January 13 : Swinley Forest

Swinley Forest is an area of woodland to the South and East of Bracknell.

Today’s caching trip was in a ‘diamond’ shape bounded by 4 major roads (The A329 to the North, the A332 to the East, the A322 to the South and the B3430 to the West).

Our main aim was to visit 4 standard caches broadly close to each of those roads (and appropriately named North, East, South and West). We had solved a couple of puzzle caches which we hoped to find on route, as well as another cache in the centre of the forest diamond.

One of the puzzle caches we had solved was a simple picture identification task once the cache title ‘nice tours, erotic sun’ had been interpreted. The other was more obscurely titled ’30 / 7’. Within the puzzle we had to ascribe numbers to simple words like ‘PANS’, and ‘DANCE’. Once inspiration struck, the puzzle was quickly solved.

One of the puzzle caches was hidden in a holly tree. Deep in a holly tree. There were several at GZ, but one large specimen stood out. We circled it several times, peering into it to no avail. We decided the best way to locate the cache was to scramble into the tree, through lots of prickly leaves and look outwards. Mrs Hg137 volunteered (!), while Mr Hg137 re-read previous finder’s logs. One of the logs made mention of the many dog walkers, which indeed there were, but to find the cache, one had to ‘stand where you cant see the dog walkers’. Mr Hg137 sidled around the tree, hiding himself more and more from the footpath. He looked in… and found the cache. It was easier, just, for Mrs Hg137 to be directed to it..before she left the tree incurring a few more scratches.

Our second puzzle cache find, was in a much quieter location and trusting the GPS implicitly, Mrs Hg137 found the cache in an instant, and in a far less prickly place.

The Northernmost part of our route

Then onto the Compass Series.. North was nearby and we managed to find the cache and leave GZ before a dog walker came by. We even found a trackable too called Travel Toad.

To reach East, we had to cross the centre of the diamond passing another cache ‘Mr Jennison’s Fridge’. An intriguing title .It referred to the ice house of a former grand house in the forest. The cache description provides the following information :

The cache is placed very close to the site of an old ice house belonging to Swinley Lodge. Until the 1820’s (when it was demolished) this was the official residence of the Master of the Royal Buckhounds. It was the location for the monarch and his entourage to meet for breakfast when they were hunting in this area of the forest.

During the reign of George II the hunt’s master was a Mr Jennison. He was a thorough representative of the conviviality of the age, a “five bottle man” who would not allow his friends to walk away from the table.

The ice house was a deep, brick lined pit, surrounded by a circle of trees. In its shady depth food was kept fresh for as long as possible.

Part of a semi-circular entrance to Swinley Lodge

Sadly for us, the ice house has long gone and the cache seems to have disappeared too. After much searching we logged a Did Not Find. Always disappointing to log a DNF, but as there had been a couple of DNFs by other cachers in the weeks before our visit, not unexpected.

Up to now the paths had been dry, sandy heathland paths, but on our way to East the paths got muddier and muddier. Drainage ditches ran parallel to the paths, and we spent some time picking our way between less muddy sections.

East was quite cunningly hidden (well in Mr Hg137’s eyes). In the bole of a tree. A small bole. Mr Hg137 removed the ‘tiny barkoflage’ and found nothing. It was the only tree of note, so Mrs Hg137 had a feel. She discovered the bole had a kink in it, and the cache was hidden beyond the kink. Very clever!

The day was cold, and we were now at the furthest point from our car, with two caches still to find. South’s hint was ‘stickoflage’ and the GPS resolutely pointed to one particular tree  – sadly for us, we couldn’t find the stickoflage or the cache. We did note though the cache had not been found since November, and since then there had been a substantial leafdrop covering the ground. Perhaps after a few more weeks the stickoflage will be visible, but for us, our second DNF of the day.

So we headed another back to our car passing West as we did so. Unlike the other caches, this was clearly visible, but protected by a large tree. It was only as we peered through the lower branches could we see the cache at ground level. An easy find, and another trackable too (The Tourist).

So 5 caches found of 7, but more importantly a great walk in a part of Swinley Forest we have barely explored.

December 29 : Barkham : “on the Dole”

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

On one of the non-raining days between Christmas and New Year, we were out for a short morning caching walk, not too far from home.

 We chose Barkham, within a mile or so of a place I used to work.   The route to our starting point was very familiar indeed, as I’d driven it more than a few times in the past on my daily commute.   (Probably a few thousand times…)

Doles Lane

We ambled slowly along Doles Lane in the sunshine, admiring the Christmas decorations in the adjoining houses.   Doles Lane is tarmacked at both ends, with a track in between, and we thought it would be quiet.    Not quite right!   A nearby road is closed and a few enterprising drivers are using the road/track as a cut-through – some get more than they expected in the puddly, unsurfaced section in the middle.

Squelch!

It seemed as if every possible muggle in the area was also out for a walk/cycle/run in the sun, and we had to confine our cache searching to the short gaps when no-one was passing.   After finding three caches, we reached the end of Doles Lane, skirted the “Road Closed” signs, and followed a path along the edge of Sand Martins Golf Club.   It quickly got muddy – very, very muddy – but we’d read the cache description before leaving home and were wearing walking boots, so we slithered and slid our way to another two caches, while watching the efforts of a less well-prepared dog walker – the dog was having a great time, not so sure about the owner!

Nashgrove Lane

After a bit we crossed a metal bridge and emerged onto Nashgrove Lane.   It’s a quiet lane, another that’s popular with walkers, dogs and cyclists.  Yes it was a very popular morning for a post-Christmas outing.   Soon after I moved to the area, I remember driving the length of this lane, while trying to familiarise myself with all the possible routes to work.   It was a bit … bumpy … and I never drove down there again.  And in 2012 it was closed to cars and a barrier was placed across the road.  We found our final cache of the morning hidden by the barrier, then made our way back across the fields to Doles Lane, and homeward for a turkey, cranberry and stuffing sandwich lunch.   What a nice bit of post-Christmas exercise!

And here are some of the caches we found:

February 26 : Fifield

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

A beautiful clear Saturday, and we were off to Fifield, a small village just south of the River Thames.  A new geocache series, the ‘GilDean Ramble #5’, had been placed here only days before.   We’d put in some pre-work to determine the locations of the caches, as they are mystery (or puzzle) caches where a puzzle is to be solved to determine the location of the caches.   There was an ’aha’ moment as we guessed the theme (which we think is a current – or mostly former – TV series with a connected subject).   There followed some scribbling, some Googling, and some sums.   There are twelve caches in the series, each with a number written inside the lid of the container, which can be used to derive the location of a bonus cache.  On the map, the caches are laid out in a neat cross-shape – needless to say, the coordinates derived after solving each puzzle place the actual caches across a much wider area, spread approximately between Fifield and Oakley Green, the next village to the east.

Fifield caches

We set off into Fifield village to look for our first cache, called ‘Fifield Village’, another new cache, but not part of the series.   It starts at a postbox, and, as we rounded a corner, a lady with two dogs was standing in front of it. She was taking a suspiciously long time to post a letter … we approached and greeted her – hello Pebbles, Meggie, and Honey! Nice to meet you!   At the time of writing this blog, Pebbles&Co have found well over 55,000 caches, the 4^th most prolific finder in the UK.   And, by comparison, we have found about 3750 caches and are in about position 2500.   We are just beginners!

Pebbles&Co

We went our separate ways to find the caches in the series.   We’d worked out a route which took us hither and thither around the footpaths of Fifield (as if we were auditioning for Google Street View!).   It was a glorious spring morning: skylarks singing, leaf buds swelling, sunshine, mud (mud? Yes, quite a bit in places). And the caches – how did we do?   Well, without giving away exact locations, we found them all, most quite quickly, some after a great deal of prickly searching, and some after traversing some muddy bits.   Part way round, Pebbles passed us; she was getting on more quickly than us, and stopped to pass on hints about two of the caches she’d already found – just as well, we would have failed to find at least one of those without that assistance.   There were caches behind posts, in trees, under bridges, in hedges, by gates, widely spread around the area.  

Every so often we broke off to find a local cache, an ‘extra’ to the series.   The owners of those caches may be wondering why they are now being found much more frequently?   It’s because caches that are in a series (or near others) tend to be found more often; isolated caches are found less frequently; one of the ‘extra’ caches we found was about four years old, but had only been found about 60 times … and 6 of those were in the last two weeks, since the new geocache series was placed nearby.   Our wanderings to the ‘extra’ caches took us as far as Oakley Green cemetery, which also provided us with a handy seat for our picnic lunch.   (Not many seats today, not many at all.)

Oakley Green Cemetery

Just after lunch – near disaster.   Mr Hg137 bent down to extricate a cache and stood up … blood dripping from both hands.   Oh dear, lots of blood.  The cache was put aside and urgent first aid started.   His hands were washed (we carry water with us) till we could find the source.    The blood was traced to a thin, deep cut running the length of a top finger joint.   Next up, stop the bleeding.  Oops, we’d left the first aid kit in the car.   A spare Covid mask was repurposed to form a bandage.  The elastic ear straps were removed and tied to apply compression, and it worked beautifully.  (We’re sorry, we don’t have photos of the incident, we were both busy at the time!)

Once all was sorted out, we went on our way.   All through the day, we’d had a recurring … ”we’ve been here before” … feeling, and we were correct.   At one place, we could remember exactly where there used to be a cache, so we went to look – and there it was!   The old series was the ‘Fifield Ramble’, which we found back in 2017.  The caches were made/placed by JJEF, a local cacher who favours one-off constructions usually made from wood.   We remembered how it worked, tried the mechanism and the cache popped open, to show everything in great condition, plus a nice dry log last signed just before the series was discontinued in 2019.    (As an aside, if you ever come across a cache made by, or set by JJEF, it is very well worth doing – finding the cache isn’t the problem, it’s getting inside to sign the log!)

Bird box 1 back in 2017 …

… and the same cache in 2022

And finally, we’d found all the caches in the Gildean Ramble #5 series, and now had a set of numbers (written inside) to turn into coordinates for the bonus cache.   We found another seat and sat down to do some calculations – it seemed quite some way away, we wondered if we had written down a number (or two) incorrectly.    No matter, we were going in that direction anyway, and there were some extra caches along the way, including a Counting Vowels cache.   Apart from Pebbles and us, we noticed other signatures with today’s date; hmm, other cachers were around, too.

Spotted on our route – Fifield residents?

Having stopped again to check the coordinates for the bonus cache, we eventually arrived at the spot we had calculated.   It wasn’t where we had expected it to be, but at least the surroundings matched the hint.   We searched, then looked again, and eventually spotted the bonus cache.   Phew – a full set!   Then we set off back to Fifield and the geocar.   Two people were walking towards us: the swiftly hidden GPS was a giveaway.   Hello to Crispy 1 and Dora_Explorer – another two very experienced geocachers!   Of course, we stopped for a chat; they, too, were heading for the bonus cache.  We reassured them that the coordinates for the bonus cache were correct, and off they went.

We returned to the geocar, handily parked almost next to an ‘extra’ cache for both a final find and a waypoint to navigate back to.    We’d found all nineteen caches we’d attempted, had a day out in the countryside and the spring sunshine, had done a decent longish walk, the first for some while, and had met lots of lovely cachers, dogs, and horses.   Oh, and we’d also met quite a lot of mud – we were well covered!    What a great day out!

Here are just some of the many caches we found:

February 19 : Yateley

What a weekend for weather ! The UK was hit with 3 named storms in less than 6 days, wind, rain and the kitchen sink!

Yet somehow we managed a short geocaching trip. We had planned a 12+ cache route some miles away, but we changed our plans, stayed local and attempted 5 caches. And more importantly – stayed safe and dry.

Yateley is a small town about 3 miles from us, the sort of town easy to drive through, but not so easy to reach a particular location. The roads twist and curve, almost forming an every decreasing spider’s web, that are seemingly impossible to escape from.

Near the Community Centre

We had just 5 caches to find, and a car park adjacent to the first cache. We had parked in this community centre car park some years before, but we only realised this as we arrived. (That’s the sort of tricks the Yateley roads play).

It was 3pm Saturday. It was activity changeover time at the Community Centre and children were dashing in and dashing out. We parked at the side of the car park, in sight of our first cache.

Four of the five caches had been placed less than a week previously so we had great confidence that all the caches were available to find. This cache was magnetically hidden on a metal gate. We poked. We prodded. We drew a blank. We circled the gate and tried again. We circled a third time, and this time, in the undergrowth we found the cache.

Whether we had knocked it down unknowingly minutes earlier or it had fallen down after the last finder, we will never know. But log signed we headed off along a muddy path away from the Community Centre.

It soon became apparent Mr Hg137’s footwear did not have suitable grip for the slippery, slidy conditions, so he gingerly edged along. We bypassed a fallen tree (courtesy of storm Eunice), and then an undulating section (slippery, slidy and sloping!) adjacent to a small copse.

Casualty of Storm Eunice

We needed to cross through the copse to reach the oldest cache of the five (placed December 2021). The cache was near a rusty roller. Find the roller and the cache was nearby. It took us a few minutes, but it was a worthwhile find – a plastic box double wrapped to keep water out!

Here’s the roller… now where’s the cache ?

We returned to the slippery path, and it soon flattened out and to became a narrow path between wooden garden fences and a stream. We had puddles to negotiate, as well as a bit of mud. The two caches we found were clever ‘log’ caches, placed to blend in well with logs and stumps between us and the stream.

At one of these caches a dog walker came by, we discreetly hid the cache and admired the cows in the field opposite. Eventually we arrived at tarmac, and our last cache of the day. In a street sign.

Over the years we have found several caches on street signs. There are really only 2 places to look. Firstly behind the sign close to the horizontal bar. Secondly in the ‘lid’ of the uprights. This cache was in neither.

We were just about to have a more detailed look, when Mrs Hg137 noticed something ‘not quite right’. The cache came loose (slightly injuring Mr Hg137 it must be said) and the log signed. We haven’t seen this type of container before…so to keep the fun for local cachers who read this blog…we won’t tell you any more.. sorry !

Five great caches all found, but more importantly we stayed dry and upright, out of the wind.

January 15 : Ruscombe

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

It was a freezing, foggy morning as we parked outside the church in Ruscombe, a small village midway between Reading and Maidenhead in northern Berkshire.   We were here for geocaching, more specifically the ‘Ruscombe Byways’ series, plus three caches from the ‘Counting Vowels’ series.

We decided to start with the Counting Vowels caches. They would take more time, as each had multiple waypoints where we needed to gather information and use it to derive coordinates.   Everything we needed to know to find the first cache could be found on the neat green area, dotted with oak trees, just outside the wall of the churchyard.    We walked around; the waypoints were quickly found, the checksum consulted, and some coordinates calculated. They led to a spot in the middle of the road … hmm, something not right here … a recheck and a recalculate came up with a slightly different answer which led to a wooden object with the cache at its base.

St James the Great

Village pond

The green

Happy at our success (it sets the tone when start well), we left the church, passed the village pond, and walked down a track into some woods.   Google Maps describes this as ‘Ruscombe Wood nature reserve, bluebells mid-April to late May’ but, given the time of year, what we could mostly see was … mud … and more mud.   While visiting waypoints for the next Counting Vowels, cache, we slithered our way to the first cache in the Ruscombe Byways series, taking far too long to find it; we had read – and misunderstood – the hint that accompanies the cache description, so looked at everything left/right, tall/short, up/down before finding the cache.   The Counting Vowels was also nearby, and we found that, too.   

Mud !!!

Three caches found, and we were doing OK.  But we had taken some while to find each of those caches, and it was still cold and grey, with the temperature around freezing point, and we were now rather colder that we had been when we set off.  We returned to the geocar and had a lovely hot cup of coffee.

Once warm(er), we set off to find the third Counting Vowels cache of the day, collecting words from the house names and other items dotted about. Mr Hg137 has friends in the village, with a suitably unusual house name, and he was ever so slightly disappointed that it hadn’t been chosen!  All clues assembled, we regrouped a little distance from the last waypoint – so we didn’t look suspicious outside a house – and found that we’d chosen our direction wisely and were stood almost on top of the cache. The remaining caches were ‘traditional’ caches so should be simpler, with a single location to visit to find the cache and sign the log. 

We crossed the railway (a main line from London to the west, with frequent trains) and walked out into the countryside, passing hatcheries full of flocks (is that the correct collective noun?) of pheasants.  It was now late morning and lot of other folk were out for a walk: alone, in pairs, in groups, with dogs.    In short spaces between walkers we found two more caches.  

It’s a bit muddy!

And then we surveyed the path across the field to the last three caches on our list, and our spirits collectively dropped: it was a sea of mud, with puddles, and muggles wading across it in wellies.    We decided we’d had a good morning’s caching and a fine walk in the open air, but we were now muddy and cold, so we finished abruptly and set off for home.    Those remaining caches in and around Ruscombe can wait for a warmer, drier day.

Here are some of the caches we found:

January 9 : Bagshot

The weekend’s weather could at best be defined as ‘murky, cold and uninviting’. As a result we undertook a three urban caches in the brief couple of hours of sunshine the weekend allowed.

We’ve cached in Bagshot before, and every time we’ve cached there we find another corner we didn’t know existed. This time we found a large housing estate sandwiched between Bagshot’s shops and the M3.

It was a Sunday morning, and the ‘noise protection fences’ by the M3 worked well, all we heard was a background hum as we wandered from cache to cache. Our first cache was a multi set near to Curley Park Rangers FC. The cache is part of the National series of caches near to football grounds. As National series go, this one hasn’t had the traction of other series as only 53 caches have been placed in the series since 2014. This cache, number 25, was placed in 2018.

Curley Park Rangers was formed in 1973 initially as an under-11s boys team, but today has many different ages of teams for boys and girls. The name ‘Curley Park’ comes from the highest point in Lightwater Country Park, a nearby open space.

Walk on the leaves, not the mud!

We parked close to the football ground and walked along a muddy path to a waypoint. We discovered that the edge of the path had a deep coating of leaves which was far easier to walk on than slippery wet mud. At the waypoint, we counted letters on a signpost, and calculated the final waypoint… back where we had come from. We retraced our steps along the leaf-edged path, and as we approached GZ saw a man out with a dog. Or should that be a dog out with a man! The Great Dane was huge ! Apparently the owner has two and has to exercise them separately! He must get a lot of exercise!

A quick find at GZ ensued shortly after and we headed for our second cache. We retraced our steps, via the leafy-muddy path to our previously used waypoint and walked on. We came out in a housing estate, we guessed built between the mid70s and early 90s. Like many such estates, little alleys weave between houses and this estate was no different. We arrived at a small copse. (No doubt, part of the noise abatement for the M3) and started to search ‘behind a triplet of silver birches’. The previous logs had indicated there were several ‘triplets’ to search, but we got lucky. The camo bag holding the cache was protruding from behind the first triplet we saw.

Good protection from the M3

We emptied the bag, and opened the cache. Mrs Hg137 placed the cache a few yards away for its photo, while Mr Hg137 signed the log. All, we thought, was well but as we were completing our tasks a lady with a Golden Retriever appeared and we explained what we were doing. The retriever gave the cache a good sniff ‘there must be food there, surely!’. As they stepped away, back onto the path, two cyclists came by. We had a bottleneck ! 2 cachers, a lady, a dog and 2 cyclists! The cache was on the ground within sight of everybody! We waited for everyone to move away before re-hiding. Fingers crossed it stays there for the next finder !

Playground for children…and hedgehogs too!

Our first 2 finds of the day had been relatively old caches (2013 and 2014), but our last cache was new. So new in fact we were the third cachers to find! Unusually this cache was hidden very close to a children’s playground (we thought this was taboo), to ‘celebrate’ where several hedgehogs have been spotted. The cache was called ‘Hedgehog Hunt’ and we thought it would be a great place for the trackable we collected recently, Travelling Hedgehog. Sadly for us, the container was too small, so we took a photo instead.

‘Travelling Hedgehog’ can’t fit into the ‘Hedgehog Hunt’ geocache !

We had a short walk back to the car and remarked how quiet the estate was. We had passed few people all morning. No children we playing in the playground, the streets or gardens. No-one was washing cars, or outside gardening, clipping hedges etc.. it was as if the estate was asleep.

So a very quiet, but successful morning in a corner of Bagshot we didn’t know existed.

December 12 : Old Basing

Just to the East of the Hampshire town of Basingstoke is a village known as Old Basing.

Dotted around the village are various caches, about 15-20 in various mini-series. We loaded all the caches in our GPS, but knew we wouldn’t get round them all.

Bolton Arch

We parked by some impressive gates known as the Bolton Arch. Many years ago, when the Basingstoke area was developed the Arch was the entrance to a hunting estate called the Crab Tree Plantation on the Hackwood Estate. The estate has all but disappeared and survives as parkland either side of the noisy, and mainly invisible M3.

Our first cache of the day was by the Arch. The GPS and a very strong hint lead us to a very obvious corner. We were expecting to find a nano cache here, attached to some metalwork. When will we learn.. never assume anything! We looked and couldn’t find.

We checked the GPS, checked the corresponding mirror location in the Arch..nothing. We searched the original again…and eventually saw something we had overlooked the first time. Log signed, after far too long a search.

Thinking about it, the first cache of the day, seems to set the tone for the remainder. And it was fair to say, that we struggled on our circuit of the Crab Tree Plantation.

Some of our struggles were due to the vast number of dog-walkers out and about. The cache owner of 4 of the caches clearly knew it was a dog-walking area, as they had named caches with an anagram of dog names (CHURLER, IVER TREE and LOE POD.. but we disagreed with the spelling with DROBA LOLICE!).

It took us some time to reach IVER TREE as a dog was being exercised with a chewy ball near to GZ. We didn’t fancy crossing the wet,winter grass in front such energetic canine fun, so took a longer route, keeping to a footpath. We found the cache (second tree we looked in, of course) and walked away unnoticed.

The next cache took us to a very small, young copse. A circle of young-ish silver birches surrounded a picnic bench, and few oak saplings stood some feet away. The GPS and indeed the clue hinted at the saplings, but as Mr HG137 approached them he saw something unusual at the base of one the birches.

At the same time two dog walkers were coming close to the copse. We decided to wait.

Rather than walk around the copse, the dog walkers came towards us. Whoops ! We’d been rumbled ! And we hadn’t even got the cache in hand!

“Are you geocachers?” one of the dog walkers asked.
“Er, Yes” we replied.
“What you want is down there” – the man pointed at the base of silver birch Mr Hg137 had seen earlier.

It turns out they were geocachers too.

We had a good natter, socially distanced of course, and discovered they were CelticTykers. We also discovered they run the public list of ‘Counting Vowels’ caches..we told them of our FTF in that series, just a few days earlier!
Our problem at the cache was that the log was wedged in its container. We tried tweezers, twigs, cocktail sticks and ear-rings (!) to remove the log but couldn’t. But with CelticTykers to prove our find we felt we could still log the find. Nice meeting you CelticTykers.

We headed downward and in the distance we saw a car parked on the grass and people surrounding it. We discovered they were Black Dam and Crab Tree volunteers who look after the Plantation and were about to undertake some bush removal.

Volunteers about to start work

Our next cache was the other side of the River Loddon. The source of the River Loddon is about half a mile upstream, so the ‘River’ was more like a ‘Babbling Brook’. The water was clear, we speculated that this section of river must pass over chalk to keep it so clear.

Juvenile River Loddon

What wasn’t clear was the bridge we had to cross. Mud, mud, mud ! We slipped and slithered our way across heading to ‘Jubi’s Cache’ – a non-dog-name cache.

We crossed this bridge after a few minutes slithering

Sadly our searching was in vain. Hidden in ivy, and we think with some clever mechanism (hanging on string?) we couldn’t find it. We gave up, had another look at the clear waters of the Loddon and paused for coffee.

The morning had not gone well. The finds had been slow, and our chats with CelticTykers and the Nature Volunteers had been longer than we thought. We decided to attempt the last two ‘dog’ caches and leave. We could leave the remaining Old Basing caches for another day.

Would we have been quicker if we had run around ?

CHURLER was an easy find, at a vacant seat (first bit of luck all day), and then a trek through some woodland to our last cache BRODA LOLICE. The cache was apparently visible from the path in some logs. We searched the logs copiously. We squinted our eyes against the low winter sun to the log pile – to no avail. After 15 minutes we gave up.

We returned to the car, disappointed with our haul of 4 caches from 6, but then remembered the remainder we hadn’t attempted. Old Basing…we will be back!

December 5 : Swinley Forest (South Ascot)

Swinley Forest is a large area of woodland (2,600 acres or 11 km2) stretching from Crowthorne to South Ascot. It is part of the Crown Estate, and is now a working forest of predominantly pine trees.

One of its drawbacks is there are few entry points into the forest, which means much of the woodland is quiet, unless of course you are close to one of the entry points.

We discovered four caches had been placed at the extreme East of the Forest near South Ascot, and with a handy entrance point at the end of a residential road this seemed a good mini-series for a cold December morning,

It was only when we checked the caches on our GPS before leaving home, we discovered these caches were barely a day old, and had already been found by 2 other cachers.

The first cache was at the entry to the Forest. Plenty of people walked by, as we checked the location out, finding the cache quite quickly, but re-hiding it took some time. A little too long, as the location was adjacent to a well-used dog poo bin, and even on a cold morning, the aroma was strong!

Third to find!

As we expected we were the third people to sign the log!

Our second cache was our hardest of the day. It was attached a large metallic gate, and with upright posts, horizontal supports and diagonal pipes to check it took some time. Especially with lots of dog-walkers going by every 2-3 minutes. We had cameras with us, so when a few people approached we wandered away to take an ‘aimless’ photo of tree bark, and avenues of glistening sunlight. Eventually we found the cache, very sneakily hidden.

The cache route took us along a well made up track to a delightful pond (apparently during the summer it can be bone dry) and a very obvious host. The GPS was little off, but with an obvious host.. who cares!

By now the paths were getting busier, and the dog walkers were getting more frequent.

We took a longer walk than necessary to the last cache in the series, and walked adjacent to a railway track. Several times a train went by, sometimes in plain view, other times hidden by the trackside foliage. The sun was getting higher and percolated the leafless trees forming beautiful shafts of light on the ground.

Can you spot the THREE decorations ?

The pine forest continued behind a golf club, and here we passed a pine tree with 2 baubles and a star hanging from it. So seasonal, yet so out of place!

Our last find was relatively easy hidden in some tree roots. And that should have been that. 4 brand new caches attempted, and each one found.

But…

… lurking deep in this part of the forest was a cache with a difference. It was an old cache (placed in 2007) as part of a ‘Stuffagps’ series. Here the cache owner had NOT provided the cache coordinates in latitude/longitude format but as a OS grid reference. Before we left home we had spent a few minutes (Ed : slightly more than a few !) with a well worn OS map, and determined the position of the cache and converting the OS grid reference to a GPS set of coordinates.

Hope we find the cache after all this mud!

We had done so well with the first 4 caches, we walked onto the ‘stuffagps’ cache. As we approached we checked the hint, and determined it would be up a bank away from a path. We jumped a small stream, and clambered up a bank. The GPS got closer and closer. We weren’t expecting to find this cache, given a level of inaccuracy in coordinate conversion…but there, exactly where the GPS pointed, was a container wedged under a fallen branch!

A very old log book !

We felt really happy, we had found 5 caches, 4 very new ones and 1 very old one using good old-fashioned OS coordinates!

A great morning!

A couple of caches we found :

February 3 : A Post Box Museum… is this where a Gruffalo lives ? (Isle of Wight)

Ever year we both like attending the Isle oF Wight Scrabble tournament, and if we can, we also like to squeeze in a few geocaching finds. This year, the event was held in Shanklin, but unfortunately for us…we had found all the nearby caches! So on the day after the tournament, we headed for a different part of the Island, just a few miles North of the main Island town, Newport.

Our target was a series called ‘Letterbox Loop’. We managed to park nearby to the start – a relative straightforward multi. All we had to do was extract some details from a postbox, derive the final co-ordinates and go find. But, what made this multi special, was the postbox. It stood proudly outside the Isle of Wight Postal Museum. The museum holds over 200 postboxes and other postal equipment. Admission is by prior arrangement.

As we walked to the final destination to the multi, we glimpsed into a garden and espied row after row of postboxes. These photos don’t do it justice!

We were a little flummoxed at our final destination as we were looking for a ‘post’ (obviously !), and we tried several places before we saw the slightly rusty, broken pole hosting the cache.

Post Box Cache

The ‘Letterbox Loop’ series is broadly rectangular, and in parallel to one of its sides is a smaller series based on the Gruffalo story.

We set off on our first side of the Letterbox Loop rectangle, and only just saw the footpath we needed to follow.
Normally footpaths on the Isle of Wight are well maintained.. this one had suffered from some heavy rain. Water cascaded in the narrow footpath gully.

Sometimes we jumped from ‘bank’ to ‘bank’, other times we ploughed upwards through the moving water. Eventually we arrived at ‘First Past the Post’. Again we took the hint a bit too literally and moved away from GZ to check out the nearby trees. Of course the cache (another post box !) was hidden inside a broken trunk, right next to the water-filled path.

We climbed, and slithered, and in Mrs Hg137’s case slipping down, towards the second cache. Our progress was slow, painfully slow. At the back of our minds was our lunchtime ferry. We had another 7 caches to find in the ‘Letterbox’ series and three ‘Gruffalos’. We decided to abandon the ‘Letterbox Loop’, hack across to a better path, attempt one more ‘Post’ cache before undertaking some of the ‘Gruffalo’ series.

A rare view across the Medina and Solent

Our spirits fell even further, when we had to DNF ‘Pillar Box’. Many of the logs said the GPS was out by 30 feet, so we had a wide area to search. Again, with the lunchtime ferry time ticking ever-louder, we gave up after a 10 minute search.

We headed for the Gruffalo series and noted a very muddy path we would have had to use had we continued the ‘Letterbox’ series. Instead we arrived at a disused railway line, between Havenstreet and Newport. The going was flat, and more importantly…not muddy. A little wet in places with large puddles needing supreme care to negotiate.

The three ‘Gruffalo’ caches were reasonably straightforward finds: under a pile of sticks, wedged in a multi-trunked tree. The third one necessitated a scramble up a small bank. Here the cache was exposed so we hid it better.

The former railway line eventually gave way to a short muddy stretch (overlooking the postal museum), and brief walk back to the car.

We were muddy, and a little disappointed with a haul of 5 finds, when we had planned for at least 10, but ferries don’t wait for cachers, so we left the Isle of Wight promising to return to the postal series, as despite the terrain, and the DNF, it looks a great series to undertake.

January 18 : Puzzled in mid-Berkshire

Note : many of the caches mentioned in this blog are puzzle caches. By their nature, puzzles need solving before attempting to find the cache. We have tried to minimise the amount of information about these caches in this blog, but clearly some spoiler information may be given accidentally.

Great Hollands Community Centre

The day had arrived to collect a number of local puzzle caches we had solved previously. Our journey would take us from South Bracknell, along the Bracknell/Wokingham/Crowthorne borders, to South Wokingham before finishing on the Finchampstead/Sandhurst border. We had 5 puzzles to collect, and two additional caches close by.

The first puzzle cache ‘Stating the Obvious’ was near to a major Bracknell roundabout. Fortunately a nearby housing estate provided a place to park, within yards of the cache. The hint mentioned ‘magnetic’ and ‘wooden posts’ which didn’t really make sense until we approached GZ. Here on a very quiet footpath, we could search without interruption. And, after looking at three or four magnetic wooden posts (!) we had the cache in hand.

Nice and quiet at GZ !

At our next location, close to Bracknell’s Crematorium we had two caches to find. The first, a puzzle cache, requires specialist knowledge to solve (or, as it is known these days, Google). Some simple maths, and the coordinates led us to only one host, and once there it took us just a couple of minutes to locate the small container.

Before we headed to the second cache we spotted a nearby building we had never seen. Great Hollands Pavilion was new, almost brand new, as it had only been opened since July 2019. There was a medium sized function room, toilets and a cafeteria. (We were too early for a coffee, by a matter of minutes). A great looking Community Centre with ample parking too.

The second cache, our only standard cache of the day, was a shortish walk away from the Centre in some nearby woodland. A pine forest – typical of the trees grown on Bracknell’s natural heath – which also acted as a noise barrier. We could barely hear traffic until we got closer to our next cache site. Here the hint instructions ‘under a fallen tree’ seemed reasonable, but of course there were a couple of candidates to check. We took far too long here, and eventually found the cache not quite where we had interpreted the hint.

After a short car ride, our next pair of caches involved walking down a muddy footpath. Our aim was to collect a multi-cache using the details we had collected (when we visited Crowthorne on a small caching trip the day before). Also on the footpath was our third puzzle cache of the day. Our plan was to find the multi first, but we were following a dog walker along the path and realised we would be overtaking him at the site of the multi-cache. We paused, and realised we were at GZ of the puzzle cache! Spooky!

Quick.. no-ones around lets go searching!

As we stood in amazement at our good fortune, a runner went by and checked whether we were lost or not. We weren’t of course, and as soon as he was out of sight, we started searching. An obvious host which we checked. Nothing. We went to a less obvious host. Again nothing. We returned to the original, and then saw a tell tale pile of sticks wedged in a roothole!

We continued on the muddy path, until we reached the multi-cache. A fine example and well worth the walk around Crowthorne’s post boxes the day previously. We twizzled the cache-lock to the appropriate numbers, and with only the smallest of jerks, the lock and cache was opened. A plastic ammo can, yielding quite a lot of goodies! One of the goodies was a disposable camera, and cachers are invited to take photos of themselves with the GZ. Quite what the owner will make of the photos after is beyond us. Blackmail maybe ?

Mrs Hg137 hiding behind the disposable camera!

Our penultimate cache of the day was another puzzle cache we had solved so long ago we’ve totally forgotten how we did it! We have a good idea, as the question was about large numbers, and the cache title hinted as how to interpret them! After the mud-fest of the previous caches we were able to park at GZ, cross a road with no interruption at all. We know the cache location can get congested, we’ve sat in a traffic queue here several times, so we were grateful for no superfluous traffic as we searched.

And so to the last location of the day. The puzzle here was part of the ‘Famous Berkshire Residents’ series. Using a series of clues one had to work out who the person was, and thus a date of birth, length of middle names etc. This person, although still alive, has dropped someway down the public radar, although a close relative has not.

We were a bit thwarted at GZ. Firstly numerous roads were marked as ‘closed’ but we were able to drive through. At the cache site itself, we had a hunch the cache was not there as there had been a string of DNFs by previous cachers. We had pre-agreed with the cache owner we would replace the cache with one of our own. Which seemed straightforward enough except..the hint was ‘under stone’. There were no stones. Barely a piece of shingle. We spent some time looking for a stone to use, and in the end hid the cache in a slightly different position and alerted the cache owner.

So 7 caches attempted, 6 found and 1 replaced. 5 puzzles removed from our list of puzzles solved and a mini-tour of mid Berkshire! A good morning’s work!

Some of the caches included :