Just five days previously we had visited Wokingham in perishingly cold weather and undertook an ad lab in Wokingham Town Centre.
Simultaneously, we tried to undertake two multi-caches which shared much of the ad lab’s route.
A combination of the cold, confusion over which cache we were doing, and the pressure to return to our car before our car parking charge ran out -left us annoyed and frustrated.
Mr Hg137 knew the Town Centre well – he’d lived in the town for 30+ years, Mrs Hg137 had a reasonable knowledge too. And we still messed up.
We decided once the temperature rose (admittedly it was only a degree or two), and some improved planning of a walking route we would return.
So five days later, we started again on the two multi-caches.
One of the two multis took us on a glorified pub crawl around the Town Centre. Wokingham was once famed for having the most pubs per head of population. Sadly a combination of Wokingham’s population growth and the economic downturn of pubs, has meant this title has been lost.
Our caching walk took us to several pubs that remain and at each pub, we had to gather numbers from either a feature of the pub itself, or a nearby piece of street furniture.
Simultaneously we followed a trail of blue plaques. The ad lab we had completed visited 5 blue plaque locations, but the multi took us to many more. Indeed the cache owner didn’t let on that the waypoints were at ‘blue plaques’ as he referred to them as ‘Wotsits’ in the cache description. What made this multi harder, was that at every plaque/waypoint we had to find a number, and use that as a basis for the coordinates for the next plaque/waypoint. We had to take great care on checking every number we found, as we didn’t to miss a blue plaque.
In the end we collected a variety of numbers for both the pubs and plaques, calculated coordinates and found both ‘final’ caches. One was hidden in a set-back location, the other in a high visibility location within a car park.
As well as a pub crawl, and a blue plaque trail, Wokingham has a ‘mosaic’ trail with mosaic laid into the pavements. We are quite sure, that in that not-to-distant future, these mosaics may well form an opportunity for another caching trail in Wokingham.
Our only disappointment of the morning was spending 15 minutes looking for a standard cache in one of Wokingham’s Parks. Sadly for us, the cache has disappeared and we registered a did-not-find. It sort of summed up the last few days in Wokingham – hard work, for very little gain.
Wokingham has many interesting old buildings dotted about the town centre. Many are marked by blue plaques, which have their very own Blue Plaque Trail. For the geocacher, the information on the plaques lends itself for setting multicaches and Adlab caches – those where numbers need to be found, or things are to be counted, to use to calculate coordinates.
On a bleak day in early January, we set off around Wokingham to find some of those caches. Our initial plan was to look for two multicaches plus an Adlab and its associated bonus (physical) cache, since all were based around similar locations and some of the same blue plaques. It didn’t go at all well; doing three caches at once, we got mixed up, then found one of the stages in one multicache had a problem: the clue item was damaged. In the end, we said – finish the ad lab and go home and get warm. And that’s what we did.
It all got easier once we were doing one thing, not three, and weren’t struggling to enter coordinates into the GPS with freezing fingers. (FYI: AdLab caches work from a mobile phone and rely on proximity to the clue locations.)
The Tudor House, Wokingham
We started at the Tudor House, once a 16th century mansion; more recently, it was a doctor’s surgery: Mr Hg137 remembers it well from his days as a Wokingham resident. Walking along Broad Street, we stopped at Nationwide Building Society. This has a blue plaque, not for its current use, but for a previous incarnation as a cinema, the first in Wokingham.
A short way on is Wokingham Town Hall, a place where we’ve both attended special things: weddings, funeral wakes, Mayor Making ceremonies and much else. Today we weren’t going inside, just inspecting the blue plaque and the water trough nearby (it’s now a planter).
Leaving the Town Hall, we turned into Rose Street, wide and lined with historic buildings. Another blue plaque awaited us near the far end, on a (small) residential house; this used to be a school with 12 pupils and a live-in teacher – it must have been quite crowded!
Just around the corner was the last blue plaque on our trail, placed to show off The Overhangs, some of Wokingham’s oldest buildings, which really do overhang one of the main roads through the town centre. Once again, the location had memories for Mr Hg137, as he used to work there in the mid-1990s (he tells me it’s modernised inside, it’s just the façade that retains the Tudor layout).
We sheltered from the wind and worked out the coordinates of the bonus geocache. Our GPS gave us a direction to travel in, and we knew how far away it was in a straight line from us, but we didn’t know exactly where it was. So we followed a not-so-straight line along paths, probably not the quickest way, through car parks, and along roads, to arrive at … a place near where a postman had chained his trolley! Oops, we didn’t want to attract attention by rummaging there! But all was well: a glance behind a nearby object showed us the cache, tucked away out of direct sight. Time was pressing now, our parking time was running out, and it was a speedy walk back to the geocar, and home for a warming cup of tea.
A morning of reminiscing for Mr Hg137 who used to live about a mile or so from Buckhurst Meadow, on the outskirts of Wokingham. Back then the area was known as Buckhurst Farm and in the late 90s, the area could have been made the stadium for Wokingham Town FC. Instead local residents complained, the football club move was vetoed, and an estate of 620 houses was built.
As well as the housing estate much of the farmland has been turned into a 30-acre country park ideal for walking around and of course geocaching!
Normally our diaries are quite busy on a Thursday, but today, a few days before Christmas, our bookings had been cancelled – do we need a better excuse to go geocaching ?
Well the weather could have been better ! A misty, murky day greeted us as we set out. The December rain had made much of the grass very wet, but the paths otherwise were more or less good. Occasionally we stepped away from the path to find a cache.
The first cache brought back memories of the first cache we found just 5 days previously. Tucked near a post, behind a bramble bush. Fortunately this time the bush was relatively easy to lean over, yielding us a quick find.
Most of the caches we were looking for were set by local cacher, Mikes54, who gives very specific hints. We were grateful of this at the next cache where we had to find a cache at the base of a tree – the hint made sure we looked at the correct one from a choice of 4! We couldn’t grab this cache immediately as the tree was close to an intersection of footpaths, and a constant series of dogwalkers!
Fortunately our next cache took us away from the dog-friendly footpaths and into a hazel coppice. Here we had not only had to find a ‘knobbly tree’ but then count coppiced hazels to find the cache. We were grateful we hidden from prying eyes when we did this.
The Mikes54 caches had all been placed barely a month before our visit, but our next cache was much older having been placed in 2009. This was deep in area called ‘Big Wood’ which straddles the Wokingham and Bracknell boundary. We found some caches in the Bracknell side of Big Wood back in September 2022. The 2009 Wokingham cache was a quite easy find, albeit the GPS was 30 feet out. (We do find that the older the cache, the less accurate the GPS is – any ideas why ?)
We returned to Buckhurst Meadows and we should really have read the cache notes before we headed for cache 4 in the series. It advised, that after heavy rain, from cache 3 we should walk into the centre of the park via the central butterfly statue and take a different path to cache 4. We didn’t, and soon discovered the perimeter path was underwater. We waded through and around the puddle-cum-lake to arrive at a seat near Ground Zero. We gave a quick search for the cache but couldn’t find it. We saw a ‘cache-size hole’ at the front of a tree, and assumed the cache was missing. Then in the gloom, 300 yards away we saw a dog-walker approaching. Should we move on ? Continue searching ? The man turned away, and we resumed our search, and after few more minutes we had the cache in hand.
Our final cache in the Buckhurst Meadows series was closer to the car, so we took a path out of the meadows, passing a playground, a school and a pond. We arrived at Clay Lane – an enclosed wooded footpath Mr Hg137 remembered well as he sometimes walked their family dog there. Unsurprisingly, the lane had altered slightly in 40 years, many of the saplings had grown, the new estate provided less tree-cover on one side. On the other many of the gardens set back from the tree-line now had gates giving access to Clay Lane and Buckhurst Meadows.
In those intervening years, fairies have visited Clay Lane too. Their tiny houses nestled at the base of trees. We were admiring many of them… and walked by a cache. After walking a few yards, we retraced our steps, and after quite a lengthy search -found the cache. Another old cache as it placed in 2008!
We returned to Buckhurst Meadows and found the last cache snugly hidden behind a lifebuoy post, again near a junction of footpaths – so stealth was needed.
Close to Buckhurst Meadows were 2 more caches – both near the busy A329M. The first in a cul-de-sac that led to a hotel (in Mr Hg137’s time, the hotel was a nunnery!). The GPS wavered here but we soon found the tree the cache had been placed behind.
We crossed the A329 to find a most unusual cache called “It’s a Letterbox”. Letterbox caches, are named, after the ‘letterboxes’ found on Dartmoor. Geocaches of this type tend to have an ink stamp inside. The size of letterbox caches tends to be slightly larger than average, to accommodate the ink stamp, but the size of this cache caught us by surprise!
The Puzzle Detectives series near Finchampstead was divided into 3 mini-routes of 6 caches. The 6 caches we had left to find were on the Finchampstead/Barkham border. The weather had got very, very hot, and just leaving the house was unbearable, so we waited a few days until the temperature had dropped to a tolerable level.
Like the original puzzles we had to answer simple questions about detective series to ascertain numbers to yield coordinates.
Today’s caches were hidden mainly in an area known as Rook’s Nest Wood and Country Park. The agricultural land was taken over by Wokingham District Council as a SANG (Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace) in 2011 and boasts a myriad of paths, some streams and a pond.
We parked at the car park. One of the caches was near the car park and, with a very specific hint, we knew exactly where to search. Our quick inspection yielded nothing. We couldn’t search for longer as a dog walker returned with her two dogs and was half watching our antics. We left the cache for later.
After some discussion, we chose this path… it was wrong!
Several paths led away from the car park, and we had a minor dispute as to the correct one (we went with Mr Hg137s suggestion, but we later discovered Mrs Hg137 was correct!). As a result we took a slightly longer route than necessary to our next cache. As with all Mikes54 caches, the hints are very exact. All we had to do was find a silver birch and a beech tree and a mini birdbox would be the cache. Silver birches and beeches are easy to spot, but it still took us a bit a time, and the bird box was very small ! We extracted the log, signed it and moved on.
Shady woodland
We walked through woodland which provided some cool cover. Back in the open we followed a stream line, to a ‘lonely post’. Even though there had been little rain, the stream had orange traces, and we wondered why. The cache was attached to the ‘lonely post’, and a quick find.
Why is the stream and pond orange ?
We were heading in the direction of Barkham church, and just before we reached it, we turned through 90 degrees onto another footpath. The path narrowed, and just before a stile a large tree and excellent barkoflage provide the hiding place for our third find of the morning.
Barkham Church
Unfortunately the route is not circular so we returned the same way, taking a minor diversion for some sustenance in the churchyard.
Through the wood again, but this we exited in a different direction. We had two caches to find before reaching the car park. Mr Hg137 had loaded the coordinates in the GPS but had mislabelled the map. We thought we were walking to one cache, but in fact the GPS was saying another was much nearer ! Oops !
So after a quick recalibration of our thoughts, we found the ‘nearer’ cache ! Another bird box ! This one covered in false ivy. A very good hide.
So one more cache before returning to the car park. As we strode on, passing a lake, presumably used by cattle, we were aware of 2 people with dogs behind us. We arrived close to GZ, and pulled out our water bottles. It was beginning to get hot, so this action was not too suspicious. We waited for the dog walkers to go out of sight, before finding the cache.
We crossed a couple of bridges on the way to the Car Park discovering why the streams were an orange colour.
The Car Park was empty, and we had another attempt to find the first cache. This time we widened our search and found the cache quite quickly. We had solved the puzzle some time ago, and the hint had changed, so we had out of date information which explained why we struggled earlier..
So all 18 of the Finchampstead Detective series found over 3 attempts including some clever hides.
Subtitled : Two wrongs don’t make aright.….butmany more wrongs sometimes do!
A few geocachers are really, really keen on being the First-to-Find (FTF) a new geocache. They will be notified of a new geocache with a ‘ping’ on their phone, and they are out of the door in a flash. We do not fall into that category.
One of the many lakes at Dinton Pastures
It is surprising therefore we have managed 5 FTFs in our 3600 finds. One of them, was way back in November 2017, and was the first cache in the ‘Counting Vowels’ series set by Mikes54. Today we happened to notice number 100 Counting Vowels had been placed in Dinton Pastures in Winnersh. It had not been found. Sadly for us, we were expecting a household delivery, so it was a few hours later, we noticed the cache was still ‘unfound’. We dropped everything and headed out.
It was an early November afternoon, and the 10 mile drive took ages. Every set of traffic lights were red, and progress was slow. We had no means of knowing if another cacher had found the cache while we we travelling.
We squeezed into the suggested car park space (were we too late?), and we walked to the first waypoint we eyed everyone suspiciously. Did they have the smile and happy face of achieving a FTF ? We couldn’t tell.
Lots of words to choose from
The counting vowels series take you to noticeboards, seats and signs. You write down certain words, and hence the vowels. Count the vowels, apply some arithmetic and derive some coordinates for the final hiding place. We’ve done several of these caches, we know what to expect.
Our first noticeboard had words pointing left, and words pointing right. The question on the cache description said use the LEFT arrow, which we did. The two ladies who were standing at the sign, stood and nattered, as we scribbled away.
Red Framed Notice
The second waypoint took us to a complex noticeboard. We saw the red framed words and wrote them down.
A family were sitting at waypoint 3. Normally we would have let them sit, but a FTF was at stake. We politely asked if we could see the inscription they were hiding. Just as one of the adults was saying “We are not sure, our child is autis.. “. We needn’t have worried, the autistic child, stood up, shook Mrs Hg137’s hand whilst Mr Hg137 memorised the necessary information (A man’s name AND a ladies name – including the ‘AND’).
(The bench was a memorial bench, and it was some while later, Mr Hg137 realised he had met and had chatted to the 2 people whose names were engraved in the bench…we’re talking 30+ years ago!)
Waypoint 4, another bench, and another few words to write down.
We had the right number of words, but the vowels didn’t add up. We needed 23, we had 24. Where did the extra vowel come from? We pondered, and decided we had to retrace our steps all the way back to waypoint 1. (We didn’t want to disturb the autistic family again)
We’ve been here before !
On arrival at waypoint 1, we checked the waypoint question and it mentioned the RIGHT arrow. Huh ? We were sure it said LEFT…this was where the error clearly was, so we corrected our words and vowels…and still had too many vowels. Mmm.
We checked waypoint 2. Again we read the waypoint question and we noticed another error. (Clearly we were putting speed over accuracy). We had to write down the red words on a specific part of the noticeboard, not the words in the red frame. Correction made…and the vowel total still didn’t agree.
About this time, a man walked by, eyeing us up at the noticeboard. Was he a cacher ? We thought he was. We followed him, thinking he was better at information gathering than us..After quite a long walk in the wrong direction, we decided he wasn’t and headed back to waypoint 3.
Not this way!
The family had left the seat at waypoint 3, so we sat there, and checked and re-checked our calculations.
We decided to put our A,E,I.O and U into the calculation, even though we still had one too many vowels. One of the calculations came to 10, and as a single digit number was needed, we decided to make the total 9 to make all the sums work.
We had some coordinates, which weren’t too far away. Indeed we event spied a hint object. Mikes54’s hints are very exact. For this cache he mentioned a wooden structure and a type of bush. Our coordinates led us to the structure… it took us a few minutes to find the appropriate bush…and then the cache!
Were we the first to find the cache?
Somehow we had found the cache! But were we the First-to-Find ?
We gingerly opened the container and found…a completely blank log … we were the First-to-Find !
First to Find ! Yay !
Cheers all round!
We returned home, logged our find, and told the owner the numbers need a little adjustment. And that we thought was that.
But…
… we shouldn’t really have found the cache at all.
Mikes54 had a good look at our online log on http://www.geocaching.com, and realised he had made a major setting error. When the cache was published the questions in the cache description, and the questions for each waypoint should have been the same, but they weren’t. This is why we chose LEFT not RIGHT at waypoint 1. It was why we had included the word ‘AND’ in one answer when we shouldn’t.
Somehow, the vowels we did find were good enough for us to get close enough to find the cache. If the questions had been much more different we would still be wondering around Dinton Pastures.
Sometimes Two wrongs don’t make aright.….butmany more wrongs do!
Late in September, while we were attempting some caches in Warren Row, we met another geocaching couple, GilDean. They suggested we might like to attempt their series set in Shurlock Row. Today was the day we undertook that challenge!
Billingbear Polo Club
Shurlock Row is a small village, almost hamlet in size, part of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, but a little section of our walk was in the neighbouring borough of Wokingham.
GilDean’s geocaching route was linear, starting with a Counting Vowels multi-cache, then 10 standard caches. We decided to undertake the Counting Vowels cache first. Many of the caches in the counting vowels series require visiting several waypoints to collect words, and hence vowels. For this particular cache, GilDean managed to find all the words (and vowels) on the village notice board. Relatively simple to do, and even simpler to walk to, as the noticeboard and final hiding place were close to the village pond.
A less than full pond…and lots of hiding places for caches
We took sometime locating the final hiding place, as the hint gave little away, and we paused several times as the local cycling club came by, in several different groups. Nevertheless a great start to a morning’s walk.
The remaining caches did not form an obvious circular route, so we decided to attempt alternate caches on the outbound journey, and the remaining caches on the return. This would ensure we would maintain caching interest throughout the walk.
Shurlock Homes ?
Cache 1 in the series was within the village itself, and a very quick find. Being relatively early in the morning, there were few people in the village, and our ‘quick grab’ of the cache went unnoticed. This cache would be so much harder on a warm summer’s afternoon, when village is more awake.
We crossed the road out of the village and walked down a wide farm track and through a metal gate (noting cache 2 was at the gate…which we would save for our return).
We crossed the M4, the noise of which formed a constant background hum for much of our walk, and arrived at a hedge. We started looking for our next cache, and then stood back in amazement, it was displayed in the open! We suspect there has been some hedge trimming, and what was a well concealed cache – is now fully visible. We hope that there aren’t too many non-geocachers walking this way during the winter who may investigate the cache and remove it from its very exposed position.
Our next attempted cache (#5) was just inside the grounds of Billingbear Polo Club. The Polo club is relatively new (20 years we think), but the adjoining Golf Course can be dated back to Victorian Times. The area of Billingbear is much, much older, as it was owned in Anglo-Saxon times by Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor, and is mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086.
We were greeted at the Polo grounds, by a bonfire. An unmanned bonfire. Smoke drifted upwards, spiralling in different directions, but mainly – or so it seemed to us – at where we wanted to search for the next cache. Several trees to check, and it was only after inhaling bonfire smoke for 10 minutes did we find the cache. We walked away quickly, noticing an open groundsman’s shed some distance away… so perhaps the bonfire was being observed after all.
The Polo grounds had a delightful avenue of trees, and as we reached the end, we saw an immense metal sculpture of a horses’s head. Coming by road, this would be one of the first things a visitor would see !
We followed our path, near to where the polo ponies (Ed : horses, really) are tied to when they are not in action. It was interesting to note the signs were, we think, in Spanish!
A squeeze gate brought us to a couple of houses, one with a fantastic tree house and on the other side of the road, the Golf Course. A large hedge separated us from the golfers. Although we couldn’t see the players we could hear much of their conversation as they walked between playing shots.
Our concentration on their conversation was broken intermittently by looking for caches (it was after all why we were there). These caches were well hidden, but with accurate hints, easy to spot.
After a short while, we had completed the ‘odd numbered’, alternate caches so we walked a little way to cache #10, before walking back to Shurlock Row.
Many cache owners like to finish their series with a clever container or unusual hide. Cache #10 for most people would have been the last cache and it was indeed a clever container. A pencil sharpener! One of the large plastic types that collect pencil shavings as you sharpen. Here, though, the shavings container was the host for the log sheet. Very inventive.
The caches on the outward leg had been hidden in just slightly out-of-the ordinary places. We took this knowledge with us on the return journey…. and it backfired. At one stump, we completely overlooked the very obvious space for a cache, and hunted elsewhere for sometime before returning to first principles!
As we approached the horse sculpture we saw a lady with a dog approaching. Was she a cacher? No, just out with her dog…which seem to spent more time in the nearby lake than running on grass.
Cache #6 was the only one without a hint. We were slightly concerned and we geared up for a long search. We needn’t have worried. as the cache had been placed in a large tree bole.
The tree-lined avenue lead us back to the bonfire which was belching far more smoke now than before. We were grateful we had found the adjacent cache earlier, as finding it on our return was have been very, very unpleasant.
One more quick find, and we were back at our last cache of the day, by the metal gate. We had our eye in with the modus operandi of the cache owner, but we were tiring. The cache proved elusive. Where could it be at the metal gate ? The hint ‘to the left’ we interpreted as ‘to the right’ as we completing the series in reverse. Making our search worse, was that the Shurlock Row Villagers were out and about and several families were striding out for late morning exercise.
Nature in the air, at waist height, and on the ground
Eventually we did find the container, again it was one much easier to locate in Autumn/Winter months than in Summer months when prickly vegetation would make access so much harder.
So we finished the 4 mile walk having found all 11 caches, and we also pleased we met GilDean a few weeks previously as we may not have undertaken this series otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
Howard Palmer Park
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!)
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.
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.
Spoiler alert: if you are expecting nice pictures of wintry sunshine, you’ll be disappointed, it wasn’t that sort of day!
Monday morning: shopping time: a reasonable way to fill an hour on a foggy, cold morning. But then some new caches were spotted, not too far away, and … no-one had found them yet. Shopping lists and shopping bags were abandoned and we donned our caching gear.
Some explanations: new caches are often found within minutes of being published, whatever the time of day. Some cachers have automatic phone alerts when a new cache appears (we don’t) These two had remained unfound for oh, 18 hours or so, which meant that time was of the essence. And ‘caching gear’ means walking clothes – a waterproof coat, walking trousers, and boots. We were likely to get wet or muddy – it had been wet, it was cold, and it was winter – and ‘shopping clothes’ weren’t going to be right.
Off we went, in the opposite direction from the shops, and reached our destination about 20 minutes later. We were in Woosehill, on the north-western side of Wokingham. Mr Hg137 used to live here, just up the road in Mars Close, and Mrs Hg137 used to work nearby, just the other side of the woods on Bearwood Road, so we were both on familiar ground.
The first new cache was one from the Counting Vowels series, where the hopeful finder collects words from various signs, and sums the various vowels to get numbers that can be turned into coordinates. As we walked around the waypoints where we could find those word(s), Mr Hg137 began to reminisce … ‘I worked with someone who lived there’ … ‘I used to walk through there’ … ‘I’m sure this seat/sign/turning is new’ … We made our way through paths between houses, and then off the tarmac, into the mud, and into Limmerhill woods, and, after a little way, arrived at the spot indicated by the coordinates. A rummage in a likely spot produced nothing; but, aha, a deeper rummage, to a second layer, unearthed something that shouldn’t be there, and inside was the cache! Better still, the log was blank; we were the First To Find (FTF)! We joyfully signed it with date and time.
Lots of signs!
We decided to follow the suggestion in the cache description, and turn the walk into a circular walk, which (coincidentally) went close to the location of the second new cache. By walking in a kind of spiral, we honed in on the likely location. We had a very comprehensive hint (in the cache description), but, being new, there were no logs from other finders, nor a tell-tale ‘cacher’s path’ to follow. Mr Hg137 searched in the appointed place, but emerged cache-less; I thought I’d heard a giveaway noise, so I had another look, and grabbed hold of the cache, a few inches away. Once again, there was a blank log and once again we had got there before anyone else. (It turned out that two other local cachers, VR7, had been eying up the caches, but hadn’t been quick enough.)
Having achieved our aim, we returned, triumphantly (if a bit cold by now), to the geocar. We reflected on our morning’s successes. We’ve been caching since just after the London Olympics in 2012, so just over 8 years. In that time, up to this morning, we’d achieved just four FTFs:
– the first was in the cold, cold snow, in midwinter
– the second was in the dark, on New Year’s Eve, about 10pm, when a massive Alsatian loomed, howling, out of the dark
– the third was in the late autumn, daylight, not too cold, nor too muddy!
– the fourth was also on New Year’s Eve, luckily in daylight this time, but in incredibly muddy woodland
These two caches were also found in the winter, in cold and mist and mud. Hmm, a pattern is emerging here. Maybe we’ll have to wait till another cold, wet, muddy, winter day till the next one!
PS What of the shopping? We did the absolute minimum (some milk) and went shopping the next day instead.
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