Trad: 1
Walked: 1.4 miles
I had quite a few jobs to do at home today, plus the weather was rubbish, so I just went out for a quick mushroom hunt at Paper Mill Lock. I spotted the suspicious ‘shroom eventually – nice camo for the cache below!
Trad: 15
Walked: 6.5 miles
As we all know, it’s not about the numbers. Except when it is…
I’m trying to keep up at least 200 finds/month this year (of course, it’s for a challenge!) and I looked at my stats to realise I was just 14 short for May. So today I set myself the target of finding all 14 to finish the task with a day to spare.
I had picked the M2M Series around Mundon (which used to run all the way to Maldon), in theory giving me 12 caches. However, things didn’t start well with 2 DNF’s! Argh! I was very glad to find the first one of the day at the third hide I tried.
It was typical Bank Holiday weather – cloudy, windy and perishing cold! Boy was I glad of my fleece hat. Ridiculous for almost June.
There were a few pockets of civilisation, but the main walk was largely rural, thankfully without the added menace of bovines to cross my path. I did see some unhappy shivering sheep – freshly shorn of their fleece coats!
Someone is proud of their garden – and has even acquired their own phone box to adorn it. Perhaps its a potting shed?
Unlike the cows, it’s always nice to smile politely when you’re pleased to see someone…
Eventually I had 10 in the bag from the series, so relocated the car to Maldon to do a few short walks and drive bys – finishing off most of my unfound caches from the No Mud series. I found an extra one for luck, bringing the tally to 15 for today, and nudging my monthly finds over my total. It was quite hard work!
Trad: 6 Multi: 3 Puzzle: 2
Walked: 5.9 miles
I was back on the Dengie Peninsula again today (there are plenty more caches to tackle in the area), picking up a mixture of Church Micros, puzzles, village signs and any other random caches I was passing.
I finally rounded up enough information to finish off the Multi Church Micro at Mundon (which requires five other specific CM finds before you can work out the co-ords). The weather wasn’t up to much, but I did pass the famously spooky petrified Mundon Oaks.
On the way home I stopped for a quick cache and dash at the festive Happy Christmas hide. I liked the idea here!
I had also crunched the numbers for the final Bolting Round Ulting Bonus cache, which was a great big box hidden in a great big tree!
The cache is a D3, so it was the perfect place to leave this geocoin I picked up a day or two ago – which wants to visit D3 or higher caches. This one also gets plenty of visitors, so hopefully the coin won’t stay in the box for too long.
Trad: 7 Puzzle: 1
Walked: 4.9 miles
I’ve had an absolutely awesome day out caching today, with geofriends David (Tot66) and his son Calum (Caliber2000). David and I were discussing our DT grids at an Essex Meet a few weeks ago, and he offered to take me out caching by kayak, so we could grab some hight terrain caches long the River Lea near Ware. It was the Messing About On The River series by Noztradamus&JackNano. Today was the day for my maiden voyage!
Having inflated the kayaks, we set off but discovered we were on the wrong bit of river/canal/tributary! So it was out of the inflatables again and portage them past the big weir to a better place to put in. However, this left us downstream with another weir in between us and No. 1. So we decided to go for 2-5 first and come back for No. 1 later.
Once we arrived at GZ, I quickly spotted the cache at No. 2 and Calum volunteered to reach up to make the grab while we kept his kayak steady. That wasn’t so bad, but after I’d signed it, he spent an age trying to get the Bison’s lid screwed up again. Many times we thought he would end up wet, but his balance won out and with some relief, he finally did the container up and sat down back in his K1. Phew!
Thankfully No. 3 was much easier – difficult from above on the bridge, but easy peasy by boat. Again I did the signing honours and replaced it as we paddled underneath.
The going was fine until we turned up a side tributary towards No. 4. Fallen trees had trapped the skegs which meant a bit of bumping was needed to get us over the obstructions. Once we got to GZ here we ran aground – it was very shallow! David gave up and got out, so he had a little paddle while signing the log for us all!
Backtracking and taking a further paddle up the main stream got us to No. 5 – again a tricky climb but with us steadying Calum’s K1 as he scaled the barrier, we got the log down and back safely.
We then set sail back towards where we had started. The clouds had burned off and the sun was shining as we paddled along. It was a lovely day for Messing About On The River, for sure!
The GoPro proved invaluable for taking some photos. Thankfully I’ve got a waterproof housing for it, and the remote control app on my phone – which was in a dry bag – so there were no worries about getting the tech wet. And a good job too…
Having manoeuvred ourselves back to the second smaller weir, we got out of the boats and sat for a quick rest on the bank. Unfortunately, upstream of the weir (where we needed to put in to tackle No. 1) there wasn’t any easy portage points. We chose the best we could manage and I was trying to get back into the kayak when disaster struck!
Yes, of course, I went in the drink, and got very wet. But it was all great fun and Calum managed to take these photos which I’ve montaged together to immortalise the event!
We tried once more and this time I made it into the boat without embarrassing myself again! Once at GZ, the current from the big weir was too strong for us to maintain a position to grab the cache, so we decided to call it a day. 4/5 wasn’t a bad score for our efforts, and I have now filled four empty DT squares with just one to go!
We had also targeted a couple of other adventurous caches to tackle after the river, both by the same CO, The first was Nano’s Secret Nuclear Bunker, which was in an abandoned Royal Observer Corps underground hideout. Great fun to explore (it was tiny, it didn’t take long!).
It brings home just how awful it would have been to have been stuck down in one of these things – there was barely room to swing a cat. One small room and an en suite loo – that was it!
We found the box and the codes required to open it to sign the log. Then it was a bit of a climb back up, but we all escaped easily!
David was glad to be out in the fresh air again!
The last of the extreme caches today was Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Head torches at the ready, we made our way inside… It was a huge storm drain tunnel which we had no trouble standing up in – and seemed to go on forever!
I’m not sure how far we walked but it took ages as we had to pick our way carefully along the slippery brick floor. There wasn’t any water underfoot, apart from the odd puddle. I can’t imagine what it would be like when there’s full flow in here!
Thankfully there was only one way to go, so we didn’t get lost!
We were told we needed to go right to the other end, turn around and begin our search. The hide was quickly spotted, and we then had to do the walk in reverse. Perhaps we should have tried getting out this end to see where it went above ground?!
There were a couple of easy trads within striking distance of the tunnel, so we decided to go for those as well. The last was a lovely duck-themed box, The Duck Pound II which encouraged you to give the ducks a good home. How could we resist? I’m now the proud owner of the little blue guy you can see here (who has since turned into the intrepid traveller, Caz’s Little Quacker):
So all in all a Grand Day Out, great fun with lots of laughs and certainly pushing the boundaries of my caching experience to date. Can’t wait to do it again! I have certainly been living up to my Life Begins geocoin’s motto today.
Trad: 8 Multi: 1
Walked: 4.0 miles
My ankle is feeling a lot better but I decided on more drive-bys around Dengie this evening just to be on the safe side. I managed a good number of finds, including a couple of Village Signs:
I made a bit of a cache and hash of K6 Althorne Station, getting the calculations for the multi wrong TWICE! What a dunce. Got there in the end, though!
This cheeky find was one of a new series by nathanjhunt called Roadside Revelations. Ha ha!
Trad: 4 Multi: 1 Puzzle: 2 Letterbox: 1
Walked: 3.5 miles
I slightly twisted my ankle yesterday after my caching walk, so decided to do some Dengie peninisula drive-bys today to give it bit of a rest.
I didn’t get going until nearly 6pm, just as a notification for a new Village Sign in Bicknacre dropped into my inbox. Oooh, you never know – might be on for FTF. I’m not normally one to chase them, but as I was going that way anyway, it would seem rude not to give it a shot.
It was a simple nano on a park bench, but yes, the log was blank when I arrived. Yay! FTF No. 26 in the bag.
There were a few Church Micros on the list, two in Latchingdon and one in Althorne, all picked up with ease.
I also found a couple of puzzles this evening – another new Really SideTracked, Cold Norton and the final Mr Mercator hide I hadn’t yet found, Lucky Eight.
There was also a lovely Letterbox hide in Althorne, Cheats Never Prosper. The cache title didn’t make much sense until I saw the great big stamp in the box! Bean & Sprout’s letterboxes always have the best stamps I’ve seen. I left a trackable for the mice to look after too.
Trad: 7
Walked: 2.9 miles
When Peverel Blue’s series, Bolting Round Ulting first came out, I decided to do them piecemeal as fillers to keep my geostreak going. But since starting with the first few, plenty more local caches have been published closer to home.
Today I decided to go and collect the remaining 7 trads and their information so I could calculate where the big bonus was hiding.
Where are you? Ah, there!
No. 5 was a nice Letterbox pot, I even remembered to take along my own Smiley Stamp to mark up the logbook.
After a slightly wrong detour for No. 9, I eventually got the this view of the lake (and found the cache!). One more to collect on the way back to the car and I called it a day there. The calculation for the bonus is a bit involved and I thought it was better to do it at home so I didn’t get it wrong!
It’s good to have most of this series put to bed now, it was a lovely little walk.
Trad: 7 Multi: 1
Walked: 5.6 miles
More hideous traffic jams today, this time on my way to Elstree for a 10:30 meeting. It took two hours as the traffic lights at the A12/M25 roundabout were broken! So I started the day in a bad mood.
Thankfully, the day went smoothly and eventually I was let out around 6pm. It was another sunny evening, and I’ve had my eye on the North Mymms Circle of 10 caches, so I headed out that way for a walk before driving home.
It certainly was a pleasant evening stroll – again rather windy and I was glad of my coat, but plenty of sunshine to keep me going.
This dude was guarding one cache carefully.
I finished up in fading light, which meant I had a couple of DNF’s (one was due to my ineptitude, the other I’m not sure is there as someone else had not found it either). But 8 this evening is a good haul, and keeps me on track to push the 200 caches/month challenge along for another month.
Multi: 2 Puzzle: 1 Challenge: 8 Earth: 1
Walked: 9.1 miles
I drove back from Kent this morning (getting stuck in an awful jam for the Dartford Tunnel) as I had to be in London late afternoon for a client meeting. Thankfully, there was enough slack in my schedule that I wasn’t late. In fact, I had time for the Very Special Stones in London Earthcache, the long-solved Freemasons’ Hall puzzle and a quick Multi, The Dancer, near Covent Garden before my meeting.
All went well and I was out by 5pm. That meant I found myself in the Capital with a lovely sunny evening on my hands. Time to go caching!
I decided to head to the Greenwich peninsular around the 02, to pick up a collection of RubyShoos’ Challenge caches which I’m qualified for. There were a few for which I hadn’t, and I didn’t bother signing those (I find it easier to keep track if I just claim the ones I can actually log at the time). When I’ve qualified for the others, I’ll have another trip this way to collect the rest.
The weather was quite windy but at least the sun was out most of the time. I walked almost all the way to the Thames Barrier by the time I had finished.
Of course, the walk back was quicker as I wasn’t stopping to look for pots. A grand evening’s walk and entertainment – cheaper than the Theatre!
Trad: 3
Walked: 4.9 miles
Julian and I had more muggle business to attend to in Margate this afternoon, but I was told I could escape for a walk if I wanted to. So I set off in blustery conditions, which of course got worse and worse the further away I was from the house. Grrr.
Eventually I returned, quite damp from the rain, having found a trio along the cilff tops of Walpole Bay, with a couple of DNF’s thrown in too. Julian looked at me rather smugly as he’d been very sensible and stayed dry indoors!