January 30 : Bembridge, Isle of Wight

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

After a few days on the lovely Isle of Wight, Monday morning was free for a little geocaching before taking an early afternoon ferry northwards and homewards.   We went to Bembridge, on the eastern tip of the island, an area we’d seldom visited.  Here’s a description:

“Bembridge Village won ‘Village of the Year’ in the BBC Countryfile Magazine Awards 2019. It was described as having a “wonderful coastal setting with a pier and lifeboat station, plus a busy village community with independent shops, cafés and restaurants. With three great beaches and the white cliffs of Culver Down on the doorstep, the village is a perfect base for exploring.”. About one mile south is Bembridge Airport. It stretches around most of the Eastern tip of the Isle of Wight and is claimed to be the largest village in England, with a population of approximately 4,000 residents.”

To get a jolly good look around the village, we’d picked four ‘traditional’ geocaches to find, plus one Adventure Lab (AdLab) cache, which would take us on a village tour, visiting the harbour, the church, the only windmill on the island, a telephone box (but a very, very special one!), and Bembridge Ledge, great for rockpooling.  

Our first stop was the windmill, at the top of a hill at the edge of the village.  It’s a fine building, with commanding views and plenty of access to … wind … you can see why it was built there.   As it was late January, it wasn’t open, but we admired it from various angles, admired the black sheep doing some conservation grazing, and found our first cache of the day. 

Local transport!

Back in the centre of the village, we spotted the village telephone box.  So what is special about this telephone box?  It’s said to be the oldest working phone box in the country, dating from 1921, and is Grade II listed. (FYI This box is the K1 design, the first.  The “classic” red telephone box is the K6 design of 1936.)   And, for geocachers (both those doing AdLab caches and those searching for ‘traditional’ caches), there’s a cache starting at this point, from the Fine Pair series (where a phone box and post box are in close proximity); we worked out the coordinates and found an appropriately telephone-themed cache container a little way away down a quiet street.

We reached the seashore, a stony, sandy beach, via a ‘secret’ path that dives between houses, then worked our way round to the harbour.   Close by is a large, ornate, and rather incongruous drinking fountain, the Palmer Memorial.   It stood outside the Spithead Hotel, now demolished and replaced by flats.   The granite object also made a fine subject for an earthcache (they tend to be about geology) so we spent a few minutes examining various bits of rock on the fountain and learning about the properties of granite as we did so.

Palmer memorial

The final part of our tour took us along the road which hugs the edge of the shoreline, leading west towards St Helens.   The edge of the village is marked by the village sign (which, of course has an associated geocache).   It was a great spot to end our tour of Bembridge, finishing with a slightly chilly, breezy picnic on a seat overlooking the harbour.

January 24 : Seaview, Isle of Wight

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Our ferry back to the ‘North Island’ (aka UK mainland) from the Isle of Wight was booked for 14:00.  That gave us time for a morning’s geocaching.   We chose Seaview, a part of the island we hadn’t visited before, which was also on the way to the ferry (ish), on the north-eastern edge of the island.

‘Beware of the Grockles’ – said the first cache name.   Not many around today, it was grey and chilly, about 5C and there was a bracing wind.  No grockles in sight (too cold) and not much looking was required, it was yards from our start point, overlooking the sea near close to a memorial about the D Day landings.

From there a narrow path between houses and beach led to Pier Road.   ‘There Was Once a Pier…..’ – said the second cache name.  From a bit of research, Seaview Pier was an elegant structure, but it’s no longer there.   And neither was the cache, though we searched high and low.   We stopped for coffee on an open area which was likely once the entrance to the pier; the coffee was lovely and warm, but the cold was beginning to seep in.   We scooted back into town and bought some sandwiches for lunch at Lily’s Coffee Shop.  It was busy and bright inside and … warm.

Lily’s Coffee Shop

We went out into the cold again and went a couple of streets across town to find a Church Micro cache.   Then, after some dodgy route finding (the cold was seeping further in) we arrived at the corner of the delightfully named Fairy Road.  There was a cache to be found here, and, once again, the cache name came with instructions:  ‘Beware – Mexican Redknee!’    There was really only one place to look.   I put my fingers in … carefully … and emerged clutching a vicious plastic creature.  Luckily, it wasn’t wriggling, but it was a very, very cold morning!

Arrgghh – SPIDER !!!

We returned to the seafront and had a chilly walk along the raised sea defences of the Duver, which used to be a toll road.  At the far end, near where the toll house stood, is a cache, which is hidden in a fake rock amongst other rocks.  We had a reasonable idea of the kind of rock we were looking for (other pictures later confirmed our hunch), but we failed to spot the correct rock despite turning over what seemed to be almost every suitably-sized rock at the location.  And there were lots.  Lots and lots.

So many rocks – so little time – ferry time is approaching!

Oh well … we’d spent far too long looking at rocks.  We walked back along the sea wall and stopped for a short while to eat those lovely sandwiches we had bought earlier.  Great lunch, but we got colder still, our toes and fingers were going numb.   We hastened back to the geocar; ferry time was calling.  

A cold end for a winter’s trip to the lovely Isle of Wight. We’d come to the island to take part in a Scrabble tournament, and had both emerged clutching prize-money; the caching had been a bit more variable, but we’d done OK there, too

September 6 : Appledore and Westward Ho!

Our last full day of our stay in North Devon – and a busy one too!

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First stop was the Dartington Glass Factory, where for limited times of day, visitors can see glass being blown, shaped, cooled, checked and boxed in the factory. Unsurprisingly the factory was very, very hot and watching the craftsmen work very mesmerising.

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Dartington Crystal

There were no caches close to the factory, so we travelled to the village of Appledore. In former times a bustling fishing port and boat-builders. Our first cache was in sight of boat-building yard, Richmond Dock. A nearby wall proudly shows all the boats made there. Appledore has a strong connection to the Isles of Scilly, which we had visited earlier this year. The ferry link between the Cornwall and Scilly, Scillonian III, was built in Appledore, and Appledore also sends teams to the Gig-Racing World Championships on Scilly.

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Appledore’s Gigs undercover

The cache we were looking for was in some railings, and with no-one (apparently) around, save a lady at a bus-stop, we furiously searched around. We consulted the online logs for a glint of extra information, and with it, Mr Hg137 had the ‘Eureka’ moment of knowing where the cache was. But, at that moment, some tourists arrived (we’ve still no idea how or when they arrived) and stood exactly where Mr Hg137 wanted to search. Eventually they moved off, and we moved in. Cache in hand, log signed…the rest of Appledore Harbour awaited.

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Appledore was quiet, very quiet. There were people about, predominantly pensioners, presumably on a day’s excursion. Sitting on seats, drinking tea. We walked by – we were heading for the former railway station (closed in 1917) where a cache was hidden. The station and the former railway line was marked by a wonderful sculpture/mural. We initially thought the cache was attached to it, but a closer inspection of a nearby seat yielded our prize.

Then it all went wrong.

We had got hot at the glass factory, and the day was heating up to…frying our brains. (Leastways that is our excuse). Our last cache was a multi. All we had to do was collect a year from a plaque by the Lifeboat Station and undertake some very simple maths to calculate the coordinates for the final cache. One of the numbers meant multiplying 2 by 2. A child of 5 could do this. We didn’t have a child of 5 with us, just slowly frying brains. For some reason…we made the answer 8 ! (To this day, we don’t know why. We both checked it and the answer was 8).

Off we went, up a very steep hill arriving at a field boundary next to a telegraph pole. The hint, alluded to such a pole, but as we still had some way to go (to our erroneous coordinates), we didn’t check the pole. We stared field-ward. The gate was locked, and no poles anywhere to be seen. After some minutes, we moved back to the car and drove to Westward Ho! still wondering what went wrong.

(Postscript : it was late that evening we re-checked the maths, and realised the pole we had stood next to, was the host! We were within feet of the cache and didn’t look! Oh dear!)

Westward Ho!

By contrast to the quiet, sleepy nature of Appledore – Westward Ho! was vibrant, noisy and the average age must have dropped by 70 years. Car parks were full (it took us 5 circuits of a car park to get a space, which tested Mr Hg137’s parking ability to the full – remember he can’t multiply 2 x 2 – so how on earth can he park a car?!)

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We walked away from the hustle and bustle to collect 3 caches. Two were puzzles we had solved before leaving home (suffice to say three words had been highlighted in each of the cache descriptions which provided a unique method of location identification). The other cache celebrated a famous author. Surprisingly, not Charles Kingsley (author of Westward Ho!), but Rudyard Kipling who attended the United Services College in the Town Centre. (The cache was called Stalky and Co, named after the book written by Kipling based on his experiences at the college).

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We strode back to the sea front, and to the North-East of the main beach is a protective bank of pebbles. This protects the sand-dunes of Northam Burrows from the sea. The bank and the pebbles formed the basis of an Earthcache. We took various readings of heights, stone shapes and provided answers as to how the pebbles moved. (Proving we can do geography exams, but we can’t do maths questions!)

Our main target in Westward Ho! was the swimming pool. A tidal swimming pool. With the tide coming in, the pool would be submerged, and unswimmable in less than 2 hours. We returned to the car, and noticed….Mr Hg137 had left his swimming costume in the hotel ! (Can’t do maths, can’t carry a bag out of the hotel…)

Mrs Hg137 changed into her costume (the awkward car parking space provided surprising privacy). Mr Hg137 hatched a plan. His walking trousers were convertible. A knee-high zip would undo the bottom leg portion. So he could swim after all – in slightly too long shorts.

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We arrived at the pool – surprisingly cool, and swam, waded and eventually watched the incoming tide splashing against nearby rocks. These splashes became more frequent and we knew our time in the pool was over.

An exhausting day where we learnt about glass-blowing, tested our geography skills but went to the bottom of the class in Maths !

PS We learnt punctuation too…Westward Ho! is the only place in Britain which contains an exclamation mark!

Caches found :

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May 23 : Llandudno and the Great Orme

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

After three days in and around Chester, we ventured further afield for a day at the seaside at Llandudno, and the geocar was soon parked on the seafront. We perambulated pleasantly along the promenade to our first geocache of the day, based on information to be found around the war memorial. Coordinates gathered, we moved off to the cache location, retrieved the cache, and were just signing the log, when we were interrupted … by a bird (a juvenile jackdaw?) who clearly thought that our rucksacks might contain food. They most certainly did, but it wasn’t on offer!

But our main objective for the day wasn’t at sea level, but higher up, on the Great Orme. By the way, the name comes from the Vikings, and means ‘sea serpent’. Mr Hg137 knows that I’m easily swayed by quaint modes of transport, and there’s a tramway up the Great Orme if you don’t fancy the walk http://www.greatormetramway.co.uk We queued up with throngs of other people, then set off in a striking Edwardian tram carriage up an incredibly steep track.


Actually, it’s not one tram, but two, with a halfway station where you change trams. Maybe it’s not possible to string a single cable all the way to the top round some sharp twists and turns. We got at the changeover point and took a short walk to Great Orme copper mine http://www.greatormemines.info How many Bronze Age mines can you visit? Not many – but we didn’t have time and contented ourselves with finding the earthcache based on the rocks around the entrance to the mine.

Great Orme Mine

Great Orme Mine

Back at the tram station, we re-boarded and took the shorter ride to the summit on a much less crowded tram. We emerged from the station almost at the top, almost 700 feet above sea level. It was cooler here, and much windier. Up here there are expansive views, an old observatory, now a café, a playground, the terminus for the cable car, and much more. Just outside the tram station is a statue of a Kashmiri goat; they roam on the Great Orme, keeping scrub in check, and I was hoping to see the real thing, but it wasn’t to be, and I had to content myself with some distant views of sheep. Never mind.

Kashmiri goat – but a statue, not a real one

We had thought it might be difficult to search for caches up here, as there were many, many people around, but there was anonymity to be had among so many people, and we didn’t get even one curious glance. Of the two caches at the summit, one is a traditional cache, close to the summit cairn, which was a little dilapidated when we visited (it’s been repaired since) and another earthcache, which needed us two find two kinds of geological information and have a look at the medieval ridge and furrow part way down the hill.

There was another cache not far from the summit, giving us a chance to step away from the crowds. Almost immediately we were on our own, walking across springy turf dotted with sheep, with a wide-ranging view out to the north and a large wind farm. We got close-ish to the cache site. Where was it? Mmm: we were stood at the top of a small cliff, and the cache was doubtless at the bottom of said cliff. Oh dear: I really didn’t fancy some hardcore rock climbing. We looked around and found a steep path, fortunately on dry grass, that made its way round to the base of the cliff. Once there, we still couldn’t find the cache. Where was it? Mmm: where would the sheep shelter from showers? Aha! That was where the cache was concealed.

Return tram journey

It was well into the afternoon by now, and we had spent three or four hours up on the Great Orme, enjoying ourselves as the time flashed by. We returned to the tram and took the trip back down into the town. The school day was now over and there were lots more children about, cycling on the promenade, down on the beach, having a fine time. We looked at the beach, and the sea, and decided it was time for a short paddle before returning to the geocar. The shoes came off, trousers were rolled up, and in we went – and – it wasn’t cold!

Llandudno West Beach

We prepared to return to Chester, an hour’s drive away. But first: one more cache, on the other side of town, sort of on our way back. It was a puzzle cache, solved by completing an online jigsaw showing the view from the cache; as the jigsaw is completed, the coordinates are revealed. I like jigsaws and this one was a few minutes fun to solve. The cache is at Llandudno West Beach, overlooking Conwy Sands. It’s a much quieter, less brash side of the town, with a beautiful sheltered beach and gently breaking waves, plus a glorious view along the Welsh coast … just as the jigsaw promised.

