February 16 : Elvetham Heath, Fleet

Elvetham Heath is a relatively new housing estate to the North West of Fleet. It comprises about 2000 dwellings with building work starting in 1999 and it was completed just 10 years later. To the north of the estate is the M3, to the south the main railway line to London. Despite these apparent ‘noisy neighbours’ Elvetham Heath is very pleasant, and surprisingly quiet.

In the centre of the estate is a supermarket, a village hall, a school, a church, a pub and many other facilities needed to support its 5000+ population.

The central car park is free for a limited time, but we thought (and we were right), our caching trip would be longer than the free car parking would permit, so we parked some distance from the centre in a residential road.

We planned on locating a cache on our way to the estate’s centre, attempt the multicaches set near the middle and return by visiting a few more caches.

The first cache we attempted was a puzzle cache based on the TV series ‘Death in Paradise’.  We thoroughly enjoy this series, but as it turned out the puzzle didn’t require expert knowledge of the show. A swift google search, some straightforward calculations and the final coordinates were discovered. The cache was hidden on a long, straight track running parallel to the railway.

The cache was a well crafted ‘bird-box’ container hidden just behind rhododendron bushes.

The path was surprisingly empty, we only saw a couple of dog walkers on our 10-15 minute walk to the village centre. We emerged from the quiet, tree-covered path to face the main centre. The supermarket car park was busy, people were crossing roads on errands… the quietness we had experienced had melted into a hubbub of people!

We had two multi-caches to find. We decided to collect the information for both caches, and then plan an optimal route to find the containers.

The first multi-cache entitled ‘My First Multi-cache’ required us to write down numbers from a parking restriction sign. The second multicache, part of the village hall series, required us to use digits from a phone number.

Both caches were in opposite directions! Before we set off to find the first cache, we found a simple cache close to the telephone box and post box – part of the Fine Pair Series. We first found a Fine Pair cache back in 2013 – that cache was number 64 in the National series – this cache was number 1435.

Interestingly the post box was an old George VI post box, so must have either been here 60 years ago, when the estate was a wooded area, or moved from another location. In keeping with the time-travelling nature of the post-box, it was topped with a Dalek, while the no-longer-used phone box, was a frostproof plant container!

With the Fine Pair cache, found, we headed North to find one of the multicaches. The final was a some distance away, and the twisty-turny nature of the roads and pavements, meant it took some time to reach Ground Zero. We were glad for a quick find, as the hiding place was very exposed in front of several houses, on a road junction.

We returned to the village centre and headed a little way south, picking up the other multi-cache.  Again another street sign was the host and a hint that confused Mrs Hg137, who seemingly never learnt the orientation of compass points based on the phrase.. “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” !

Time was pressing, and we limited our searching to one further cache. This was close to the car, but, at the time, many of roads and pavements were being dug up, and non-optimal alternatives meant we took longer than expected to arrive at GZ. The hint was magnetic, and it took us a few minutes to find the correct metal object, but once we did we had our largest container of the day.

There are still a few caches in the Elvetham Heath estate, which no doubt we will collect at some other time.

July 17 : The Ridgeway : Streatley to North Stoke

It had been over a month since our last walk along the Ridgeway.

Streatley marks the half-way point of the Ridgeway, and a complete change of scenery. Gone are expansive views from chalk hills, instead a more urban, riverside walk.

Geocaching walks should really score highly on at least one of the following criteria :

• beautiful or historic scenery
• large quantity of caches
• quality of cache containers or hiding places

Sadly this walk didn’t really score high on any of these indices.

We should have realised our day wouldn’t score highly as we parked our ‘destination’ car in North Stoke. There was a fine pair multi to solve. ‘A fine pair’ relates to a red telephone box and red post box in close proximity. Numbers are extracted from each structure and a set of final coordinates calculated. We decided to do this before driving the ‘start’ car to Streatley. That way if the final hiding place was on our route into North Stoke we wouldn’t have to walk back to it. Sadly for us, the numbers we had to find from the post box didn’t make sense. We had to subtract one number from another… but this gave us a negative number. Hmm. Something wrong. And a strong portent for our caching trip.

As we arrived in Streatley, we drove into the same cul-de-sac we used some weeks previously. We noticed two ladies with two cars doing some odd manoeuvring . Actually it wasn’t odd, they were replicating our actions of some weeks earlier. Parking one car, and driving another to the start. We wished them well on their walk from Wantage to Streatley.

We set off, heading through Streatley’s town centre, and headed East, crossing the River Thames into Oxfordshire. The bridge hosts two long distance paths, the Thames Path (cross the bridge and turn South), and the Ridgeway (cross the bridge and turn North).

Before we turned North, we checked out two more multicaches. One based on the village hall, the other based on the village sign. We sat on a seat on the village green and calculated the final coordinates for both caches. We were in luck, they were both sort-of-ish on our route. We paused for coffee (calculating, quite correctly we wouldn’t see a bench or seat for some time).

Invigorated, we headed North away from Streatley. One of the multi-caches, was close to an estate of houses. Of course we followed the GPS religiously as it pointed left, right, in alleyways, behind garages. It was only when we were at GZ, signing the cache, did we see a less complex route back to the Ridgeway.

Not the most scenic part of the Ridgeway

For about half a mile (seemed longer), we were hemmed in by buildings and trees on the left, and building and gardens on the right. A narrow pathway between. At end of the pathway was the hiding place for the second multi.

The pathway opened out after the cache, to a slightly wider track, with less houses and more trees. We were running parallel to the river, but the trees and occasional house obscured our view. Our next cache was named ‘Cleeve Lock View’, but we couldn’t really see the lock at all! We couldn’t see the cache either. Apparently hidden in a stump or bush, but we couldn’t find it having searched many likely hosts.

Somewhere down there is a lock!

There was only one host to check at the next cache ‘Triangle’. There was only one triangle, a road sign…but no sign of the cache in the sign or at its foot.

We continued on, dispiritedly with consecutive DNFs. We arrived at the large village of South Stoke. Here there was plenty to find. Firstly a 5 stage ad lab. We had to visit several waypoints in the village, and using wireless connectivity answer a simple question. At the first waypoints we were examining a noticeboard with different local numbered walks centered around the village. We entered the answer into the phone… nothing. No response at all. We moved to another waypoint, this time at the local pub. The phone beeped the waypoint question as us… we keyed in the answer… nothing. We had internet connectivity to see the question, but not to enter the answer. Hmm.

Never mind, there is also a Church Micro in South Stoke. It required finding a particular grave to ascertain some numbers. The cache owner had not supplied a waypoint for the grave, so we bumbled our way around the graveyard for some time before alighting on the required information.

It was lunchtime, so we sat and ate, and calculated the final for the church micro. A little distance away, but broadly on our route. But what to do with the ad lab ? We knew the correct answers, but couldn’t get the software to accept them. Now both of us have IT training, and we decided to apply the golden rule. ‘Turn it off, and turn it back on again‘.

We turned the phone off, waited a few minutes and turned it back on. We revisited one the waypoints, and miraculously the number was accepted. We hastily looked for the other ad lab questions – one based in a very well laid out play park, with a Jubilee beacon, fire pit and community orchard. As we answered each ad lab question, we were unusually presented with another. These answer to these questions combined together to give us the final location for a bonus cache. After zigzagging our way around the village we answered all the waypoint questions, assembled the coordinates, and surprisingly found the cache quite quickly.

The church micro was was a little distance from the Ridgeway, and we were grateful for an easy find.

Leaving South Stoke, the Ridgeway dropped down to the River, and for a mile or so, we were in the open countryside which had been missing from our earlier miles. The Reading-Oxford railway line follows the river, and at Cholsey (or more accurately Moulsford), a large brick bridge takes the railway over the river.

We had seen a distant view of the bridge from the other bank when we walked the Thames Path, but this time we were much closer. This bridge is one of two brick bridges build by Isambard Kingdom Brunel over the Thames (the other being at Maidenhead). We hadn’t appreciated that this bridge not only has curved ‘arches’ but the legs of the arch also curve.

There were no caches on this section so we had little to find, until we reached North Stoke. We had done the groundwork on one multi (sort of), but we needed to collect numbers for another Church Micro. Some to and froing around the churchyard, and we discovered the final was some yards back along the Ridgeway.

Or at least should have been. The area had been cleared of vegetation, and new fence panels erected. There really was nowhere for a cache to be hidden. Oh dear.

The cache should have been hidden here… but with all this work…its gone!

All we had to do was attempt the ‘fine pair’ multi, guessing at a replacement digit for the ‘negative’ digit we had calculated earlier. Of course, given our high number of DNFs we had collected on our walk, we added another.

A day of few outstanding views, and even less caches. Fingers crossed the next section will yield more.

January 26 : Sandhurst Village Hall Meet

In the UK, there are many National series that links caches together. One such series is the Village Hall Series where caches are placed near to Village Halls. Information boards at Village Halls lend themselves to providing numbers and many of the Village Hall caches are multis. The first Village Hall cache was placed in Denmead (near Waterlooville, Hampshire) on February 18th 2013.

Since 2018 there has been a celebration of these Village Hall caches with a ‘Village Hall Week’. Cachers are encouraged to place new Village Hall caches, visit existing Village Hall caches or attend a meet (or all three!) during that week.

This year there were several Village Hall meets, and one was at Sandhurst Community Hall about a mile from our home. (Arguably Sandhurst is a town, not a village…and is a ‘community hall’ the same as a ‘village hall’ ?). The meet was at the unusual time of 1030 am. This was fortunate as Mrs Hg137 regularly attends a weekly yoga class between 930 and 1030 and her leaving time coincided with the start of the meet in the car park.

Mr Hg137 walked to the venue and arrived shortly before 1030. there were already 6-10 cachers loitering in the slightly murky, drizzly conditions. As we chatted Mrs Hg137’s yoga class finished and she joined the ever-expanding group of people.

There was much talk of local caches (most of which we had found). We discovered cachers had come from far and wide – at least 2 were an hours drive away from Sandhurst.

The meet lasted until about 1130, though we left shortly after the group photo was taken. Well over 30 people attended, and as one person lightly complained ‘there were more people here at an unsociable time in the rain, than I had for my Village Hall event last night in a warm cosy pub’. That’s cachers for you! Our thanks to cachers VR7 for this photograph of many of the attendees.

June 6 : Skipton and Gargrave

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

Today was our ‘day off’, part way through a walking holiday based near Malham at Newfield Hall.    Geocaching doesn’t mix well with being on a guided walk (it holds everyone up when we disappear into bushes!) so we reserved our geocaching for the day when we didn’t have a walk planned for us.

Off we went to Skipton, about six miles away.   It had been a while since we visited, so we had a look round, wandered up the wide High Street to Skipton Castle, visited the market, and reacquainted ourselves.  We also fancied a boat trip on the canal, so took ourselves off to sit canalside and watch the boats go by while we waited for the first trip of the day at 10:30. And, while doing this, we espied the statue of Fiery Fred Trueman and thought ‘aha, there’s a cache hereabouts’!   So we worked out some coordinates, and tootled off to a place not so far away (22 yards?  Not quite, but not so far off!) where we soon found the cache.  (FYI: Fred Trueman lived in the nearby village of Flasby and is buried at Bolton Priory, also close by.)

Fred Trueman statue

Narrowboat ‘Leo’ was now ready for the first boat trip of the day and we spent 40 minutes or so getting an entirely different view of Skipton on a beautiful, quiet, smooth trip along the Leeds and Liverpool canal, then a short trip along the Springs Branch which runs behind the castle.  It’s a different, calmer view of the world from the water …

Having seen Skipton, we moved on to Gargrave.  We had both visited the village a couple of days before, but were part way through a day’s walk and didn’t have time to stop and look for caches.   Today was different.   We started off with a cache near the Village Hall, then crossed the River Aire and walked up to St Andrews Church.  A Church Micro cache starts here; we spent a little while hunting for the waypoints. They are all there, somewhere, but the grass has been (deliberately) allowed to grow in places and that made some things hard to spot.  We ate our picnic lunch in the sunshine while assembling the coordinates.

Gargrave Village Hall

St Andrews Church, Gargrave

We spent the afternoon wandering around part of the ‘Gargrave South’ geocache series, which heads south-west out of Gargrave along the Pennine Way, then returns along the Leeds and Liverpool canal.    We ascended gently out of the village, finding caches as we went, and crossing over the railway line that leads from Skipton, to Settle, then on to Carlisle.   As we crossed the railway bridge, a lady came walking towards us, wearing walking boots, carrying a large rucksack.  We asked her if she was walking the Pennine Way.   She replied that, no, she was walking from Lands End to John O’Groats (LeJog), doing 18 miles a day, with no rest days, and was about 41 days into an 83 day walk.   Eek!  That is serious walking and put the paltry amount we had been walking daily – 9 to 14 miles – to shame.  Good luck Rachel Douglas from New Zealand, and ‘may the road rise up to meet you’!

LeJog – Rachel Douglas (New Zealand)

After a few miles, and a few caches, we made our way down to the Leeds and Liverpool canal, reaching the towpath by the locks at Bank Newton.   We walked back towards Gargrave, along the most northerly section of the whole canal.   There were a fair few boats, slowly working their way up the locks; there are 91 locks on the 127 miles of the canal, so they get lots of practice!  

Twelve out of thirteen caches from the ‘Gargrave South’ series later, plus six locks, an aqueduct, and several bridges (foot, road, and rail), we were back at our start point.  But first … there was a very new cache hidden close to our geocar.   It would be churlish not to look for it.   The only snag – it was called ‘Across the Beck’ and that was exactly where it was.  Mr Hg137 climbed down and teetered around on stones in the beck while clutching a handy piece of rope, dangling from a tree.  Miraculously, he didn’t get wet … but he didn’t find the cache. Never mind: we’d had a grand day out in and around the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.

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

April 2 : Bentley

Bentley is a small town, or perhaps a large village, a few miles South West of Farnham, just inside the Hampshire border.

Winter was having a final throw of cold weather, and the morning was cold. We could keep warm by walking around, but too much dawdling at a cache, and the cold weather could be felt.

We parked near the village pond and sports field, where some football training for young children was about to start. There was much running around and chasing of footballs.

The Village Pond, Bentley

There was a cache nearby, but we left it – hopefully the sports field would be quieter later, and it gave a waypoint for the car.

The A31 skirts Bentley and one assumes many years ago the road went through the village. Today the A31 is about ½ mile to the South and the village is quiet.

Our first cache though was by the A31. Or at least should have been. The cache was missing. In fairness, we thought it was missing, as the last two cachers hadn’t found it either, but they only had 10 geocaching finds between them so there was a chance they may not have looked everywhere. They had. We did as well . The cache was missing.

We headed back to the centre of Bentley and admired the village history on a large map. Various dates and numbers on the map were needed for the multi – part of the national village hall series of geocaches. A quick calculation later and a short walk and we were at GZ. A very inauspicious sign to check, but Mrs Hg137 found the cache within seconds. As we walked to the cache we noticed the town had a good range of shops – the independent grocers being the most popular- two pubs and a small trading estate.

The caches in Bentley are quite spread out, and we had long uphill walk to our next cache at St Mary’s Church, part of the Church Micro series of caches, Many of the Church Micro caches are multis, this though was a standard cache hanging in a tree. There were of course several trees, and lots of ‘protective branches’ so it was quite a tricky find.

St Mary’s Church, Bentley

We looked inside the church and sat outside for a quick cup of coffee. As we did so, several people came by – they were heading to a choir practice for the village’s jubilee celebrations. Apparently the choir will  be singing a song from every decade of the Queen’s reign, We hope it goes well for them.

Our next three caches were to the North-East of the village, and another long-ish walk.

The first cache, called ‘horses and hawthorns’, had been DNFed recently by a very experienced cacher. We decided to give this cache a quick 5 minutes, but we only needed 5 seconds ! The cache was hidden exactly as hinted, and less than 3 feet from the gps. ! How the previous cacher couldn’t find it, we will never know.

Smugly we continued on, walking around various field boundaries, crossing stiles, admiring the colourful rapeseed crop (surely it’s too early in April, for rape to flower? ), and also rows and rows of grapevines. The chalky soil and south facing slopes should be ideal for grape growing.

Eventually we arrived a large fallen tree (the cache description called it log), and after battling with the early Spring hedgerow growth, we found the large cache quite easily. More fields, and more stiles and we arrived at our next cache. ‘Troll 2’. Yes, it was hidden under a bridge.

A dried up streambed leading to the Troll’s cache hiding place!

Surprisingly it took us some time to see the bridge! The bridge crossed a stream, but surprisingly, for early April, it was dried up and a much simpler footpath, crossed the streambed. As we crossed the streambed we saw the bridge, and walked on the bank to it. The cache was supposed to have been hidden under the ‘West’ side, but it wasn’t there ! Mrs Hg137 retraced her steps, and walked along the streambed, looking upwards. There she saw the cache…. on the East side ! (In fairness there was a good ‘ledge’ for the cache on the East side, but it meant the hint was wrong!).

Our last cache was back near the car. We retraced our steps through the village, much quieter than when we walked through earlier. The playground was quiet too, as was the village pond. Nearby was the cache, we signed the log, and read various signs about the correct food for ducks. Who knew you shouldn’t feed ducks bread, but feed them porridge instead!?

The porridge sign reminded us how cold we were, so we drove home, encountering  a snow shower on the way back. 

A cold morning’s cache with some unexpected finds in Bentley.

March 5 : Chawton

The village of Chawton, situated in Northern Hampshire a few miles South-West of Alton, is famous for one lady. Jane Austen.

Unlike many other places connected to a famous celebrity, Chawton doesn’t go overboard with its fame. Yes, there is Jane Austen’s house (now a museum), and a nearby stately home, Chawton House (which Jane referred to as the ‘Great House’ (but actually owned by her brother) and the local church. The pub is named after Jane’s mother, but otherwise there is little or no reference to the famous author.

Jane Austen’s House (being renovated)

Chawton House

St Nicholas Church, Chawton

The village does though host a number of geocaches. It was these we came to investigate on a cool March morning. Rain was due later and we wanted to complete the caches before the footpaths became too muddy.

Our first cache, a multi, was part of the National series of ‘Village Hall’ caches. Around the village hall were various notices from which we were able to extract information and thus numbers. These included the laying of the foundation stone, and dates from the village war memorial.

Chawton Village Hall

It didn’t include the tale of ‘the dog that saved the village hall’. A few years ago, some card was left on a warm hob as people were leaving. The card caught fire and the subsequent conflagration would have burnt the hall to the ground. But, as luck would have it, a neighbour was out walking their dog. Normally, the last ‘walkies’ of the day, would have been earlier, but because the owner was hosting a dinner party, the walk was delayed. The owner saw the smoke, called the fire brigade and the hall was saved. All because the dog needed a late night walk!

The coordinates we needed to find the cache was some distance away. (We were hoping for a short 100 yard walk, but ended up walking a quarter of a mile, uphill!). We arrived close to the cache site, and a fallen tree, blocked our entry to Ground Zero. Mr Hg137 climbed over it, Mrs Hg137 bent double under one end until we both arrived at a likely host. The cache description mentioned ‘a rock’, but before we started looking Mr Hg137 saw a plastic box at his feet. It contained a log sheet which we signed. This cache had gone missing and replaced, by the rock we assume. A cache and log is there to be found, we were at GZ. There was a container there, so we claimed the find. We have subsequently contacted the owner, and they will be checking the cache(s !) soon.

Our walk had taken us near to the start of another multi cache, again part of a National Series, ‘Little Bridges’. We wandered through woodland and arrived at the ‘Little Bridge’. Some simple counting was needed of planks and poles, and then we calculated the final coordinates. Again a quarter of a mile away in a similar direction from where we had come from, in woodland.

We were somewhat fortunate as this woodland was marked ‘no access’ following Storm Eunice – some gates still indicated this, but others were prohibition free and indeed many locals were walking their dogs in the woods.

A quick cache find when we eventually arrived at GZ, and of course we had to walk back through the woodland to reach our next cache in the village.

This was much easier, near to the the Cricket Club. Cricket Clubs in early March look slightly unkempt, the grass is uncut, the white lines unpainted, the nets unerected. In fact had the cache title not mentioned ‘cricket club’ in the title, we may not have known one was nearby.

At the far end of the village is Chawton House, and the village Church. Here Jane’s mother and sister, both called Cassandra, are buried. (Jane is buried some miles away in Winchester Cathedral). The dates on the two Cassandras graves were used for our third multi cache of the day, part of the Church Micro series.

We actually completed this cache in reverse as the gravestone is easily findable online, and the calculations can be undertaken without visiting the church. (It is though worth visiting).

And so we had one cache left, fairly close to our car, and near to the village hall. We had walked by the cache as we undertook the first cache of the day, but didn’t realise ! The previous finder had said “don’t lift the stone on the left, it hides a dog poo bag”. We lifted the stone on the left! Corrected our error, and lifted the stone on the right for a quick find.

The promised rain was just starting to threaten. so we scuttled back to the car and left having found 5 caches out of 5 ! We may have walked a round-about route in Chawton, but as Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice :

“The distance is nothing when one has a motive.” – which sums up geocaching quite nicely.

Jane Austen

January 29 : Riseley

Riseley is a small town/village just inside the Berkshire border. Today’s caching trip (of 10 caches) were from 4 different series.

The main cache of the day, was the Village Hall cache. Between January 24 and January 30 2022, cachers marked the anniversary of the first village Hall cache way back in 2013. Riseley Village Hall is 1161 in the series. We have found less than 10 of these 1161 caches!

Riseley Village Hall

The Riseley Village Hall cache had been placed as part of this year’s Village Hall week. Also two other series had been laid out nearby (Riseley Wander – 4 caches) and 2 Counting Vowels. These series had been set by 2 local cache owners, whose modus operandi we are familiar with..

We arrived at the Village Hall, and squeezed into the car park (Saturday morning at 915, coincided with football and tennis practice). We collected clues around the village hall, including its newly planted orchard and walked to the Village Hall hiding place.

Overlooked slightly by some houses, it didn’t take us too long to find. As we retrieved the container, Mrs Hg137 remarked .. ‘Is this one of VR7’s caches ?’ – indeed it was. Their method of hiding is well known to us.

We were on a narrow-ish path leading away from the Village Hall and passing a modern housing estate, At the end of the path, we found the first cache in the Riseley Wander series, again set by VR7, and a similar construct to the first cache.

A lot of finders in the first 5 days of this cache

These caches were so new (5 days old), yet the logs already had a fair few finders. Earlier in Village Hall week, there had been a cacher’s meet at the Hall, and during the meet the new caches had been released. We think a group of 10 cachers walked the same route as we were doing, a few days before. Quite what the residents of Riseley thought about it , we will never know.

ColdHarbour Cottage

Riseley Wander 2 was in a hedge between two cottages, the first ColdHarbour cottage looked idyllic and straight out of a film set. The cache, was a variation on a theme we had already seen.

Then we started the first of the two new Counting Vowels caches. Here we had to write words at three different waypoints, and calculate coordinates from the numbers of each vowel we had found. It was a longish walk between the 2nd and 3rd waypoint and we thought nothing of it. After we calculated the final coordinates, we entered a wood, and arrived at GZ looking for the cache. Whether the tree cover played havoc with our GPS, or the coordinates weren’t quite right, we spent far too long looking. Eventually we did find the cache, in a tree we had rejected early on. We made note of the location to inform the cache owner of a possible correction.

So many trees, so few hiding places !

As we left the wood, we realised we should have stopped on the long stretch between the 2nd and 3rd waypoint to find Riseley Wander 3. We turned back and headed there. As we did so, we saw a couple walking towards, they looked vaguely familiar and indeed they were cachers too, Penwood Plodders, who we first met back in August 2017.

We chatted, and told them about the ‘slightly off’ coordinates. We went our separate ways, us returning to Riseley Wander 3, them to the final waypoint. We found the cache quite easily, and passed them again as they were busy counting As, Es,Is, Os and Us.

So many books…we can’t take them all

Our next cache was another part of a National series, Legends of the Call , set near telephone boxes. This was 28 in the series. The telephone box had been turned into a mini-library and Mrs Hg137 spent some time checking every book, and found one, at the second attempt that fitted into her bag. We paused for coffee, fully expecting Penwood Plodders to walk by. They didn’t. We were concerned that maybe the ‘correction’, that we had notified them of, was in fact wrong.

We walked on to find the final Riseley Wander cache behind the playing fields associated with the village hall. We could have finished the morning’s walk there, but we had a few more village outlier caches to attempt.

Post Post

The first was the second counting vowels. We realised we were walking near to the final two stages of a 4 stage multi, so collected appropriate words for later. As we were doing do, we waved at Penwood Plodders who were now marching towards us. Our mission though was to find the Post Post cache (another National Series, set on or near postboxes). This post box was some distance from the village – we wondered who used it, as it was some way from houses.

After a successful find we headed back, and skirted around a field to arrive at the Devil’s Highway, a former Roman Road.

Hidden behind a large holly bush was our next target cache, Holly Tree Lair Revisited. At first we tried to walk into the holly bush, but eventually we ducked under some barbed wire and found the cache easily. The cache was even big enough to hide the ‘Hedgehog trackable’ we had with us.

Farewell Hedgehog… good luck snuffling out more adventures

We had one cache left, the counting vowels we had started earlier. We soon arrived at the remaining waypoints, and we calculated the final as being close to the village Hall. (Handy end to the day!).

We arrived at the cache, found another trackable, and noticed Penwood Plodders had been there before us.

We arrived back at the Hall, triumphant having found 10 out of 10 caches. Penwood Plodders were sat on a bench enjoying a coffee and lunch. We chatted some more, they had omitted the Post Post cache, and intended to drive there. They had also seen another cacher near the first Counting Vowels cache hence their delay in catching us up.

A pleasant morning, some interesting containers, and as always really great to see other cacher’s out and about. Here are a few of the caches we found :

January 3 : Crondall

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

All Saints Church, Crondall

New Year had passed, and it was time to get outside and do something other than eating (!) and watching TV.   The weather was grey, but OK, so we packed a picnic lunch and set off for a day’s caching, the first of the year, around Crondall, a village in Hampshire, a few miles north-west of Farnham.

We parked in the newly gravelled Village Hall car park – two muggles were working inside the hall and we asked permission to do so.   They came to talk to us and were told that the village ‘wasn’t what it used to be’ – we reserved judgement as we’d only just arrived.

After a quick look around and inside All Saints Church, we set off down a muddy footpath between the churchyard and the village primary school, to make a start on the ‘CUIYC 2000th Cache Celebration Series’.   (In case you were wondering, it stands for Cache Us If You Can …)     After a couple of caches, we emerged into open fields and were climbing gently, with good views back over the village.   While signing a cache log, a muggle passed us, with his dog (Barney) some way behind; we were told that Barney knows his own mind and turns for home when he’s had enough; we looked up a little later and there was no sign of either muggle or dog, so we assumed that Barney had decided the walk was over …  And, Barney was just the first of the many, many dogs, maybe two dozen in total, that we passed, out for a winter walk with their pet muggles.

Further on, we came to the first truly inventive cache container of the year, based on an animal.    A great cache; we learnt later that the caches nearer the village tend to go walkabout from time to time, so they are fairly standard containers, easily replaceable, such as 35mm film pots.  Further out in the country the containers are more creative, many based on animals, birds, amphibians and insects (!)   We worked our way on around the fields and hedges, finding more caches concealed by assorted wildlife.   Another in the series was hidden amid a pile of flints and stones – yes, the cache was a stone – yes, it was also the very last one we picked up!

Part way round, we stopped for lunch – we had been expecting to yomp round the circuit, then have a late and rushed lunch on a seat in the churchyard – but we did better, with a comfy log and a country view.

Apart from the cache circuit, there was a bonus activity, because there was a bonus cache to find at the end of the series.  Some of the caches had a letter/number written inside, which could be assembled to make the coordinates of the bonus cache.  We had concerns that we might not find all the numbers, as some of the logs were damp or fragile (so we couldn’t see if there was a number) and there was one cache we didn’t find (nope, simply couldn’t spot the cache hidden in a spider!).   But all was well, as we assembled enough numbers to come up with a plausible set of coordinates, and navigated ourselves to within a few paces of the cache … so that worked out very well.

Penn Croft Winery, Crondall

Having finished the series, we saw some new farm buildings in the distance, and wondered what they were.  Once there, we found out: it was a winery! It was closed for the holidays, so we went off a little way down the lane to find an extra cache, ‘Crondall’s cache’.   We wished we hadn’t: the cache hadn’t been found for four months, and the log was then marked as damp: by now it was sopping and way too wet to sign.

This log is far, far too wet to sign!

Fingers dripping slightly, we retraced our steps and returned to the village, soon arriving back at the village hall.   This, too had a cache, from the ‘Village Hall Series’, and on our short walk to the cache, we had chance to admire the rest of the Hall, the adjoining playground, cricket pitch, and bowls club.   A great asset for the village.

Crondall Village Hall

Once home, caches logged, we considered what those villagers had said – ‘Crondall wasn’t what it used to be’ – and we thought we disagreed.   Apart from the well-used church, village hall, and playground, it’s on two bus routes, has a super primary school, a general stores/post office, doctor’s surgery, TWO pubs (few villages still have this), and a Rolls-Royce/Bentley garage (even fewer villages have these!).  Hard to say that it’s not a thriving place.

Here are some of the caches we found:

October 13 : Chobham

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here.

We’ve driven through Chobham many times; it’s an attractive, prosperous and well-kept village.   But oh dear – the traffic!   Two A-roads meet in the centre of the old part of the village; throw in two mini-roundabouts, a zebra crossing, narrow village streets and busy village life, and there seems to be a semi-permanent traffic queue.  

Nevertheless, there were three interesting-sounding geocaches around the village, one Church Micro cache and two multicaches, so it looked like a promising place for a morning’s caching.   And there was also a village car park, free for two hours and not expensive thereafter.

Although there were two multicaches, with waypoints in interweaving locations, we decided to attempt only one cache at a time.   We’ve gone wrong so often while trying to ‘speed things up’ by doing more than one cache at a time, and have ended up grumpy and confused (possibly that should have been our caching name!).   It was not such a very large village centre, there would be no problem if we did a couple of circuits on this bright, sunny autumn morning.

Chobham Cannon

Our first multicache was ‘Chobham Cannon’, which starts at that very object; it commemorates a visit from Queen Victoria in 1853.   We followed the waypoints, dodging the traffic; actually, it was busy (and noisy) by the roads, but only a few yards away from the main roads, in the churchyard, the park, or down side streets and alleyways, it was quieter and more peaceful and … nicer.  After a little time, we had acquired all the numbers we needed for the cache coordinates – except one. Hmm, what to do now?  Go round again?

Chobham Village Hall

Realising we were close to the start of the second multicache, ‘Chobham Village Hall’, we decided to try that one instead.  The coordinates for this cache were much easier to assemble than the previous cache, and very soon we were walking away from the road, along a footpath that led into the fields outside the village.  Such a contrast: in a very short distance, we went from urban to rural: a busy main road, then fields with horses grazing and dogs out for a morning walk.   We arrived at a kissing gate, where we hoped the cache was hidden.   But where was it?   After a good look and feel around, we were defeated.

We returned to the village and chose a seat in the churchyard for a coffee break.   Of the two caches we’d so far attempted, we’d got an incomplete set of coordinates for one, and had failed to find the other: it wasn’t going well so far.   Over coffee, we wondered about the Church Micro cache, the only one we hadn’t attempted so far.   We wondered if it was anywhere near where we were sitting? We consulted the GPS. It was 11 feet away. Yes, that close!

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We had found a cache at last, and were immediately happier.  Next, we decided on another attempt at our first cache, to see if we could find that missing number. We returned to the location of the missing number and spotted something we hadn’t seen when approaching from a different direction.  Coordinates were finally assembled; at the likely spot, there were only a few places we could look, and searched them all, several times. Eventually, yet another look at the place that most closely matched the hint showed us the cache, very neatly tucked away (a previous feel with fingertips had just missed it).

With a few minutes left on our car parking time, and increasing confidence (we’d now found TWO caches!) we thought we would have another look for the cache we couldn’t find earlier on.  This time round, we got lucky. Or more likely, our previous searches had moved vegetation around just enough that the cache could be felt on a second search.

All caches found – finally – though for much of the morning, we didn’t think it would turn out that way!   And a jolly nice stroll around a very pleasant village.

To end, here are the caches we found:

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May 22 – Church Crookham and Ewshot

Just to the south of Church Crookham and the adjoining village of Ewshot, two relatively new series had been published – the CP (Crookham Park) and SANGS (Suitable Alternative Greenspace) series. Both series are through fields, woodland and houses. The land was once Army land (Queen Elizabeth Barracks), and once the Army vacated in the early 2000s, the developers moved in, and created housing as well as protecting some of the countryside.

The first series we attempted was the CP series, which took us North from the Church Crookham allotments through woodland, finishing by walking through the housing estate. The circuit consisted of 11 caches, and a 12^th, just off the route.

As we were leaving the allotments we got chatting to some local beekeepers. They were visiting their 4 hives, and checking the welfare of nearly 250,000 bees. The bees hadn’t been that active over the recent days, as it had been too cold and too wet to collect the pollen and nectar available from the spring flowers.

Beekeeper returning from the hives

Most of the hides on the CP series, were ‘clever’ consisting of well hidden small nano containers.. For that reason this blog won’t be too specific about the containers or the hiding places. The caches weren’t that easy to find and searching became a problem as more and more dog walkers came by.

There were caches in a road sign (hard), an ivy covered tree (we searched the wrong one to start with), and one under a bridge where our initial searching only located the concrete stanchion!

The largest cache we found on this circuit was the only non-CP cache (Alice’s School Treasures) hidden very well in a chopped tree-trunks.

The former Army land was remembered part-way round as we encountered a Gurkha statue ‘Guardian of the Orchard’. We speculated how fine the blossom in the orchard had been a few weeks before.

We were surprised to find no seating close to  the statue, as it would be a fine place to sit and remember. Instead we found a small bench a little distance away on the edge of the housing estate. We could just see the statue as well as a teenager practising his basketball tricks.

Where would you hide a cache here ?

Our next cache was unusual. Not because of what it was (a nano), or because of where it was hidden (road sign), but the hint (it was in Spanish). We subsequently discovered the relevance of the hint and the road sign when we used Google’s dictionary at home!

The housing estate was very new looking (not surprising) and many of the roads comprised three storey town houses. The pavements became footpaths and took us by a small pond, which the May rainfall had yet to fill.

As we found the last couple of caches we passed several wooden sculptures – all very well carved. In fact Mr Hg137 was so pleased to find  the ‘woodpecker’ statue had a corresponding hole (caused by the woodpecker) that he failed to realise Mrs Hg137 had found the last cache of the series!

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We were by now back at the allotments, which also housed a ‘Mens Shed’ where people take broken items along for repairing.

We had done so well on the CP circuit we felt ultra-confident as we strode out on the SANGS circuit. Here there were 7 SANGS caches and 4 others including a couple in the small village of Ewshot.

Our ultra-confidence ebbed away within yards of starting the circuit. We were starting from the last cache in the CP series rather than the car park) and chose to follow the GPS, rather than use a tarmac road which we thought led in the wrong direction. Our ‘direct’ route took us to a fence which we had to scramble over. Not good!

The SANGS series had been set by the same setter as the CP series, and again we had to find well hidden small-ish containers. The first ‘non SANGS’ cache, with hindsight should have been attempted after SANGS 1, but we attempted it after SANGS 2. A big mistake as we had to circumnavigate 2 fields and a winding road to find a slightly damp cache guarded by  stinging nettles. Had we realised, we may not have made the diversion.

The former Army land was predominantly grassland and Highland Cattle are rotated around the fields to keep the grass levels low. Some fields also have horses which unusually were more interested in eating, than coming over to see what two dishevelled walkers might have to offer.

In many of the fields were WWII pillboxes, an unused defensive line stretching from Hook to Salisbury. Inside one of the these pillboxes a cache was hidden (we somehow missed the very obvious hint item – and spent far too much time feeling, in darkness for something that wasn’t there).

After traversing, and partially avoiding a flooded field we arrived at Ewshot, a pleasant village. A cache, part of the Village Hall series, was hidden unsurprisingly near the Village Hall. A tricky find, made harder as a child’s event was just finishing and parents were waiting in the adjoining car park.

We had a quick coffee break on a neighbouring seat, and looked South. A large bank of dark, forbidding cloud was close to where we were heading next. Our next 2 caches were in a ‘cul de sac’ away from the Village Hall. One by the ‘Windmill Pub’ and with the hint ‘Phone call for Windy Miller’, there really was only place the cache was hidden.

Then a little further on a Church Micro multi. We had to count various letters (A,B, C and D) on a war memorial. We counted them and our total was 31. It should be been 32. We counted again, just as that ominous black cloud started the inevitable downpour. We still made it 31, but realised that a ‘G’ could have been interpreted as a C. We were getting very wet, so headed into the small church. We applied some maths to the numbers we had calculated and arrived a plausible set of coordinates for the final cache. We waited for the rain to ease for some time.

At last the rain eased, and we had a reassuring quick find yards from the Church door. We strode back to the Village Hall, slightly damp, and still confused by the C/G anomaly. Our mindset was clearly elsewhere, as we were very slow at observing a lady, standing yards from the Village Hall cache, using a phone and checking on directions. By the time we had walked a few yards we both thought ‘I wonder if she is a cacher?’.

Our next cache was our only DNF of the day. Hidden in/on/around a neglected post – we couldn’t see it at all. Which left 2 caches left in the series – one hidden a tad too close to some hawthorn for comfort, and one in an inviting hole in an oak.

As we signed this final log of the day, we noted another cacher had signed the log that day. Intriguing.. the only cacher-like person we had seen was the Village Hall lady.

When we returned home, we could see a lady (Pheobie1983) had logged some finds on the SANGS route. We messaged her, more in hope than expectation, but we discovered she was the cacher at the Village Hall – she had ‘half-clocked’ us as cachers too, but neither of us were quick enough to chat to other!  Incidentally Pheobie1983 had found the cache we DNF’ed – so it was our ineptitude at that cache that prevented a full house of 23 caches.

Two fine circuits, the CP circuit probably the better, and some excellent containers too!

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