Author Archives: Fil Northerner

Project 297

Geocaching is great fun, and I enjoy going out and meeting other geocachers, but after 4.5 years to make caching trips worthwhile I have to drive a long way from home to start with, which is putting a dampener on my enjoyment. So I have been looking around at something else to do.
I tried Munzees but that was so terribly uninspiring due to it’s repetitive nature (walk to next lamp/sign post. scan sticker… repeat) that it wasn’t the right thing for me, even though there are a whole load of munzees local to me – well there are a whole load of lamp posts and sign posts !
So I wanted something interesting and something near home… the answer came easily. I was doing some research into the Trig Points on Geocache GC45CC – Ye Ole Survey Monuments and found that there were 6,800 pillars and a further 7,000 odd other survey points used for either triangulation or height leveling…. and then there are the  innumerable further survey ‘cut marks’ some of which are listed on various websites and many of which are not, only being listed on old maps.  Far too many points to visit and catalogue, so I have to narrow it down to my local area.. ,and thus Project 297 was born… I live in the middle (roughly) of OS Explorer Sheet 297 Lower Wharfedale & the Washburn Valley (the corners are 12.3, 10, 10.1 & 12.5 miles away from me, so nowhere is more than 20 mins drive from home.
There are  27 Trig Point Pillars on 297 – although some of them no longer exist… also there are about a further 60 Ordnance Survey primary / secondary bench marks, mainly flush brackets along the Skipton to Wetherby levelling line which runs through Ilkley and Otley – finally there are hundreds of cut marks, far too many to search for over the whole map area so I will concentrate on the ones in the area I can see from the windows of my house – all Otley and a bit more.

The plan is to walk and cycle locally to visit and record these survey locations, there is searching to do to find them, and research both on line and elsewhere to do to find the cut marks… might even have to buy an old map or two… beats spending a fiver on petrol to increase my cache numbers by a couple of magnetic micros stuck on sign posts.

Caches No’s 3024 to 3037 – Yet Another Trip To Norfolk – Again !

My annual Autumn trip to Hunstanton in Norfolk (see 820, 1670, 2070 & 2,820 caches ago). On this trip I had planned a whole slew of caches for the way down, but then on 5th November the  Ye Ole Survey Monuments cache was moved to a location “sort of” in the general direction I was heading so I replanned the route to take a 25 mile (and apparently 55 minute) diversion to go and find it. