Today I finished my 10-day non-traditional caches mini streak, which now qualifies me for the Unconventional Streak Challenge Cache near Shoreham in Kent. That’s the last of the set of five which I needed to qualify for, so sometime soon I will go and pick them up on a challenge day in Kent.
My target for the day was Warley Wander by hair225, a nice little puzzle cache south of Brentwood. I was also pleased to effect a revival here, as it’s not been found since September 2014.
Trying to continue my streak of Unconventional hides, today was supposed to be Day 9 out of the 10 I need to qualify for the Challenge Cache. I had a puzzle lined up to find, plus a backup, before going out to lunch with a muggle friend.
I knew I wouldn’t have time to look after we had eaten, so made a point of setting off early to search. A frantic hour later, I still hand’t found either of my intended targets!
The only other non-trad hide which was on my GPS was 6 miles away (as the crow flies) but I thought it would be worth the 10-mile detour by road to pick it up – it was a Letterbox cache along The Essex Way. I know from experience that these are rarely difficult to find, so thought that was my best bet.
Letterbox Hide – Essex Way 245
Thankfully, it was indeed an easy find! And I even had time to look for a couple of Infinson’s Number Caches nearby, before heading home to get changed into my posh togs for lunch. So only one more day to go!
Also, find number two today brought up my 900th cache since I started my geostreak on Day #1!
There was a bizarre Flash Mob Event arranged for 6pm in Vange this evening. I did ask why, but the answer is rather convoluted, so I won’t recount it here!
In preparation for my visit, I had already solved a nearby puzzle cache which I went to pick up during daylight, an easy find. Then I had a go at a Letterbox cache which sadly was a DNF – too many prickly bushes and it was getting dark, I lost the will fairly quickly.
The Flash event was well attended, even though it started raining half way through. What a motley crew!
The Motley Flashers Of Vange
Apologies to Vange, but it does look better after dark!
Time for just one cache today, but hardly dash… The Little Critters Puzzle Bonus has been bothering me for ages – but it wasn’t until the recent Essex Meet that I got an inkling of how to go about solving it. Numbers crunched, I headed off today to see if I could find it.
The co-ords led me to a film pot, inside which were co-ordinates for the main hide and a key! Once I had searched that out, I found a lovely well-stocked cash box, waiting to receive visitors.
A Well-Stocked Cash (Box)
Another great little puzzle ticked off the list! And that also means day 7 of my mini 10-day non-traditional cache streak is complete.
I went to London for an evening event today (which turned out to be cancelled at the last minute!) but took the opportunity to go up a bit earlier and polish off the vintage London Rainbow Virtual Series, which consists of 7 virtual hides from which you collect clues, and one actual multi at the end.
Violet – Abbey Road Studios
I had visited three of the 7 virtuals on previous visits. Today I headed for Blue (around St James’s Park, Orange (close to Sloane Square), Violet (at the famous Abbey Road studios) and finally Yellow (Camden Lock Markets), Needless to say, I took the tube between sites, but still managed to clock up over 10 miles on foot!
Yellow – Camden Lock Market
Having computed the numbers for the final hide, I initially decided I didn’t have time to go and find it before my event. But once I arrived at the venue to find it wasn’t on any more, I thought “what the hell, might as well” and jumped back on the tube towards Hyde Park to search out the last part.
I’m usually appallingly bad a night caching, but thanks to a very specific hint, I managed to put my hand on the magnetic micro pot within seconds. Hurrah! A grand day out.
Today’s outing was to Wickham Bishops and Great Braxted to pick up some mutlis, puzzles and revisit a trad which I had DNF’d a few weeks ago.
First stop was the Church Micro at Great Braxted. Despite owning the CM a Little Braxted, I’d never visited this church before, so it was definitely worth a visit. The sun eventually came out too, once I’d spent more than half an hour roaming the churchyard, looking for clues.
Great Braxted Church
The Trad at Beacon Hill was the one which had been missing for my last visit. Today the weather was much better and so was the reward.
View From Beacon Hill
I then moved on to Wickham Bishops to do three multis around the village set by kareninwb. Two were successfully completed but the numbers at one clue point were missing and I could not pick up the last one. There’s always another day….