Conwy Sands from Llandudno West Beach

This was a perfect cache to end the day: it had a good puzzle, a great location and a good cache container at the end of the hunt. We returned to our hotel tired but well pleased.

Here are some of the caches we found:

August 4 : UK Mega 2017, Devon – Day 1, Otterton, Ladram Bay and elsewhere

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

I had finally been permitted a day off work. So, bright and early, we were heading down the A303 towards Devon, towards the 2017 UK Mega Geocaching event at Bicton College.

Close by Bicton College lies the River Otter, Otterton village and Ladram Bay, with its red cliffs and sandstone stacks. The bay is one of my favourite places – ever, ever – we last visited in May 2016 and posted about the caches then. But, for the Mega event, LOTS of new caches had been placed and we planned to do quite a few of them.

Jurassic Coast

We parked in Otterton and switched on the GPS. Mr Hg137 had spent several hours loading up 76 caches for the weekend and we were fully prepared. The GPS fired up … and there were just two (yes, two) caches visible. Aargghh! Something had gone wrong, and we didn’t have a caching route for today, or the rest of the weekend. We thought … how to load some more caches … we had a GPS, we had a laptop, where to find some wifi? Aha! The village pub. We grabbed GPS, laptop and cable, and rushed to the village pub, the Kings Arms http://www.kingsarmsotterton.co.uk where we bought a drink, asked for the wifi password and sat outside, loading caches. The village seemed to be quite busy, and suspiciously many of the folk wandering around seemed to be carrying GPSs. Hmm, a lot of geocachers about!

Mission accomplished, we walked back to the start of our day’s caching route which would lead us out of Otterton, over tracks to Ladram Bay, then up Peak Hill for a view across to Sidmouth, then back along a green lane to the village. We would usually have parked at the car park at Ladram Bay, but the price for doing this has risen to a rip off price of £10, and that is way, way too much for an afternoon’s parking. Oh well, another customer lost forever.

Slippery, slidy path down to the bay

Our first couple of caches were from the ‘Strolling around Otterton’ series which had been recently placed, ready for the Mega event. Mr Hg137 became confused when one of the hints read ‘behind TP’ and he spent a little while looking for a tepee rather than a telegraph pole. Never mind, he worked it out soon enough. Then we left the village and walked towards the coast along a muddy, sunken lane leading downhill towards the bay. We had joined the route of the ‘Mega Byways’ series and found some more caches as we slipped and slid and eventually emerged into Ladram Bay Holiday Park.

Ladram Bay

The South West Coast Path crosses here, and we joined it to walk up the hill to the east of the bay, pausing for lunch at a picnic bench overlooking the beach. Here’s a video of the super little bay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9e5nTQvGgY
As we set off uphill away from the bay, we stopped to read a noticeboard, and for a chat to two people coming from the other direction. Their GPS gave them away as geocachers. They were Lydford Locators, and we found more than 50 of their caches as we worked our way down the upper reaches of the Thames in early 2015. We were duly awed to meet them and they were … puzzled by us two fans.

We carried on up the hill on a path between the cliff edge and a cornfield, finding caches as we went. We recognised another geocacher, Simply Paul, who we had last seen at the 2016 Geolympix in Ashridge Forest. And we kept spotting people behaving oddly, stopping at regular intervals or disappearing into hedges and bushes. Cachers, cachers everywhere! (Goodness knows what the locals and muggles made of all this ….)

Peak Hill, Devon: view west

We reached the top edge of the field and went into woodland, then spent a little while searching around in ivy before finding our next cache. All the time a family were approaching up the hill, and we just managed to replace the cache before they arrived. Hello to caching family, BECKS RLLR plus geodog, and we kept on bumping into them for the next mile or so. Leaving them to look for the cache we had just re-hidden, we huffed and puffed our way to the very top of the hill, 157 metres above sea level, leaving the woods for heathland and for a fine view out to sea. A short way further on, the south-west coast path began to drop towards Sidmouth, and the view opened out.

SWCP Panorama

Mr Hg137 suddenly realised that there was a cache, named ‘SWCP Panorama’, that he had omitted to load during our earlier, rushed episode at the pub. He cast around like a bloodhound on a scent, and the cache was soon found. It was under a pile of large pebbles that looked as if they had been regularly disturbed – that’s the thing about Mega events, the caches are found a lot in a short time, and there are usually signs of searching, or even a cacher holding the cache!

Bars Lane, Otterton

We turned back inland and down Bars Lane, a sunken tree-lines track which turned into a lane, and with a few stops for cache finding and a few diversions down side paths for more cache finding, we made our way back to Otterton. As we reached the cache where Mr Hg137 had searched earlier for a tepee, we bumped into yet another group of cachers – this group were clearly from Scotland and they were the organising committee for the 2019 Mega event, which is to be in Ayrshire. So many cachers!

Arriving back at the car, we decided to attempt one more cache. This one was called ‘Spoiler’. You get some coordinates as a start point, are told that the cache is within a two-mile radius, and are given a photo taken from the cache site. And that is all the information you get. We’d done one of these before, in London’s Docklands, and hours, days and weeks of research had gone on to find the right place. This one was a bit easier. We knew that the cache was inside a circle based on given coordinates – we drew a circle on the map. We perused likely places using every kind of online map – and got a few candidate places. We researched further – bingo! Mr Hg137 found some drone footage. We had found the place. We drove there, down some very narrow Devon lanes. Walking round the location, we found the cache at the third attempt, when we had finally managed to line up the photo and the view exactly. Phew! Success. We headed off to Honiton and our hotel, to rest up, load some more caches, and prepare for the rigours of the Mega Day on the morrow.

A secret location somewhere in Devon!

Here are just some of the many caches we found:

June 23 : Chichester Marina

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Chichester canal – the last lock

A warm Friday seemed like a good day for lazing around on a beach – and why not wonderful West Wittering? Just short of our destination we paused for some caching, a walk round Chichester Marina and views of Chichester harbour.

There are two caching trails that lead out from Chichester, forming a circuit. The first is the Lipchis Canal Wander,along the partially restored – partially derelict Chichester Ship Canal, which is also part of the Lipchis Way from Liphook to Chichester http://www.newlipchisway.co.uk The return section is appropriately called The Return, along Salterns Way http://www.westsussex.info/salterns-way.shtml to the city, which is an off-road cycle route back to the city. We planned to do the parts of both routes that lay closest to the marina.

We parked, and set off along the canal, derelict at this point, heading back towards Chichester. The canal still holds water, but this section is only used by ducks and moorhens, not boats at present. Guarding the first cache and ignoring us, two swans were a-sleeping on the road; they must do this often, judging by the number of loose feathers lying around and the protective ring of cones around them. We walked on along the canal finding three more caches, and a trackable, as we went. Crossing the busy A286, we had a glance at the next section of the canal, which is still to be restored, then retraced our steps towards the marina. We found another four easy caches as we walked through the marina. There are millions and millions of pounds worth of boats moored here, ranging from tiny motorboats to enormous floating ‘gin palaces’.

LOTS of boats here!

Nearer the estuary, the canal is used by houseboats as well as ducks, and then there is just a disused lock leading out into the harbour, set off by an interesting sculpture, which just looks like a boulder from one side, but something else from the other direction. Here, too, is the start point for a multicache which ended our first caching series for the day.


We’d now completed our caching along the canal so headed across the marina to look for caches elsewhere, from ‘The Return’ series. First, we had to cross the lock that keeps the marina full of water when the tide is out, and it was at that point in the tide where boats were busily entering and (mostly) leaving. We waited for the semicircular gate to close, walked across the top, and out onto the edge of the harbour.

We paused to eat our picnic lunch overlooking the harbour and the people messing about in boats. Later, walking along Salterns Way, we left the marina and were soon away from the coast amid farmland, hedges, and ripening crops. We found another two caches here, the last in a quiet spot away from the bustle of the marina with expansive views back to Chichester, the South Downs, and Goodwood racecourse.

By now, the beach was calling us, so we retraced our steps, circling the other side of the marina to reach the geocar and to head off to West Wittering for our first swim in the sea for the year. And, no, the water wasn’t cold!

Here are some of the caches we found:

May 27 : Hastings in the evening, again

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

On a warm Saturday evening, we decided to make the most of our caching time by going back to the seafront at Hastings for a bit of caching, a walk on the beach, and a bit of a paddle too. The tide was well out when we arrived so Mr Hg137’s additional plans for a swim were immediately thwarted, as he’d have needed to wade halfway to France before the water got deep enough.

This time we decided to start at Hastings pier, http://hastingspier.org.uk , but our attempts to get there were barred by a zealous security guard, as an outdoor cinema screen was being set up. Oh well, another time maybe … Instead, we set off west along the promenade towards St Leonards. Our first two caches came from the ‘Toy Series’, and there are at least 42 of these dotted about Hastings. We found numbers #31 and #32, both with small cache containers attached to a toy. They made us smile. Fun caches!


We went down onto the beach, down the steep shingle, and onto the gently shelving sand that appears near low tide. The shoes came off, trousers were rolled up, we finally got our paddle, and it was not nearly as cold as we had feared. Then we walked back to the shore, wading through a small stream of water draining down the beach. Underfoot, it still looked like sand, but it was much finer, and softer, and both of us sank well above our ankles. Aargh, a quicksand moment! We arrived back at the promenade plastered in mud, and spent longer cleaning ourselves than we had paddling. NOT GOOD.

Once slightly tidier, we set off again towards the next cache, which was under a seat. On the seat were … several muggles. We waited, they didn’t move, we waited, we moved on, to find another two caches, one at the place where St Leonards pier used to be http://www.piers.org.uk/pier/st-leonards-pier By now it was cooler, and sunset was approaching, so we turned round and retraced our steps along the promenade, back into Hastings, and had another try at the cache under the seat that we had missed out earlier. This time, no-one was sat on the seat, so we had time for a good search, but we still couldn’t find the cache. (Editor’s note: only one cacher has ‘found’ that cache since our visit, and we are not absolutely convinced about that log.)

We arrived back at the geocar. It was twilight. We thought ‘hmm, maybe we could go and look for that cache we failed to find two days before…’ A quick trip along the seafront to Hastings Old Town, and past the black fishing sheds, and we were again looking for ‘I love it, this Old town’ in the gathering gloom. We were less conspicuous at this hour, but even so, we still couldn’t find that cache.

Twilight, Hastings old Town

And that was the caching done for our holiday. We drove back to the hotel in the dark, reflecting on the past seven days. Seventy one caches attempted, sixty three found, glorious weather, simply a super week!

PS And one other thing: we finished our Sandhurst to Sandhurst walk, 85 miles, starting in January in freezing winter weather, and finishing in May on a hot early summer afternoon.

For the future (maybe): there is yet another Sandhurst! This one’s in Gloucestershire. We might, perhaps, walk home to Sandhurst, Berkshire, from Sandhurst, Gloucestershire. Time to start planning?

May 25 : Hastings

Hastings was our venue for the week, but our hotel was about 4 miles from the sea and historic parts of town. Today would be the day for exploring !

Warrior Gardens, Hastings

We had unsuccessfully attempted to visit Hastings Pier earlier in our stay, so this time we were determined to find the caches hidden in or near it!

But first…where to park the car? Fortunately a bit of online research pointed us to a not-too-expensive car park yards from the sea. We paid for 5 hours, thinking (stupidly), we’d be finished in 3 hours, and we could drive elsewhere to finish the day.

Our main targets were on the seafront, so we started to walk there and almost immediately noticed a church micro. An easy find, but an unplanned one.

Somewhere in the picture is the church and the cache!

Next – to Hastings’ beautiful Warrior Gardens. Here a multi had to be solved, based on the dates of a statue. The final destination took us through both parts of the tiered gardens (a road bisects them) and so we had a fine view. What was slightly frustrating was the cache. A film container, not brilliantly hidden behind a bush and less salubriously, a dog poo bin. There ought to have been better hiding places!

We walked back through the Gardens to arrive at the seafront, and a real gem of a cache.

My Heart Belongs to Hastings

Padlocks

My Heart Belongs to Hastings is a sculpture officially unveiled in 2012. Then the sculpture was a piece of driftwood with a few padlocks attached. The idea, as with other ‘love padlock sculptures’ is that people show their love to each other/Hastings/pets.. by placing a padlock on the sculpture. Over its 4 years, many hundreds of padlocks have been added…including a padlock cache! Yes, we had to search hundreds of caches to find a cache! After a few minutes searching, Mrs Hg137 had a good idea and almost immediately found the target. We awarded this cache a favourite as it was so different from what we were expecting.

Hastings Pier

…and the view back to shore

The pier was open, and we had time to explore. Noticeboards were placed at strategic intervals telling us of the Hastings Pier Fire, how the pier was rebuilt, major bands that played on the pier etc.. all interesting information. All of which helped us to derived the coordinates for 2 different caches. One was apparently hidden on the pier itself, but we never found it. GZ seemed devoid of hiding places, and the hint bore little or no resemblance to items nearby. (We thought the cache was going to be under a telescope, but there were none at the co-ordinates). The second cache we did find, a small nano hidden just at the pier entrance.

Our Eureka moment, signing the log, was marred by an elderly Hastings resident asking us if we were lost or needed help…we didn’t but shortly chased after him to ask whether there were any bus services between the pier and the ‘Old Town’. There weren’t.

We had taken nearly 2 hours to attempt 5 caches, and we were still yards from the car! We decided to walk along the promenade to the Old Town. Very pleasant, but we did pass several caches we had attempted two nights previously.

The Old Town/Fishing Quarter had several caches. As we had been relatively slow up to that point, we jettisoned the host of multi-caches which seemed to pepper this part of town. Instead we looked for another cache on artwork.

Winkle

This time we were looking for a nano on a Winkle! This area of town was known as Winkle Island, in honour of the Winkle Club which ran various charity events. Very modern, very metallic and very tactile. Visitors can clamber over it, and we did ! Sadly no cache came to hand! (We discovered after our visit that the cache owner had been checking the cache out not 15 minutes before we arrived!)

We walked on to the edge of the Fishing Quarter, to try to find an even harder cache. No hint. Just a miscellany of slightly worse-for-wear street furniture and pot-holed pavements. We looked long and hard and failed. Two DNFs in a row – not good, and our third of the day!

DNFs are great time stealers, and by now we were grateful we had paid for those 5 car park hours. As the day was hot, and we also decided to casually wander back to the car and finish our exploits mid-afternoon.

As we turned to walk back towards the car, we undertook an Earthcache. Unusually this Earthcache did not test our knowledge of geological rock formations, but of groynes. We had to describe what various groynes were made from and well as their advantages and disadvantages. As we were constructing our answers a fishing boat returned to shore.

Hastings does not have a natural harbour. In days gone by, boats were MANUALLY hauled up and down the shingle beach every time the fishermen sailed in and out. Nowadays a small mechanical digger takes the place of the manual labour.

The Old Town was the location for our last seafront cache. Here the roads were narrow, and twisted and turned up ever steep gradients. The flatter roads contained an unusual array of tourist shops and eateries, but our target was some 100 feet above them. On private property. In a window box! We were looking for a cache inches from someone’s front window! We found it, but so, so unnerving.

Hastings Tourist Town!

So a mixed day on the seafront, a few too many DNFS, but some very varied cache locations.

Window Box Cache

As we arrived back at the hotel we remembered there was a cache in the road opposite. We parked up, and found it immediately (it hadn’t been hidden well)… but it was full of water! We decided to remove the cache, take it to our hotel room and dry it out. It wasn’t on the tourist trail, so we gambled a few hours away drying out would enhance it no end. It did! We were soon able to sign the dried up paper, and we replaced the cache with no other finder being inconvenienced. Our good deed for the day!

May 22 part 2: Hastings in the evening

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

It was the second evening of a week’s holiday in and around Hastings. We had spent the day doing ‘tourist stuff’ (and a bit of caching!) in the sunshine around Battle Abbey, the site of the Battle of Hastings (I reckon King Harold made several tactical errors, which led to him losing both the battle and his life). But it was a beautiful warm evening, and it seemed a shame to spend it doing nothing. So off we went to the seafront at Hastings, close to the pier. Arriving in the evening sunshine at just before 8pm, we parked on the seafront. There are two good caches on Hastings pier, and they were our first target. Oops, no. Despite having read that the pier closed at 10 pm, it actually closed at … 6pm.

Early closing?

Never mind. We walked on, and found ‘Lest we Forget’, a 35mm film pot close to the war memorial. At time of writing, it had just been archived, so that’s not giving anything away.

On along the promenade, we located another cache close to a statue of a lion.

Seaside lion

And a bit further on was Castle Hill car park, with the castle – one of William the Conqueror’s – looming above us atop a cliff reinforced with brick walls. There was a cache here too … but the hint said it was hidden behind a brick … and there were thousands of the things! We poked randomly at a few sample bricks before applying some logic, and using the GPS to get the right location, and it all went rather better after that, and we found the cache after another two minutes. All the while we were wandering around, inspecting brickwork, a muggle was sat patiently in his car, waiting for something or someone. Whatever he was waiting for didn’t arrive/happen while we were there, and we don’t think he saw us replace the cache.

Hastings Castle

By now it was dusk, with a beautiful sunset sky developing, and we returned to the promenade to walk back to the car. Lots of folk were still out walking/cycling/roller-skating, and the lights of ships could be seen out at sea. Well, we couldn’t spend a week at the seaside without visiting the sea at least once, could we?

May 26 : Devon / Cornwall : Day 5 : poems, surf, and chefs: Greenaway, Polzeath, and Padstow

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Polzeath surfers

Greenaway is my family name. And I well remember the toe-curling, red-cheeked embarrassment at school when we studied John Betjeman’s poem ‘Greenaway’. But this meant that I knew there was a beach in Cornwall of that name, and a little research showed that there was also a cache of the same name near that beach. So there was no way, no way at all, that a visit to Cornwall was not going to include a visit to Greenaway. And here is that poem … it’s not that long if you aren’t into poetry …

South West Coast Path – to Greenaway

GREENAWAY
by John Betjeman

I know so well this turfy mile,
These clumps of sea-pink withered brown,
The breezy cliff, the awkward stile,
The sandy path that takes me down.

To crackling layers of broken slate
Where black and flat sea-woodlice crawl
And isolated rock pools wait
Wash from the highest tides of all.

I know the roughly blasted track
That skirts a small and smelly bay
And over squelching bladderwrack
Leads to the beach at Greenaway.

Down on the shingle safe at last
I hear the slowly dragging roar
As mighty rollers mount to cast
Small coal and seaweed on the shore,

And spurting far as it can reach
The shooting surf comes hissing round
To heave a line along the beach
Of cowries waiting to be found.

Tide after tide by night and day
The breakers battle with the land
And rounded smooth along the bay
The faithful rocks protecting stand.

But in a dream the other night
I saw this coastline from the sea
And felt the breakers plunging white
Their weight of waters over me.

There were the stile, the turf, the shore,
The safety line of shingle beach
With every stroke I struck the more
The backwash sucked me out of reach.

Back into what a water-world
Of waving weed and waiting claws?
Of writhing tentacles uncurled
To drag me to what dreadful jaws?

The beach at Greenaway

To return to the post … We parked the geocar on – yes on – Polzeath beach, after Mr Hg137 had reassured himself that it would not be swept away by a wave coming from the distant sea (it wasn’t). It was then a super walk on a sparkling clear May morning, of about a mile along the coast path, to a seat overlooking the little beach of Greenaway. Once there, a mid-morning coffee was drunk, while a gentle search around the seat revealed the cache. Success! But I had an additional plan. I was going down ‘to the beach at Greenaway’. And so we did. There are a few steps down to an unspoilt small sandy beach surrounded by rocks. What a lovely place!

Surfers at Polzeath

After that indulgence, we walked back to Polzeath, where there was another cache overlooking the bay. We spent a while looking for it, before re-reading the description and hint and realising what and where we needed to look. Then we turned the geocar south around the Camel estuary to arrive in Padstow. The nearest cache to our parking place was the Church Micro at Padstow, so we set off to find it. We were thwarted … by a wedding, which was about to start, with photographers planning their shots and guests beginning to drift in. It didn’t seem right to intrude on that so we moved on, intending to return later.

I want your lunch!

The busy, crowded harbour seemed like a good place to have lunch, so we ate our sandwiches, defending them against a seagull that wanted them, and wondering exactly where the cache we knew was on the other side of the harbour could be. Lunch completed, and the seagull vanquished, and we strolled over to the slipway where the cache would be hidden. But we didn’t find it. More correctly, we couldn’t even look for it, as so many muggles were fishing for crabs off the slipway that we couldn’t make ourselves conspicuous by searching. Once again, we moved on.

Padstow harbour – right by a cache – much too busy to search here!

We meandered on, past Rick Stein’s cookery school, the National Lobster hatchery http://www.nationallobsterhatchery.co.uk , and a cycle hire business, heading for the Camel trail http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/cameltrail which is a disused railway line heading inland from Padstow to Wadebridge and eventually to Bodmin. Suddenly the bustle of Padstow was behind us and we were looking out over the river, with only cyclists, runners and walkers for company. There are caches all along this trail, but we had time for just one, from the ‘Benny’s Quest’ series. Luckily, this was just out of view of the trail, so we had time and space to search without attracting attention. We needed that space and time as we hunted around for a while before finding a cache fashioned from a piece of pipe, hidden in the shade in a wall.

We needed to return, so we walked back into Padstow, and through the narrow streets by the harbour, full of trendy shops, galleries, and restaurants, including a couple more of Rick Stein’s restaurants. We arrived back at the churchyard, hoping for another try at that Church Micro, but the wedding wasn’t quite over – the organ was still playing and there were still guests in the churchyard. Yet again, we moved on; we just didn’t time that one right.

It was still only mid-afternoon, but we had an evening appointment, at the open air theatre at the Sterts Centre. Off we went, stopping for a meal at the Cheesewring Hotel http://cheesewringhotel.co.uk/ in Minions, which we had visited three days earlier – it bills itself as the highest pub in Cornwall at 995 feet above sea level. And the play … it poured with rain all evening, and, while it was nice and dry under the theatre canopy, it was really hard to hear anything above the rain. Luckily, we’d mugged up on the plot of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ first … as the only thing we knew about the play was the famous stage direction “Exit, pursued by a bear” … which is what I’m about to do now! Growl!

Here, in no particular order, are the caches we found: