland is always changing. Clearings are not clearings for long, silver birches tend to form a mini forest of their own.

For both caches we spent 10-15 minutes looking at a myriad of hiding places, and came close to DNFing both.

Amost a DNF !

Fortunately persistence paid off, and we were successful at each.

Our route back to the car passed the gates of ‘The Heritage Club’, a grandiose title which can easily be mistaken. It is not some 17th century building, or 19th century steam railway.. it is in fact a nudist holiday camp.

The Heritage Club

This accounts for the very high, prison-like fences surrounding the property. Given our struggles to find the last two caches we probably wouldn’t have seen anything if the fences weren’t so high!

Last cache of the day

The skies were darkening and cars had headlights on (at 11 am on a July morning!) we had a quarter of a mile yomp along a pavement back to the car. One cache to find – magnetic behind a road sign – and we would have finished. Yards from the car park, the first raindrops fell and we reached the car without getting too wet but having gained another Mary Hyde souvenir.

July 19 – WHY revisited!

You may remember from our July 6 we visited the Wick Hill Yomp series (WHY) and accidentally walked off with one of the logs.

This was the day we would return it.

Like most geocachers we didn’t want to just go to the one cache – especially one we had already claimed – so we planned a different route to it – via Simon’s Wood.

Simon’s Wood (and the adjoining Heath Pond) are managed by the National Trust consist of mixed woodland, numerous paths and tracks (most of which are not on maps) and is listed as an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The day was very hot, though they had been an overnight thunderstorm, which meant that some of the paths had some large puddles to negotiate.

Cache 1 – “Stumpy” was closest to the car park. First placed back in February 2003 it was hidden not in a stump but behind one. Finding the stump was quite hard as the tree cover made direction finding quite difficult. We were grateful for the two notable hints of 7 and 8 trunked Sweet Chestnuts as this did ensure we were well on target. One of the largest caches we’d seen in a long while – these cache sizes seemed to be the norm back in 2003.

Big Cache.. even bigger spelling error!

Cache 2 – “Heath Pool”. Our walk through Simon’s Wood took us towards the triangular Heath Pool. Here we paused several times to allow for dog-walkers to pass, before our search started “in a fallen tree”. Typically we started at the wrong end of the ‘fallen tree’ but a few minutes later the log was signed.

Heath Pool

Cache 2 … some big log!

Our plan now was to visit WHY 2 to re-deploy the log book.

On our way we passed another cache- this time involving a tree climb. We looked long and hard, but in the end we decided not to attempt climbing 20 feet up wet slippery branches !

So which way to the WHY 2 cache ? We decided to follow the most obvious looking path. It broadly followed the correct direction, and providing it turned left, we’d have done our duty. The path didn’t – it turned right and went behind a row of houses we were fairly certain were on the WHY route… but no way through the large gardens. So we back-tracked and took a small side turning to a little clearing containing 3 large fallen trees. A great place to hide a cache.. but our task was to find WHY 2.
So we walked back to the ‘cache in the tree’ and followed a every-decreasing footpath until it turned through 90 degrees, where it became a bridleway. Pity the horses which come along here ! Steep, slippery, overhanging rhododendrons, and barbed wire on the paths edge. Using our best balancing skills we made it through these obstacles, and arrived at WHY 2 where we eventually replaced the log. As we said in our previous post … sorry we took it!

So one cache left to find .. “One of Three”. Guess what! We had to retrace our steps through the obstacle course, and back to “the cache in the tree” which even on our third visit still didn’t look inviting. The GPS signalled us down a path previously walked… to the clearing with 3 large fallen trees! Grr .. if we looked our GPS earlier we’d have found the cache without undue walking in what was becoming very extreme heat.

Still all we had to do then was head back to the car (passing of course “the cache in the tree” for the fourth (!) time.

Three caches found – and one returned log.. and one cool shower to look forward to.

July 6 – Signseekers Geo Achievement Coin 250

As we mentioned in our previous post, we collected a fresh trackable on our walk around Wick Hill.

This was a relatively large geo-coin which had been released to celebrate the owners 250th geocache find. (Given we are on nearly 700 finds, clearly we must have missed this opportunity somehow!).

It started its journey in December 2013 in Tennessee, and since then spent the first month in and around Nashville and Chattanooga before reaching the UK in January 2014.It spent most of its time in the UK visiting Devon, Cornwall and Somerset before branching out to visiting South Wales and Gloucester prior to arriving in Berkshire where we found it.

We have a trip to Brighton planned so fingers crossed we can find a cache that it will fit in.

The geocoin’s mission is to travel the world… its got someway to go as its only completed two very small corners of two different countries! Good luck in your future travels!

July 6 – Wick Hill Yomp (WHY)

Many times, when you are caching, you have unexpected pleasures.

These could be because the cache trail is unexpectedly scenic, on local footpaths that one didn’t know existed, or very well constructed hides.

The Wick Hill Yomp (11 caches WHY1 – WHY11) provided us with the last two pleasures. The route was within 5 miles of home, on footpaths we had never/rarely used, and the hides were very well thought through.

(It is all too easy for a cache to be a plastic film container hidden under a pile of twigs behind a tree).

These caches had that little bit extra, and some careful searching was needed throughout.

The circuit itself was about 3 miles long, mainly footpaths and not-quite-fully-tarmacked roads and after about a half a mile walk from the car we arrived at WHY 1. The hint alluded to ‘stickoflage and a multi-trunk tree’. Ground Zero contained only one such tree… let the search begin! 20 minutes later we had still not found the cache.. we had looked at EVERY tree nearby and poked every crevice (Really ?!). We gave up ! Not the start we wanted!

We arrived at cache 2. We looked for the hint item (‘roots of a fallen tree’) – nothing near GZ. Were we really losing it ?! We searched a bit longer, and then, much to our relief the cache was spotted. A medium sized container, quickly opened, log taken out and signed, we placed the Proximity Trackable inside the cache before replacing it in its hidey-hole. (Ed : if you are an experienced cacher reading this, re-read the last sentence and think about what we did)

Our success continued for several other WHY caches – many were very well hidden in the trees and fences along the way.

We like these Ivy Trees… not much Ivy!

We diverted off-route part-way round to visit Finchampstead’s War Memorial or at least a cache at some seats nearby. Another fail! However reading the logs, many others have failed here, possibly due to a large fallen tree at GZ!

Finchampstead War Memorial

Back the WHY trail and our finds kept coming, some underneath oak trees, others under metal gates. On reaching cache 10, we swapped trackables! We left the Earth Geocoin and collected the Sunseekers Geo Achievement Coin 250.

After the finding WHY 11 – we had found all the WHY series bar number 1. We decided to go back and look again. We returned to the multi-trunk tree and searched for a second time. After 10 minutes we found a small hidey-hole that must have been missed 90 minutes earlier. Phew – the series was complete!

WHY 1 … but where is the cache ?

Our walk back to the car went by our 12th find of the day… leaving us on a total of 699 caches! (If only we had not had the one DNF we would have found 700 caches!)

So did you spot the mistake at WHY 2 ? We didn’t until 10 days later !!! We didn’t put the logbook back in the cache! We accidentally took it home with us! We have let the cache owner know and we will replace it back in the cache shortly. Whoops! …. Do let us know if you’ve ever done this!