But the most satisfying find of the day was one of Mr Crow‘s fiendish Rally Round puzzles, RR31 – Urban Bishops. I’ve looked at it on and off for several years and made zero progress. But yesterday I took another look at the cache page and had an idea. Not how to solve the puzzle (I still have no idea) but where the hide might be.
A bit of speculative rummaging in my likely spot and there it was! Yay! Successful Crowjecture completed!
After my abject failure at Pleshey Ring 12 last week, I realised it was my own fault because I can’t divide simple numbers. Ha! Having seen the error of my ways, I even found the hint item in Google Street View after crunching the right co-ordinates, so I decided another visit would be in order today.
Ravens Gate
Once at the location, I found what I was looking for after a short search. It’s always satisfying to turn a previous DNF into a 🙂 And Day 4 of my non-trad streak completed.
I’ve had solutions for the seven Harry Potter puzzle caches set by Stones2005 in Littlebury Green for a couple of months, but today was the day I decided to make a trip to go and look for them, plus some other traditional caches nearby. The puzzles weren’t too difficult to solve, just enough to stretch the grey cells after a bit of Googling!
I stopped off first to pick up Q is For Quendon, part of the ABC of Essex series, close to the pretty church (I’ve already found the CM there).
Quendon, A Pretty Church
At Harry Potter #5 I hit my 3900th find – well on schedule for 4000 at my birthday/New Year event. #5 was a tricky hide with a clever field puzzle element – how to get the cache out of the tree? The hole through which you grasp the chain the cache is attached to is not big enough to get the cache out!
Thankfully, I figured it out…
How Do I Get It Back In?
This scary dude was hiding the cache at #6! Not sure who frightened whom…
Argh!
The final cache was nicely themed with the whole Harry Potter films. My second pen had run out (the first a few caches previously) so this selfie had to suffice for logging the cache.
In lieu of a pen
All in all an enjoyable day out, despite the mud! My new wellies came in very handy today.
I needed to visit Nazeinng today and thought I would take the long way round to find a couple of outstanding older caches I need for my Jasmer grid.
The first was Wildlife Cache # 2 – Tree Pipit in Epping Forest, placed in January 2005. It was a bit muddy underfoot, but I found the cache in the end.
Natural Cammo
Next up was Coal Post #19 near Nazeing which has been in the wild since July 2003. It was a quick find, thankfully.
Coal Post #19 – Another Golden OldieWell-stocked Cache
Then I relocated to a couple of locations in Nazeing, firstly to find a Church Micro puzzle cache which I’d solved the day before (still on my non-trad streak). Then onto the Church Micro in Nazeing itself, plus another located nearby.
After my logs today my Jasmer Grid is now looking nicely full for 2003 onwards. I should be able to fill Sept 2002 and May 2001 on my next visit to Newcastle, probably next year.
Jasmer Grid, 22nd November 2015
The only other UK caches I can find to fill in more squares are June 2001 (near Wokingham), Feb 2001 (the first in Wales) and Dec 2000 (north of Glasgow, Scotland’s first). If I want any more, it will have to be road trips to Denmark, Chicago and Oregon. Not for a while…
Today I chose Maldon and Heybridge for my caching trip, to mop up a few stragglers which have been bugging me for ages.
One fun cache was Hop, Skip and JUMP, hidden along the mud flats. It holds an excellent little surprise in the container, I won’t spoil it if you intend to visit!
Maldon Mudflats
The daily streak continues, but it can become a little tedious just grabbing a cache and dash, boring trad each day. So I have decided to have a few little challenges to help things along.
For starters, I have published my New Year/Birthday Event cache at the local pub, and have set myself the target of reaching my 4000th find at the event. That’s about three per day, which isn’t too bad – especially as I can do one a day for most days, then have a bigger walk/caching day out at the weekends.
I’ve also been looking at various Challenge Caches around the UK (most of them in the South East), and seeing what I need to do to qualify for them. On is the Unconventional Streak Challenge which requires you to find at least one non-traditional cache (multi, puzzle, virtual, event, earth, etc) for 10 days in a row.
Annoyingly, I almost qualified for this in the first 10 days of my current geostreak – I got 9 consecutive days with lots of different types of caches. But I didn’t know about this challenge then, and day 10 was just 5 trads – RATS!
So today is Day #1 of my mini-streak of unconventional finds – today’s qualifying cache being a multi, The Tower.
