April 15 : Bracknell Bees and Farley Copse

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

After a few very wet days, everything was rather soggy, and we decided against a country-based geocaching walk: probably too muddy.  Instead, we picked a semi-urban route, thinking that the paths underfoot would be reasonably firm and dry … and so we found ourselves walking through the longish grass at the edge of a fairly damp football field while a children’s team played.  Everyone was watching the football, and not us, so we thought we would be fine to get on with our caching without being spotted.

The series we were following is called ‘Bees Knees’ in homage to the Bracknell Bees Ice Hockey team who used to play nearby.  The Bees have now buzzed off to Slough to play and their stadium has been demolished.

Having read the cache descriptions, we knew we would need extra ‘equipment’ and had brought a variety of geocacher’s tools with us.  As we approached the first cache, we realised that our selection of tools didn’t include anything suitable for this. We found a handy substitute nearby (phew!) and used it to retrieve and replace the cache. The makeshift tool was better than anything we would have brought with us.

Moving on … it was good to be walking along a firm pavement rather than a muddy track to our next cache.  On arrival, we looked up and realised we were again a tool short.  (I had decided against bringing a walking pole with me as it would have stood out in a town.) We cast around and found a piece of scrap metal which was perfect for the job. After a bit of wafting and prodding, the container dropped into our hands. Now to return the cache … with pauses while we waited for traffic to pass by … it took us numerous attempts before we carefully nudged the cache back into position with the piece of scrap metal. All good fun!

Our next two caches weren’t so high up, so easier to reach.  However, that gave Mr Hg137 the chance to scrape his knuckles on something or other and he then bled redly and grumpily for a bit. Meanwhile, I removed, signed and replaced the cache without incident, even pausing midway to stick a plaster onto the injured hand.    This bit of our route is very close to where the stadium used to be; while development is going on nearby, the stadium is currently empty land and is a bit sad.

Bracknell Bees: home of the Hive no longer

We moved on to the next cache.  So far, we’d not been especially well prepared, but had muddled through and found/replaced everything. This time round, we’d belatedly read the cache description and had realised we needed to arm ourselves with a tool (which, once again, we’d failed to bring). While walking to the cache, we found something moderately suitable, and brought it with us. It did the trick … now to replace it. Hmm. Mr Hg137 opted for trying to throw the cache back into position – which didn’t seem to be a terribly good idea – but, at the third or fourth attempt, the cache landed within inches of its starting point, and simply needed a gentle nudge or two from the makeshift tool to push it the last little bit.    (If you had happened to be in this part of Bracknell on this day, and had seen two slightly damp and dishevelled people carrying assorted sticks and bits of metal … it was us!)

A longer walk between houses took us to some woodland, Farley Copse , once part of the grounds of Farley Moor House.  We spotted a group of people working away in the woodland and rushed off to talk to some of them, busily planting up a new pond; they turned out to be from Binfield Environment Group and they were doing a great job.  We walked on through the woods, stopped for a coffee break, chatted to some muggle dogs, admired a mature Wellingtonia (a survivor from the former estate), and found more caches; an interesting bit of woodland.

Binfield Environment Group in action

Pond under construction

Farley Copse

Wellingtonia

There was just one more cache to find from the series and we had read that it was a bit special and would need time.   This time, we did have the correct selection of tools with us.   FYI – some caches require ‘extra’ equipment – we’d come prepared with a penknife, torch, string, pen, paper, water bottle, magnet, etc, etc.  Other caches need things like ropes, ladders, catapult, fishing poles, climbing equipment, canoes; we hadn’t brought those, thinking they might be conspicuous on a suburban street …

We set about opening the cache, deploying some of our tools.   There were several stages, each supplying something vital for the next part, and each needing a different technique.  After some little time, and feeling just a bit conspicuous, we opened the third section, to find a capacious log book and a big jar for trackables – we took one.   This cache may well appear on our ‘caches of the year’ post later on this year.

In summary: Iffy weather, excellent caching! And the moral for this series was  : read all the descriptions beforehand. We made our way through the caches with the tools we’d brought, plus bits and pieces found nearby, but we would have done better if we’d brought some of the other tools mentioned in the descriptions.

And here are just a few of the caches we found:

Now you see it …

… now you don’t

December 23 : Fairlands

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

With the turkey already defrosting, and only a day to go before the food preparation frenzy would start, we just had time for a mini pre-Christmas caching trip.   Off we went to Fairlands, a place I’d never visited before.

Fairlands is part of the scattered parish of Worplesdon, a few miles north-west of Guildford.   A few houses were built in the 1930s, then it expanded again in the 1950s/60s and now forms a self-contained little settlement with some shops, a school, community centre, and doctor’s surgery (and maybe some other things we didn’t spot).   From the cacher’s viewpoint, the ’Fairlands Woodland Wander’ cache series forms a loop to the south of the village, and the shorter ‘FWWX’ series joins up the loop to the north; these two series were our targets.

Having parked at the nearby Community Centre car park (hope the Christmas Eve disco goes well!), we started with a pavement walk to our first cache, hidden beside some street furniture.   After that we walked on, not spotting the unobstrusive footpath we needed (we were talking too much…)  A bit of backtracking, a bit of grumbling, and we’d recovered our poise and found the correct direction. We were soon out in the countryside, at the next cache, near some stables where horses were being fed, groomed and prepared for riding, but we think no-one noticed as we retrieved another cache from the base of a hedge.

Littlefield Manor

Having passing the riding school, and placated the noisy Jack Russell that appeared to be in charge (and doing an excellent job too), we turned along a track past the impressive Littlefield Manor. We were making steady progress, so onward to the next cache.  But then the track ended and became a footpath, which was a little damp – well, under knee-deep water is more accurate – but a well worn side path was shown to us by a couple of passing muggles with the comment ‘that path is only dry for 1 month a year!’  We followed the diversion, got back on our route, and continued with the cache finding.

This footpath is a little damp!

A good spot for a coffee break?

We were about halfway round our circuit now and it seemed a good time to stop for a coffee.   As we were drinking, feeling smug at our successes so far, a muggle and a muddy spaniel came walking past, and hailed us with ‘Are you geocachers? Did you find that cache just behind you?’ We’d been rumbled … and we weren’t even acting suspiciously at the time! (OK, we were standing in the middle of nowhere, by a semi-flooded path, drinking coffee, but we weren’t actually searching for anything right then.) Aha – it was another cacher – Spenjack – nice to meet you, it’s a little while since we’ve come across a geocacher while out and about.

After circling a farm, finding more caches, we started on our way north, back to the village, and we realised we had a small problem – we’d forgotten to load the information for one of the caches into the GPS, so we didn’t know where it was, or anything about it.   But … we had a printed map of our route, so we knew it was where the path crossed a small stream, also its approximate distance from our previous/next caches. So off we went, in hope but not certainty. Arriving at a likely area, we were about to mount a search of everything likely, but Mr Hg137 just happened to look in the right direction – and we’d found it, almost instantly!

Back onto the paved streets of Fairlands, we had one more cache to find as we made our way back to the geocar.   Once again, it was concealed in street furniture; but there is something not there in the street furniture of Fairlands – not a single street light.  The residents have always rejected them to maintain the semi-rural character of the area.

Here are some of the caches we found (and how we re-hid one of them):

As found …

… and as re-hidden

Now you see it … now you don’t!

December 18 : Egham

The town of Egham nestles between three major roads, the A30, M3, and M25. It is also close to the River Thames. It hosts a number of geocaches and our plan was to attempt 6 of them.

St John’s, Egham

Perhaps, undertaking urban caches one week before Christmas wasn’t a good idea. Supermarkets would be busy, and townsfolk would be rushing around trying to complete as many pre-Christmas tasks as they could, in the shortest possible time.

We decided to park in a side street a short distance away from the town centre, and avoid the crowds (and car parking fees!). Our first target was ‘Sidetracked Egham’ part of the nationwide series of caches placed near railway stations. This cache met the brief admirably as the station, and its railway crossing was visible from the cache site. We made a slight error here, as the hint alluded to ‘behind’. This should have been taken in context, ie coming from the railway station. We approached from the opposite direction and of course the hint meant nothing. Despite this we found the clever cache quite quickly.

Egham Station

Our next cache was as close to the Town Centre as we got. The cache was hidden in a churchyard. Quite how permission was granted, we don’t know, but this was our second graveyard cache in 2 months. Our problem was the exposed nature of the host, a glorious yew tree.

The church was open, and a nativity play was being rehearsed, and angels and shepherds sat glumly awaiting their moment. The yew tree was close to an intersection of paths used by shoppers and nearby, in plain sight of the cache, were volunteers tidying the graveyard. We grabbed the cache, walked on a few yards, signed the log, and replaced with almost indecent haste.

On the way to the third cache

Our third cache was a puzzle cache based on Shakespearean quotes. Some of the answers were homonyms of numbers e.g ‘WhereFOUR art thou Romeo’. We solved the puzzled relatively quickly by thumbing through our Complete Works of Shakespeare.

A noisy place for a DNF !

To find the cache we retraced our steps to the railway, and headed closer to the M3. We spotted the host quite quickly, but sadly didn’t find the cache. The previous cacher had also DNF’ed the cache, but other finders had remarked on its ‘sneaky’ container. Too sneaky for us.

Our spirits fell even further at the next cache – a tree climb. We were expecting a fairly simple tree climb, as the terrain level for the cache was a 2. Most tree climbs we’ve seen have been 3, 3.5 or higher. We were expecting to climb perhaps 2 branches, reach and grab the cache and move on. This cache though was 15 feet high. The first 2 branches were easy-ish to ascend, but to get to branches 3-6, a slim sylph-like body was needed to squeeze between 2 upright branches. This is easy for a thin, skinny teenager wearing a T shirt in summer, but Mr Hg137’s middle-aged frame combined with several winter layers, made this impossible. Mr Hg137 opted out after the third attempt.

Up there ? Really ?

Our last 2 caches were much closer to the car. The first was odd for a couple of reasons. Many people had struggled with the cache, but in midwinter after leaf-fall the cache was very, very visible. What was also odd, was the location – behind a seat. The seat had no purpose. No view, no bus stop, and the road it was next to didn’t lead to many houses so no need to a halfway-breather-stop-seat.

A seat…but its not clear why its there !

Our final cache was hanging in some street furniture. We arrived at the ‘furniture’ at the same time as another family so Mr Hg137 simulated a phone call as we let them pass. Once they had gone by, we pulled a piece of string to acquire the cache. These caches frequently give us pleasure, as we never know how long the string is, or what the final container will be. We were disappointed at this cache. Waterlogged, dirty and the type of container that gives geocaching a bad impression.

Six caches attempted, four found but a feeling of disappointment as the quality of hides and containers of the last two caches won’t inspire us to return. Sorry Egham.

July 3 Wokingham (part 3)

Our final day of flat clearing and our final caches in or near the centre of Wokingham.

Today’s first target was some unfinished business from the previous week. The fine pair. We had the co-ordinates, we knew where the cache was – near Wokingham’s allotments. Our problem last week was that Allotmenteers like to chat as well as nurture their plants, and last week we were thwarted by chatting at Ground Zero.

This week was different, few people were around and within a few seconds the cache was ours. A quick find which made up for the previous week’s travails.

The allotments are close to Wokingham’s Hospital which is where our next cache was hidden. Wokingham’s Hospital is predominantly for outpatient services, with only a small number of wards for inpatients. The cache we were after was close to the entry signage. Our GPS initially pointed to the wrong sign, but after a little (slightly conspicuous) searching the cache was in hand.

Train Spotting in Wokingham

Our next cache was our only DNF in Wokingham. Hidden behind some street furniture in Alderman Willey Close, we couldn’t find it at all. The street furniture is overlooked by houses and flats so peering and poking in bushes is quite tricky. We saw an ’empty hollow’ where a cache might have been.. but not much else.

Alderman Willey Close is named after former Wokingham mayor, William John Willey – although the road came to fame many years ago on BBC’s Test Match Special . It was pointed out to the commentators that Alderman Willey Close is probably the only street in Britain (or maybe the world) where all 3 parts of the name can be connected to Ashes cricketers. (Terry Alderman fast bowler – Australia; Peter Willey – all-rounder England; Brian Close – opening bat, England), Sadly for us, we scored a duck with the cache!

Wokingham has a strange history. It is firmly in Berkshire, yet in ancient times part of Wokingham’s Centre stretching Northwards, was part of Wiltshire. A county some 50 miles to the south-west. Many of the roads have ‘Wiltshire’ connotations and there is even a road marker close to All Saint’s Church showing the boundary between Wiltshire and Berkshire.

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Our last cache was in Wiltshire Road. Called ‘Moonrakers in Wokingham’ we conjectured what this unusually named cache celebrated. Was it a James Bond themed cache ? Was it placed near the former Barnardo’s School (possibly the pupils were known as Moonrakers?). Mrs Hg137 knew what Moonrakers were – smugglers who had almost been caught red handed trying to retrieve smuggled goods from a moonlit pond. On being challenged on what the ‘smugglers’ were doing, they replied in a simpleton way…’we were trying to rake the Moon’s reflection’. Believing that the smugglers were village idiots, the police disappeared. It was only when we arrived home, and re-checked this story did we discover Moonrakers are another name for Wiltshiremen. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait for the moon to appear, just a family of muggles to pass by, before a clever find (in the style of smuggled goods).

So 3 caches found, and a flat to finish clearing. Our caching trips to Central Wokingham were at an end.

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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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February 20 : Little Sandhurst – a piece of history

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Sandhurst ancient well

With lockdown still in force, we didn’t have many options for going out, let alone geocaching. But … we needed to buy some DIY materials, a couple of miles away … so we decided to take our permitted daily exercise walk afterwards, which might just take us past the start point of a local multicache.  (Editor’s note: It’s strange how so many of these walks conveniently lead us towards and past caches!)

Scotland Hill

Anyway, the DIY materials were quickly bought and stowed away in the geocar.   Then off we went to the start point of the cache.

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It’s a historic well, tucked away at the side of the road, halfway up Scotland Hill in Little Sandhurst.  We paused, admired it, and collected the information we needed to find the cache coordinates.  A muggle spotted us, stopped his gardening, and came over for a chat.  He said he knew the well was originally thatched (it’s now tiled), but otherwise knew little about it.  We checked later and found an old photo of the well, complete with thatched roof.   He’s also correct that there is very little information indeed on that well, other than the information carved on it and repeated on a plaque: that it was built to commemorate a local resident.   It caught fire at some point, possibly in the 1960s, before being listed in 1972.  It was then restored, and reopened by the Mayor of Sandhurst in 2006.  The local council maintain it, using funds supplied by the local freemasons, who have a picture of it on their banner.   (And those few sentences are the result of a lot of online searching; this is a very secretive well!)

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We strolled off after our conversation, and resumed our daily exercise with a short walk to the cache location.  After signing and replacing the cache, we continued our walk with a circuit of Little Sandhurst – this end of town is quite hilly! – before returning to the geocar to transport our DIY materials homeward.

September 27 : Dorchester on a sunny Sunday afternoon

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

What to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon? As we were in Dorchester for the weekend, a walk around the town, interspersed with a bit of geocaching, seemed like the answer. (We tried this, three days earlier, but were beaten back by torrential rain. Everything looks nicer in the sunshine …)

Leaving our hotel, we set off through the Brewery quarter, a new development on the site of the Eldridge Pope brewery and home to restaurants, cinemas, and some fine brewery-related statues. Here’s an article on how one of them was installed

Statue of Drummer the dray horse

It wasn’t far to Dorchester West station, where we found our first cache, while snacking on large and delicious late-season blackberries. Then it was off to the western side town to find some Church Micro caches. FYI – if you like caches from either the Church Micro or the Sidetracked series, Dorchester is an excellent caching place to go, it has a good selection of both types!


The first Church Micro was easy, near a large church in an almost deserted street: a nice easy find. The second was more problematic: two muggles were involved in a deep conversation right in front of the church. We ignored them and got on with looking for the numbers, stepping round them as we did so. They were still nattering away when we withdrew a short distance to work out the coordinates. Off we went to the cache location: a muggle was mending his fence, leaning on the final location to do so. Oh dear. We walked a short distance away and waited. After a bit he went away with a piece of fence, presumably to adjust it for size, and we chose that time to rush over, and speedily find, sign, and replace the cache. Phew!

What next? Oh yes, another Church Micro. (I did say there were lots in Dorchester.) We walked through the immaculate /colourful / popular Victorian pleasure gardens , admired a little surviving bit of Dorchester’s Roman wall (the western edge of the Roman town), and arrived at the church. After a bit of counting and recounting of various objects, we had some coordinates, and set off to find the cache nearby.

Dorchester’s Roman wall

And that was the Church Micros done for the day. The rest of our caches for the afternoon were spaced out along the River Frome, which forms the northern boundary of the town, just as it did in Roman times when Dorchester was Durnovaria

River Frome, Dorchester

The town stops abruptly at the river, and there’s a super walk along the riverbank, with fields to one side and the town rising on the hillside on the other side. We found three caches along the river. Two of them were from the Little Bridges series, where footbridges cross the river. (Editor’s note: The Little Bridges geocache series started in 2009 to highlight small footbridges in remote parts of Wiltshire. Since then the series has expanded all over the country; to qualify, the bridge must be a footbridge too small for vehicles.) And the third is close to John’s Pond, supposedly where the only prisoner to escape from Dorchester Jail accidentally drowned ( more information here including a splendidly creepy ghost tale).

John’s Pond

By now, the sunny September afternoon was turning to dusk and we walked a short distance uphill to the centre of town, and off to the pub for an evening meal. Goodbye, for now, to Dorchester, it’s been fun!

Here are some of the caches we found:

September 24 : Dorchester in the rain

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Our long weekend in Dorset had not started well. Having left home in bright sunshine, we arrived in Dorchester with rain falling and thunder rumbling, then spent some time struggling at the hotel … how to make the lift work? (key card) … food in the hotel restaurant (no, sorry, we’re closed) … how to make the wifi work (sign in using only Internet Explorer!) … how to get into/out of the underground car park (gates / key card / lift) … how to cope with the Covid measures (aarrggh plus face masks!). After an hour or so or that, all was solved but we were both rather grumpy, so we decided to walk into town, see how things were, and maybe find a few caches too.

After a short walk, we arrived at the war memorial, ready to find the cache associated with it. And it began to rain again. Hard. We decided that inspecting the memorial closely during a rainstorm would be no fun, so took shelter outside a nearby coffee shop. The rain eased after a bit, so we continued on our way, collecting some coordinates for a Church Micro as we went (the cache was a little way away, we’d find it later).

We passed a house where the ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’ lived in the eponymous Thomas Hardy book – it’s Barclay’s Bank now. There are Thomas Hardy related items all over Dorchester, you could spend a weekend just doing ‘Hardy stuff’ – there are statues, a school / shopping arcade / pub / his houses – plus the various locations mentioned in the books http://www.dorchesterdorset.com/blog/thomas-hardy/thomas-hardy%E2%80%99s-dorchester

Dorchester High Street in the rain

We arrived at the High Street to collect more coordinates from another Church Micro, one of many in Dorchester. The heavens opened – again – as we reached the church. We worked out the coordinates on a soggy piece of paper. The rain relented as we walked to the final location, then came down with renewed vigour while we searched for the cache. We took way too long over finding it, getting soaked, but find it we did, before we retreated to a bit of cover to wait for the rain to stop … back at the coffee shop.

This meant we were back at the War Memorial. We didn’t do the cache here before, but it was a bit drier now. We circled the memorial, collecting numbers, did the sums (which matched the checksum – great!) then found a likely hiding place nearby. A feel around, and the cache was located.

Our next cache was at Dorchester South station, so close to our hotel that it’s almost visible in the picture on the cache description. After a few laps of the platforms, bridge, and car park, we had some coordinates, and then the cache. This was the only cache of the afternoon where we didn’t get soaked either while working out the numbers or while collecting the cache, or both!

Maumbury Rings

Just south of the station is Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic / Roman / Civil War earthwork (it’s been re-used several times) https://www.dorchesterdorset.com/maumbury.php The original route for the railway was intended to go straight through it, but was ever so slightly re-routed after a campaign to save it. It’s an impressive place, still used today for outdoor concerts, plays and the like. And a little further on was the final cache of the day – the cache for one of those Church Micros we’d solved earlier on in the rain.

And that was it for the afternoon – we had started off soaked, complaining, under grey skies, and finished in the clear bright sunshine of an autumn afternoon. Apart from the damp pavements, it was as if it had never rained!

Here are a couple of the caches we found:

April 7 : Barnwood

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

St Lawrence’s Church, Barnwood

As it was due to rain, we decided on a morning’s caching close to our hotel, so we could retreat if there was a deluge. As a child, I lived in Barnwood for two years, so I was looking forward to revisiting childhood haunts.

A cycle-cum-footpath led from the hotel towards Barnwood, passing close to a superstore. The first cache of the day was one from the ‘Off Your Trolley’ series. I looked and failed to find, then Mr Hg137 stuck his hand into the same bush and withdrew it, holding a cache. One up to him! Grrr

Springtime

Lunchtime sandwiches purchased, we continued, away from superstores and industrial estates, into Barnwood proper. Our next cache was a Church Micro centred on St Lawrence’s church. Here was a place I recognised. I used to attend the local C of E school, and I well remember traipsing from the school to the church at harvest festival time, carrying a giant marrow. It seemed a very long way, but then I was only five … Anyway, I digress. We did several circuits of the churchyard, collecting numbers to use to solve the coordinates of the multi cache, and pausing to chat to a very elderly dog-walking muggle who was eager to describe the very heavy rain earlier in the week; parts of the churchyard were still underwater. Numbers gathered, we had a short and soggy walk to the cache location.

A diversion followed, while we went to look at my old house and my old school, which is now a school for the deaf. I got a bit misty eyed – they both looked a lot smaller than I remembered.

My old house!

… and my old school!

Back to the caching: we entered Barnwood Park to look for more caches, the first on being the oddly named ‘Chris Thistle’ which is close to a weir on the brook that flows through the park. All became clear as we drew near. The title is inscribed on an object close to the cache.

Chris Thistle is here, somewhere

… or maybe Chris Thistle is here, somewhere

Walking on through the park, there were many signs that said ‘don’t feed the birds; don’t feed the squirrels’ so we had to disappoint the bold squirrel that leapt into our path and waited for food. We grabbed another cache as we left the park and then it began to rain. Grrr. At least we were expecting it.

But it didn’t last long, and had stopped as we approached the next cache, named ‘Raining Frogs’. We were hoping for an unusual container here, but we couldn’t find anything more interesting than a piece of string at GZ (Ground Zero – the location of the cache) After a long look around we left without success.

Postscript: The next day the cache owner posted this sad little note:
The GZ appears to have been “nuked”. I was amazed to see the tree splayed out and flattened in placed. Could see no sign of the cache, which was upsetting because it was a fairly expensive capsule. Still – that’s the risk I took and in this instance it is lost. Not replacing this – too disheartened! Thanks for doing it, those who did! Sorry!

We had one more cache on our list for the morning, ‘Elizabeth of Barnwood’, named after one of the more colourful residents of the Barnwood Hospital (Asylum) which used to be across the road from the cache site. It (the hospital) is gone now, turned into houses, just like the playground of my old school. Grrr. As with the first cache of the day, I searched confidently, but with no success, while Mr Hg137 put a hand out and grabbed the cache straight away. Grrr again.

Five out of six caches found, we returned to the hotel and lunch, with me wittering on about the past, and Mr Hg137 making non-committal noises. A good use of a damp morning.

Here are some of the caches we found: