July 13 : Playing Detective on the Berkshire/Hampshire border

July 13 has great meaning for us – our caching handle is, after all, Hg137. So today seemed a great opportunity to go caching. Except it was hot. Very hot. We didn’t fancy a long walk or a long journey to a caching route. After much consideration we found an ideal series on the Berkshire/Hampshire border between Sandhurst and Yateley.

Moor Green Lake on the Berkshire/Hampshire border

Each cache in the series was a puzzle based on a TV Detective programme. The setter, Mikes54, has a longer set of caches near to White Waltham, Maidenhead. In that cache series there are 26 caches and each cache is ‘named’ after a TV Detective programme (one for each letter of the alphabet).

The series we were attempting was much smaller, just 8 caches. Set in a similar style we had to work out which TV detective series began with B, D, I, L M, S, V, and W. The cache description provided some very useful hints, and then using an online search engine we could answer some questions. These were of the type :

• when was programme 1 of series 3 first aired
• how many millions of people watched episode called ‘X’
• what is the run-time of each episode
• how many episodes were there in the fourth series

Once we had gleaned the information we worked out some co-ordinates and discovered the caches were about 3 miles away close to the banks of the River Blackwater. We had cached along there before (back in 2018 when we walked from Sandhurst in Gloucestershire to Sandhurst in Berkshire). We knew the terrain, and so we ventured out in the early evening, avoiding the hot stifling conditions of the day.

River Blackwater

We chose not to park at the North of the series as the car park was due to close at 8pm, instead we parked at the South and approached most of the caches from ‘the wrong direction’.

Mikes54 does give very specific instructions. Not only do the co-ordinates take you to Ground Zero, but the location of the cache, where it is hidden and the type of the container is given. (Many other cache owners would give the hint ‘behind post’, but Mikes54’s hints are ‘behind the central post, 2 posts to the right of the noticeboard’. Mikes54 definitely wants his caches to be found !)

Lots of Information Boards

We followed tracks around the former gravel pits, now wildlife lakes that are adjacent to the River Blackwater. We started our route in Hampshire, but we were quickly in Berkshire.

Unfortunately the caches didn’t make a circular route, so there was a certain amount of walking a cul-de-sac and returning the same way.

After finding 5 of the caches we headed towards the main car park but here the paths split in two, and we found ourselves on the wrong path to locate two caches. Never mind, we would turn round at the car park, and return on the other path. Before we did so, we took a small (half-mile) diversion to find a ‘Post Post’ cache, where the cache is hidden on/under/by a post box.

Somewhere near here is a cache!

We returned to the car park, and started to talk to two horses sheltering from the heat by a tree. In the nearby field, rabbits were running about, close by a deer had also come out in the cool, twilight air.

Deer and rabbits

The advancement of twilight had brought many birds returning to their night time lakeside roosts. They noisily screeched and squawked at each other. It would nice to imagine they were talking to each other about their days adventures : how far they had flown, what food they had found…but we suspect the screeching and squawking was ‘get out of my roost!’

Lots of paths…but which is the correct one ?

We left the car park, selected the correct footpath, found the remaining caches with a small struggle. Whether we were tiring, or the light was fading, but it took us some minutes to find the last couple of containers despite Mikes54’s excellent hints.

Most of the cache containers were small, but one was a bit larger and contained three trackables! We took all three, and will blog about each of them in the coming days. We can’t remember the last time we found three trackables in one cache… or even three on the same day !

3 trackables

We returned to the car content that we had found 9 caches, which we realised afterwards was our highest cache haul on the 13th of July!

August 8 : Crowthorne

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

We had an errand to run in Crowthorne and decided to combine that with a short afternoon caching trip.  It had been a showery weekend and we hoped to fit our activities between showers.  The errand went smoothly, so we were then free to grovel around in bushes looking for caches …

Our first target was from the ‘Counting Vowels ’ series, in Napier Woods.  On checking previous logs, we saw that the cache had not been found for about six months, with a previous log saying it might be missing.  We contacted the cache owner, mikes54, who was part way through a maintenance run on his caches, but hadn’t reached this one yet.  He gave us detailed information on the cache and its location, and permission to replace it if missing.

We found the entrance to the woods very easily – we didn’t know this was here – and walked through the woods checking the waypoints. All was present and correct so far, and we paused to work out the coordinates and set a location into the GPS. Then we set off to walk to the cache location, and it began to rain hard.  We took shelter under a tree, then moved to bigger trees as the rain continued. After it stopped, we went on our merry way to the cache location.  There were two possible locations, one more likely than the other, and we checked them both thoroughly. No cache in either.  We replaced the cache with a like-for-like of what was there before, and sent photos to the cache owner showing what we did.  (The cache has been found since, so we helped things along.)

Replacement cache

We returned to the centre of Crowthorne, for another attempt on a cache we had failed to find five and a half years before, ‘This piece of road is below 30’.   We hoped our finding skills had grown in that time.  (Hmmm- maybe!)  At the location – the vegetation seems to have grown a bit in the interim – we rummaged around with no success. After a bit we gave up and walked away. And then I made a casual remark about the location, which set Mr Hg17 thinking. We returned, and rummaged around some more.  I spotted something mentioned in the cache details, but didn’t find the cache. Mr Hg137 searched around and retired, bleeding, after some of the prickly vegetation spiked him.  Again, we have been in touch with the cache owner, have done some detailed searching on Google, and now have some additional information which will enable us to have a third attempt, when we’ve assembled some PPE against that dastardly vegetation!

So far, so not-so-good; we’d tried two caches, replacing one and not finding the other.  We went for a third attempt – a puzzle cache, ‘Down Two then Left’.  We’d solved this one a few days ago: a combination of the title and some of the less obvious pictures led to an ‘aha’ moment, and the rest of the solution was quick and easy.  We walked off to the cache location, soon spotted the cache container, and signed the log.   Finally, a cache log we could sign!

More rain clouds approaching, so we scooted back to the geocar, hiding in a bus shelter when it rained, again.   An interesting but not entirely successful afternoon!

June 26 : Wokingham (part 2)

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Another Saturday morning arrived; once again we were in Wokingham, clearing a flat after the death of a relative.  To brighten up the day, we added a short caching session.  This gave Mr Hg137 the opportunity to revisit some of the lesser-known corners of the town (he lived there for many years), and it gave me the chance to explore parts of Wokingham I had rarely visited.

To start, we gathered the information for a multi-cache from the ‘Fine Pair’ series, starting at the post office, with its red telephone kiosk and multiple post boxes.  Assembling the coordinates, we found we would need to walk away from the town centre to find the cache – no problem, we would do that later on.

Pocketing the coordinates, we moved on to the Town Hall, where a tiny nano-sized cache is tucked away close to the building.  We knew the Town Hall well – we got married there a while back when Mr Hg137’s father was Town Mayor, so this cache was in an area full of memories. We retrieved the cache quickly and (we hoped) unobtrusively and sat on a seat to sign the log and admire the wares on sale in the nearby market.

Leaving the market place, we followed a footpath between buildings towards Howard Palmer Gardens.   The walls of some of the buildings are adorned with artwork by Catsy (Wokingham’s answer to Banksy?)  

Catsy was here

The park was another place we knew: our wedding photos were taken here. After Mr Hg137 had meandered around the park, trying to work out exactly where we had stood, we turned our attention to the cache. We wandered around for a bit, felt around, and eventually came across something. The cache!  And then the real fun started: we couldn’t get the log out of the cache container. A fingernail was broken, and curses were muttered, before we returned to the park with the cache and a selection of ‘tools’ to try. After some more time, we prised the log out of the container and finally got to sign it.

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  Howard Palmer Park

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  Wedding photo location (maybe)

A meandering route took us to the location of the ‘Fine Pair’ cache.   As we approached, already congratulating ourselves that we’d found the right place … one elderly gentleman muggle stopped for a lengthy chat with another elderly gentleman muggle … right where we wanted to search. We walked on a little way and covertly observed them. After 15 minutes it looked as if they still had quite a bit of their chat to go, so we went on our way.  One for another day!

We reached a residential street near the station.  There’s a cache here, and we paused to let a muggle walk by before starting our search.   We paused again; Mr Hg137 recognised the muggle, a neighbour of his from times gone by.   Another lengthy chat ensued, and after that we went on our way, thinking it now too conspicuous to start rummaging in the bushes.   Another cache for another day!

By now, we were getting quite close to the flat we were clearing, and wouldn’t be able to put off the task for much longer.    We had one more cache to find, part of the ‘Wandering ‘wound Wokingham’ series.  This one had been possible to solve as an online puzzle: the cache description consisted of twenty photos of windows, each to be found in one of ten streets in Wokingham: by assigning windows to streets, it was possible to come up with a set of numbers and turn those into coordinates.   I had spent some time virtually travelling the streets of Wokingham, had come up with locations for nineteen of the twenty windows and had some plausible coordinates, with a location that looked (also online) as if it could be the correct place.  (And I had gone boggle-eyed doing it!) 

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So many windows!

Off we went to the likely spot, and there was the cache. Hooray!  My research was correct.  But, oh dear, the container was about a quarter full of water and the log rather damp, but signable. We replaced the lid and replaced the cache, upside down, in the hope that future rain will either run off or drain out.  And with that, our caching was done; off to a flat to pack things into boxes.

And here are some of the caches we found:

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June 19 Wokingham (part 1)

The arduous nature of clearing a flat following a bereavement was to take much of our time over the next few weeks. To sweeten the pill of ‘rubbish’ clearing, we decided to combine our trips to Wokingham with some light caching.

Our first targets were in the Southern Approach to Wokingham, This was an area Mr Hg137 had some knowledge of (he was a Wokingham lad for over 40 years) – but he still found new roads to explore (Ed : mainly because he took a wrong turning whilst caching!)

We had 4 caches to attempt, the first was a puzzle cache. This was based on Cryptic Crossword Clues. The lengths of answers yielded numbers which, with some light arithmetic, yielded coordinates. At a busy road junction. With a hint of ‘behind the pole’ it should have been easy…but there were lots of poles. Eventually after much crossing of roads, and copious searching we found the cache. Heavily magnetised and with a stiff lid, it was difficult to lift out, and to open. Despite this, water had still made its way into the container. We signed the log, re-crossed the road and moved on..

Corpus Christi Church, Wokingham

Our next cache was part of the Church Micro series – Wokingham’s Catholic Church, Corpus Christi. We had to collect some information in the car park, turn them into coordinates and, as it turned out, then walk back 100 yards on our route to where we had remarked ‘this would be a good location for a cache’ !

It took us some time to find the cache, as we were again close to a road junction. But after a few minutes the cache was in hand.

Lots of good hiding places here !

Our next cache was our second puzzle cache of the morning. This took the form of a short murder story from which one had to yield some numbers. The name of the cache is based on a famous fictional detective’s line (though never written by the original author), which needed some subtle reinterpretation to solve the crime/cache.

Our slightly longer route than intended took us past Langborough Recreation Ground where Mr Hg137 remembered playing rounders as a child. Tucked in a corner away from prying eyes was a well concealed container and an easy find.

Is this really the right way ?

Our route back to the car took us by our only standard cache of the day, magnetically hidden behind a signpost.

In all we walked about 2 miles, often backtracking, and crossing roads. For an urban setting we were pleasantly surprised to find quite reasonably sized containers – it is all to easy to hide a nano behind a green telecoms box, but every cache was better than that.

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May 1 : Pirbright (ABBA Puzzle Series)

One of our earliest geocaching expeditions was to undertake a 20+cache series around Pirbright called the ‘High and Low’ series. Caches were indeed hidden High and Low.

That series has been replaced by a similar, but different trail, the ABBA Puzzle Series.

19 Puzzles have been set (and a bonus puzzle) – loosely based on the 19 song titles on the ABBA Gold Album. It took us about 3 weeks to solve the 19 puzzles, and they involved a range of puzzle solving techniques. If you want to solve the puzzles yourself, you may want to skip the next few paragraphs, as there may be some unintentional spoilers. One or two of the pictures may be of cache locations – or might just have an ABBA tie-in!

Did this come from Waterloo ?

Most of the puzzles had a link to a song on the Album. For many the connection was a straightforward leap  –  “Waterloo” being an obvious example. But invariably, that’s when the fun started. Most geocaching puzzles require one level of solve, but these puzzles often require 2 or 3 steps.

One of Us (hides a cache)

An example was “Dancing Queen”. The puzzle involved a picture of former Prime Minster May entering (I don’t want to use the word ‘dancing’) the Conservative Party conference to the Dancing Queen soundtrack. Underneath the picture were some ‘squiggles’. Ordinarily identifying the squiggles would lead to some numbers. But no, the squiggles could be made into words, odd words, but after a while a pattern appeared which meant a ‘sequence’ could be obtained, and hence some co-ordinates. In general, the cache page contained subtle clues to help with the solve… the trick was finding them.

Thank you for the music (books)

A few of the puzzles had one single step. One of these was “Take a Chance on Me”. This was a test of probability as the puzzle hinged on three loaded dice and the relative probabilities of rolling certain totals. Between us, we have a fair expertise in maths, but it took us some time (Ed : 4-5 days) to unwind the 30-40 years of rustiness before an answer manifested itself. The highlight of this solve was the false Eureka moment by Mrs Hg137 when she pronounced the probability of rolling a 3 was 11/81 !

“I’ll cross the stream, I Have a Dream“

The other single solve was “Super Trouper”. Here a drone had been used to show the placing of the cache (in the roots of a tree). The drone then flew up, away, rotating left, right before landing again. All we had to do, was identify the features in the drone’s footage, align them to a map..and find the tree! Easier said than done.

Does your Mother Know ? (which way to go?)

As each puzzle was solved (and a useful geochecker was provided), a clue to the bonus puzzle cache was provided. The bonus puzzle was a logic puzzle based on the 4 ABBA members, what order they were standing in, and what they were wearing. Of course any one piece of information gave little away, and it was only after the 19^th puzzle was solved, were we able to fully solve the bonus puzzle.

I do, I do, I do, I do

If you are unfamiliar with the songs of ABBA, this shouldn’t stop you solving the puzzles. In fact only one puzzle required knowledge of their songs.

After 3 weeks solving we were ready to find the caches!

We arrived at Pirbright, and the recommended car park was already full, as it was close to sports fields and various games were underway. We drove on, and parked closer to the Church, in the same space we used back in 2013.

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Our first cache though, was not the ABBA series, but a multi based on various monuments in Pirbright. Many of them had been erected to celebrate the life of, or the Jubilees of, various monarchs. All we had to do was visit each, write down a few dates and calculate the final coordinates. We were a little surprised that we had to walk a far way to find the cache, but on arrival at GZ, the hint made sense. Our only obstacles were some chest high railings and some early Spring stinging nettles.

A non ABBA cache!

We had worked out a walking route for the ABBA caches, but the Pirbright multi, had changed our start point, so a quick decision was made to start from a different location. A quick find at a roundabout, and we were away…singing as we went. (As most people do when they undertake this series).

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Many of the Pirbright footpaths we remembered from our previous visit, others were new to us. (It didn’t help that last time we walked anticlockwise around the village, and today we were walking clockwise).

On our route we saw lots of wildlife – horses, alpacas, lots of birds including a nuthatch and squirrels. The spring flowers were on the cusp between daffodils and bluebells – we saw wood anemones too.

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The caches were, by and large, relatively easy finds, with fairly accurate coordinates. Our earliest troublesome find was ‘behind large tree’. This involved scampering up a bank to look ‘behind the tree’. However the tree had a root system in the front of the bank, and the cache was hidden behind the roots, in the hollow.

We followed paths for much of the time, though there was some road walking. One was relatively busy, as several horseboxes passed us, heading for a parking area, where the horses could be unloaded and exercised.

The grave of Henry Morton Stanley, we presume

We criss-crossed fields, and looped round to the back of Pirbright church, where we re-visited Henry Morton Stanley’s grave before arriving close to the car for a picnic lunch. As we sat, an Army convoy passed by (Pirbright has an associated army camp). We had completed about 2/3 of the caches, and a smallish section remained.

Army on Manoeuvres

These caches took us a lot closer to houses, but fortunately few people were around to enquire what we were doing. We had three caches to find when we found the bonus cache, and what a bonus – an ammo can! We don’t see many of them, and they do make great containers.

A couple more quick-ish finds later and the route was complete – all caches found, and with “Thank you for the Music” being hummed noisily we returned to the car after a fine day’s caching.

Here are a few of the caches we found :

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January 26 : A puzzle solved…and a puzzle found in Sandhurst

Although we have quite good logical, puzzle-orientated, minds we sometimes struggle with some of the puzzle caches that have been set.

The cache owner may have displayed some pictures, numbers, letters or phrases from which to extract the cache co-ordinates. Sometimes we don’t even understand the question!

A local cache owner has created a series of 26 puzzles named after each letter of the alphabet. Some times the letter is meaningful in the solve, sometimes not.

Cache Q is a rare, relatively simple, solve. That is, assuming you see the answer….

Mr Hg137 had solved the cache sometime ago, and realised the final hiding place was close to one of our (few) daily walking routes. But for much of 2020 this cache had been DNFed (did not find), by cachers who went looking for it. But early in 2021 another cacher had find the cache implying the cache was there to be found!

As we hadn’t found a cache in 2021, Mr Hg137 mentioned the puzzle to Mrs Hg137 (mainly for confirmation of the solution). Mrs Hg137 couldn’t work out the puzzle, she made a few valiant attempts (including singing the song ‘I can sing a Rainbow’ … Ed : don’t ask !). Mr Hg137 provided a different musical nudge and Mrs Hg137 zoned in on the solution and confirmed the final hiding place.

Today, was the day we went for the find.

A small amount of snow lay on the ground, there was light drizzle in the air. No-one in the their right mind would be out. (Except us, of course). We had a clear run at GZ, following the hint explicitly… and drew a blank.
The hiding place was a sign very close to a prickly berberis bush. We both incurred blood scratches as we searched. Eventually we found the cache. Or, at least. we think we found the cache.

We retrieved the log, signed it and noted…there were only 2 signatories – the first to find cacher..and a finder from 2016 !

We returned the cache as found and claimed the cache. But the puzzle that remains… did we find and sign the correct cache log ? We’ve messaged the cache owner….and we’ll wait and see. Fingers crossed this was our first find of 2021 !

December 31 : End of Year Highlights

What a strange year !

Every year we have published, on this blog, pictures of our best caches of the year. Just containers we liked, or locations we loved.

This year is our ‘highlights’ blog is different.

To start with, we have found about 75% of our normal amount of caches. (We’ve adhered to, mainly, the Government guidelines of exercising close to home for an hour and as the year progressed not travelling too far.) We did have 2 mini-breaks (visiting the Cotswolds and Dorset) – but most of our caching has been local. When the ‘tier’ system came in, this also meant we couldn’t travel in/out of different tiers – restricting us further. As a result, the diversity of caches hasn’t been so varied.

But we have still had a few adventures and a few caches we can look back on fondly.

In February we attended a Scrabble tournament on the Isle of Wight, and managed a short caching trip before we returned on the ferry. The series was set near to the Postal Museum, and we found probably one of the best, and apt, cache containers of the year – a small letter box!

Post Box Cache

A couple of week’s later – we found a simple cache container in the centre of Reading. But the beautiful fox that ‘helped’ with the hunting was wonderful to see. Its moments like this that may geocaching special.

During the various lockdowns, we solved a few local puzzle caches, so that when we did go out, we had caches to find. We solved online jigsaws, sudokus, famous Berkshire Residents and various codes. We solved various puzzles on the theme of ‘Apples’, and even solved puzzles contained within the cache to unlock the log book!

On one of Summer’s brighter days, we cached along the River Thames and unexpectedly saw a number of vintage boats. The significance of the boats was explained by one of the owners… they were all Dunkirk Little Ships. Every year there is a ‘social meet-up’, but this year they just settled for mooring together adhering to COVID guidelines.

Dunkirk Little Ships

A notable achievement for us, though not in the same league as the Dunkirk Little Ships, was the completion of our ‘finds by hidden date’ grid as shown on http://www.project-gc-com. We realised we had one date to find – Christmas Day – and an aptly named local cache ‘Hope Yule find it’ completed our grid.

Here though are our top 3 caching experiences of 2021.

In third place, Stuffagps 4: Over Under… At this cache, as the name suggests, we had to reject our GPS and revert to basic map navigation and calculation. An old cache (placed 2007), and a pre-GPS method of finding. So great to achieve!

A very old log book !

From an old cache, to two brand new caches. In equal second place we have Counting Vowels #79 – Limmerhill and Fox Hill Woodland . We are not First-to-Find hounds, as many other cachers are, so for us to be the first to find on 2 caches on the same day is rather special. And worth the early start on a cold December morning to achieve.

But the top spot caching experience of the year goes to….wait for it …. (cue ‘drum roll’)…. Giant’s Jaunt in Cerne Abbas. Although the final container was nothing special, the finding was. In the style of a multi, but written as a poem with no co-ordinates, we had to wander around the village of Cerne Abbas looking at buildings, signs etc collecting numbers. A fantastic ‘treasure-hunt’ cache and highly recommended if you are in the village.


On a different note, the various lockdowns have meant more people have been reading this blog..in previous years we have has 2900-3000 views each year (broadly 8 views a day). We had overtaken this total by the end of September and with over 100 views in one day in November alone…we have become much more widely read.

To all our readers, new or old, cachers or non-cachers, thank you for reading.

Here’s to a much better 2021

Stay local, stay safe.

September 12 : Bramley, Shamley Green, and the Surrey Hills – and Apples!

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

During lockdown, a new series of caches, the ‘Apple’ series 🍏 sprang up, located between Bramley (fittingly) and Shamley Green in the Surrey Hills.

But all those question marks mean that these are puzzle caches, with a nominal start point as shown on the map, but with actual coordinates to be found by solving the puzzles posed in the cache descriptions. There are a variety of puzzles – pictures – music – logic – guess the identity – finding connections between things – and many more.

We both set about tackling them. We had mixed success, and we soon realised that we were unlikely to solve all the puzzles within a reasonable amount of time (or maybe ever). Sometimes, an educated guess early on followed by some Google research solved the puzzle. For one of the puzzles, I spent a couple of days muttering …’pirate, wizard, jellybeans’… to myself as I worked on it. There was a Scrabble-related puzzle – we HAD to solve this one as we are both keen Scrabble players, playing at East Berks Scrabble Club http://eastberksscrabbleclub.org.uk – and we solved that one after a brainwave from Mr Hg137.

After about two weeks of hard thinking, we had the answers to about half of the puzzles, and devised a route that included them, plus some on the Downs Link and in Bramley and Shamley Green too. We’d walked in the area about three years before and knew there was lots of lovely scenery and nice caches to be enjoyed https://sandhurstgeocachers.wordpress.com/2017/02/18/february-18-sandhurst-to-sandhurst-kent-guildford-to-winterfold-heath

Shamley Green church

We parked near the church in Shamley Green, passed the church, and were out in fields. We found one cache and went to follow another footpath to the village green, but a sign said the footpath was closed. Deciding to walk down it anyway, we found that the cause was a large fallen tree, which had been chopped up and moved to the side of the path, so we were OK. The GPS struggled under thick tree cover, but we found another cache before emerging onto the village green.

The green has a busy village shop on one side, a pub on another, a bus stop, a fine village sign, and a cricket pitch. We wandered around the outfield, mostly looking for a seat to have coffee, but also spotting another cache (one of the ‘extras’ on top of the Apple series). Much thought ensued as the cache wasn’t easily reachable, then we made some tentative efforts with a tool of Mrs Hg137’s devising. After modifying said tool, the cache was eventually teased out and signed. Then to replace it … hmm. Mr Hg137 bravely volunteered and managed to replace the cache after deploying some muscles that hadn’t been used for a bit! Then it was off to that bench to recover with coffee and sweets.

Refreshed, we left the green along a narrow lane and across more fields, in the direction of the Downs Link path, finding a few more caches, including that Scrabble-themed cache mentioned earlier (a chance for a free advert for our club in the cache log!).

We also diverted from our main route to find a cache in the Fine Pair series (a location where a traditional K6 red telephone box is close to a red post box). The telephone box is now disused and houses a book and jigsaw exchange. I inspected the contents, there were sooo many things I would have liked to take, but, as I had to carry whatever I took for the rest of the day, I settled for a paperback.



Crossing the derelict Wey & Arun Canal https://weyarun.org.uk we arrived on the Downs Link path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs_Link and we had a few caches planned as we walked north to Bramley. The first was ‘AnTs Roundabout’ and we needed to solve a puzzle, involving … ants … to gather some numbers which we could use to undo the padlock on the cache container. We set about solving it at the side of the path but were spooked / distracted by the two large, noisy guard dogs, safely behind a high fence, but who had spotted us and wanted us gone (or to eat us for lunch). So we moved a little way away, found a bench, and restarted solving the puzzle. A few minutes later and, with a click, the container was open. Hooray – and a good challenge!

After lunch on that bench, we carried on to Bramley. We found three out of four caches, though one had us flummoxed for a while. It was called ‘Bamboozled’, and we couldn’t find it; after a bit, we looked around, and noticed we were stood next to a large clump of … bamboo. Doh!



After finding a Church Micro cache at Bramley, we started our return leg, walking south along a bridleway. There were caches from the Apple series spaced along here. Some we had solved (we duly found those), and some we hadn’t, so there were some gaps in our route. But – we surmised that, if the caches were spaced at roughly equal intervals, we might just find an unsolved cache if we looked in the right places in those gaps. Well, we peered behind quite a few trees, looked in quite a few places, and got lucky just once.

We had reached the fourth and last leg of our squarish route, and turned west towards Shamley Green along the Greensand Way https://ldwa.org.uk/ldp/members/show_path.php?path_name=Greensand+Way We re-crossed the Downs Link, scrambled down the embankment to find another cache, then up the hill to and our start point. That was it for the day – 23 caches attempted, 21 found, including 13 from the Apple series; I’ve deliberately not said too much about the caches from that series so as not to give away locations; the joy in this series is the puzzle solving and the caches themselves are relatively easy finds, and your reward for the mental effort. And, for the route itself: a nice, varied route, some villages, some long distance trails, some countryside, rivers and canals too. On our way we saw tiny Christmas trees, blackberries and an impressive selection of fungi, lots of Harley Davidsons and cyclists, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, cows (Belted Galloways) plus jackdaws, rooks, and a circling buzzard.

Tiny Christmas trees

An impressive collection of fungi

🍏 🍏 🍏 A ‘Golden Delicious’ day of caching! 🍏 🍏 🍏

Here are a few of the many caches we found:

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 :

March 23 : South Downs Way : Cheesefoot Head to Exton

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

River Meon at Exton

On a cool grey Saturday morning, we set off to walk our second leg of the South Downs Way (SDW), starting high on the downs at Cheesefoot Head, near Winchester, and finishing at Exton in the valley of the River Meon.

Cheesefoot Head

We could hear the sound of revving engines as we parked at Cheesefoot Head and found our first cache of the day in the copse next to the car park. This was ‘Hill Bagging Series #5 – Cheesefoot Head TUMP’. The cache description defines a tump thus:
…” A TUMP is a hill in Scotland, England, Wales or the Isle of Man which is separated from adjacent tops by a height difference of at least 30 metres on all sides. This rather odd name is a corruption of HUMP, another hill bagging term that refers to hills with one HUndred Meters of Prominence.” …

The path went along the edge of the natural amphitheatre of Cheesefoot Head, marked by our next cache, ‘Talking to the Troops (Hampshire)’ which commemorates Eisenhower’s address to Allied troops just before D-Day during World War II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheesefoot_Head We continued, and stopped to talk to a runner. She was from Sweden, there to support her son at the World Motocross Championships, being held at the nearby Matterley Basin. Aha ! that was the source of the noise. https://www.mxgp.com/

Misty view of Matterley

We followed the SDW as it skirted the Motocross event, passing between the car park and the campsite. Here there was a block of portable toilets: I was once told by a very, very experienced walker that one should never, ever pass up the opportunity of a toilet while out walking … so I didn’t, and these were of a pretty good standard. We walked on, and passed the throng of people, cars, tents, caravans, and then it was peaceful countryside once more. We passed other walkers and cyclists coming the other way. And told them all about the motocross – and the toilets. Most brightened up noticeably at the mention of those toilets!

Not just us out walking!

There followed a pleasant, but cacheless walk of a few miles, across the downs, then over the A272 and along a track past a farm. The noise of motorbikes gradually faded. It got brighter, and warmer. There were shadows! It had turned into a lovely spring day.

A little later, we reached at the Milburys pub http://themilburyspub.synthasite.com/ We’ve visited it before (for research, obviously!) and it’s a friendly place with good food, and good beer, too. One thing of interest inside is a 100 metre (300 foot) well down through the chalk to the water table, where water can be raised using a treadmill. If you ask the bar staff, they’ll supply an ice cube that you can drop down the well, to wait for the splash. One other thing of interest is that this is one of the very, very few pubs you’ll pass on the SDW, so make the most of it!

The Milburys

Somewhere around the Milburys, we had found three more caches, two of them multicaches, (with a start point somewhere else), but we’d worked out the coordinates earlier on, so we didn’t have to backtrack to find them, and the third a puzzle cache, based on codebreaking, which I had great fun working out. Editor’s note: the locations are deliberately vague – if you want to find the caches, you need to solve the puzzles yourself ….

Sculpture at Lomer Farm

Further on, we came to Lomer, which was a village in the 1500s, but is now a single farm, with a few lumps and bumps in a field where the village once was. From there, it wasn’t far to Beacon Hill; there had been a gentle ascent of about 50 metres from the Milburys to Beacon Hill and then a steep, steep descent of more than 100 metres into Exton, in the Meon valley. There were some caches to find along here, which was good, they gave my knees a few chances to rest on that descent!

Beacon Hill

Steep descent!

Exton is a pretty village, with thatched cottages, a flint-walled church, a village pub and shop, and the River Meon flowing through. But we were blind to that, we had more caches to find. Two were from nationwide cache series: one, a Church Micro, the other, from the Fine Pair series (a red phone box and post box within sight of each other).

A Fine Pair

For one of these, a parked van shielded us from the drinkers at the Shoe Inn while we did the searching, and for the other, we waited for the local lads to finish their football game in the street before making a quick grab for the cache.

St Peter & St Paul, Exton

Almost finished now, we had a short walk alongside the river, stopping for one final cache, a large old ammo can, before returning to the geocar and heading homewards.

Editor’s note: we walked the SDW back in 2011, before we were cachers, and remember that there was a dearth of water taps. We found three ! on this walk alone, though one of them wasn’t working.

Water station near Cheesefoot Head

Holden Farm, near the water tap

Lomer Farm water tap

There was one near Cheesefoot Head, at a sort of service station for cyclists, one at Holden Farm near a milestone erected by the farmer (we saw him and asked about it), and one at Lomer Farm, near Beacon Hill.

Here’s a recent blog post about this precise subject: https://threepointsofthecompass.com/2019/03/10/the-south-downs-way-in-winter-water-sources/

To finish, as usual, here are some of the caches we found: