Tag Archives: dengie peninsula

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McWombling On The Dengie

Tuesday, 6th December 2016 Caz

Trad: 1 Puzzle: 5
Walked: 4.1 miles

It’s been about 7 years since I started on McWomble‘s linked Church Micro series, scattered about on the Dengie peninsula. I’ve had a few of the numbers safely written down for ages, but made a concerted effort to gather a few more a couple of months ago. Then I promptly forgot about them again.

Today I decided to see if I could finally put the series to bed. Several Bonus churches needed collecting, and the Bonus Bonus! (McWomble doesn’t do things by halves). Actually, most of these have now been adopted by Bean & Sprout, but they remain evil and pretty much in their original locations.

The first target was CM541 Mayland which I found eventually after barking up the wrong place for several minutes. It’s a nice neat little church quite a way from the village centre.

I stopped for another puzzle by Bean & Sprout next, Joker – which required a bit of bog snorkelling, but I had come prepared! It’s not a T4 for nothing… Then a quick trad on the way to CM538 Asheldham. Thankfully this was a quick find.

CM536 Tillingham was next, which led me a bit of a merry dance. Eventually I spotted it somewhere where I should have noticed it before.

One more bonus church to go – CM545 Bradwell St. Thomas. It’s a notoriously difficult one to find, even though it only gets a D2 rating. I’m sure the older ones are harder than some now! Anyway, after much grovelling all I came away with were damp knees and stung hands. Drat.

However, undeterred, I was only missing one bonus number, so I headed off to CM546 Bradwell St. Peter and sat in the car park to think about where it might be. Luck was on my side – the number I was missing was only going to be one of a couple of values, since it would be in the sea otherwise! So I made a guess and headed off to my GZ.

Silent Spinners - Near CM546 — Silent Spinners – Near CM546

I was delighted to find the pot, exactly where it should be. Hurrah! So, just the one cache in the series still to find, but I’ll come back for that another day.

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A Walk With St. Lawrence

Sunday, 4th December 2016 Caz

Trad: 7
Walked: 3.2 miles

I headed over to St. Lawrence Bay today to look for a series of hides along the sea wall. The afternoon started off sunny, although the wind was rather keen in places!

Being close to the Winter Solstice, the light didn’t last very long. The golden grasses were soon illuminated by orange light from the fading sun.

The sunset happened at about the time I had just turned from the furthest point from the car, heading back. The clouds were rather good too.

Having had a DNF on a tricky D4 hide on the way out (think tupperware box under a pile of rocks), I finally bagged the tricky blighter by torchlight on the return leg. Hurrah!

Another enjoyable Winter walk.

events, hq duck dash, puzzles, solo

Day #385 – Dengie Dally

Sunday, 14th August 2016 Caz

Trad: 12 Multi: 3 Puzzle: 4 Letterbox: 1
Event: 1
Walked: 6.1 miles

Another Sunday, another Beastmarsta “Meat”, this time at Bradwell Waterside. There was a good turn out again, with quite a few of the usual suspects turning up.

Shifty and Little Quacker met some other ducks who are still taking part in the HQ Duck Dash. There wasn’t much rivalry, but quite a lot of quacking going on.

During the meetups, infinson and I managed to extract a little nugget of information from Gilly Bean & Sprout about her D5 cache, 9 PLUS 5. It has had us both fooled for some time, but with new intelligence, we headed off there after the event and had another go at it – and what do you know – we got in! Finally!

I found a couple of other caches with Ian and then we went our separate ways. Next on the agenda was King Of The… Hill? which required a little climb on an old tanker – job done.

Another great themed cache was Fish Supper, which I had solved quickly a few days ago. There was a nice surprise when I eventually fished out the pot.

There were some more straightforward hides too, this one was an easy find and Little Quacker made a lady friend.

Another highlight of the day was finding my 100th Letterbox cache, which now qualifies me for a letterbox-based challenge cache. A good day out.

solo

Day #312 – Tillingham Totter

Thursday, 2nd June 2016 Caz

Trad: 5 Multi: 5 Letterbox: 1
Walked: 6.4 miles

I wanted to avenge the DNF at Burnham-on-Crouch’s Church Micro so today I set off in a determined mood, vowing I must find it! After a few false starts, I eventually sorted it out! Phew!

My next stop was to be Asheldham, to attempt Bean & Sprout’s series around The Pits. I found a couple, but through no fault of theirs, the footpaths in the area became umpossibly impassable, so I gave up after trying to hack my way through. On to plan B!

No Way Through - The Pits! — No Way Through – The Pits!

The tiny village of Dengie which gives the peninsular its name was my next destination – for the old Church Micro there.

I then relocated to Tillingham for more Bean & Sprout hides – some multi boxes including the Village Sign.

The best reward of the day was the final cache at Sprout’s Birthday Cache. It was a monster box bigger than my head filled with goodies – pity I didn’t have anything to swap, so I left the swag where it was.

There was time for a nice little Letterbox hide on the way home, too!

puzzles, solo

Day #308 – Dengie Smörgåsbord

Sunday, 29th May 2016 Caz

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.

solo

Day #306 – Dengie Driving

Friday, 27th May 2016 Caz

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!

first to find, puzzles, solo

Day #305 – Dengie Drive-Bys

Thursday, 26th May 2016 Caz 2 Comments

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.

CM107 - Latchingdon — CM107 – Latchingdon

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.

grand day out, puzzles, with alistair

Day #37 – Bradwell Bimble

Tuesday, 1st September 2015 Caz 1 Comment

Traditional: 12 Multi: 4 Puzzle: 2 Challenge: 1 Letterbox: 1
Walked: 9.3 miles

For today’s expedition I planned a visit to Bradwell-on-Sea in Dengie Peninsula to pick up a variety of caches which were placed for the Essex Camping event a couple of years ago. The majority of our finds were Bean & Sprout hides, again with some ingenious twists rather than lots of film pots. We parked up by the Marina and started our walk.

I particularly enjoyed the Lengthy Log Challenge, as well as caches which completed another two squares in my D/T grid: A walk on the wild side, continued… (an ingenious 5.0/3.0 field puzzle which had us going for about 20 minutes) and Mill End Dandle (a 4.5/3.5 multi which could have had us running around for ages, but we quickly spotted its cheeky 2nd stage).

However, we were defeated by the fiendish 9 PLUS 5 along the way – another field puzzle where we actually found the cache but couldn’t figure out the combination to get at the log. Much head scratching but we drew a blank. Ah well, another time…

I confess I read the cache page for Sir Henry Bude Dudley and was rather overwhelmed by the information it contained to sort out the second stage of the multi. So I didn’t – but found it by conjecture, which pleased me way more than it should have!

Our route took us along the old Roman road almost as far as St Peter-on-the-Wall church, but we turned around short of the end as we needed to be back at a reasonable time.

When we are out and about, Alistair and I play a silly game called “Yellowcar” where I have to spot yellow cars and he has to spot Minis. Here’s an old Citroën 2CV van we saw along the way, but he wouldn’t let me count it! Spoilsport!

We enjoyed a tasty dinner at a nearby pub but, of course, there’s always time for ONE more cache on the way home… A drive-by which required a photo of us and the GPS next to a post box! Why not?

Daily Cache

Tag Archives: dengie peninsula

McWombling On The Dengie

A Walk With St. Lawrence

Day #385 – Dengie Dally

Day #312 – Tillingham Totter

Day #308 – Dengie Smörgåsbord

Day #306 – Dengie Driving

Day #305 – Dengie Drive-Bys

Day #37 – Bradwell Bimble

My Tupperware-Hunting Adventures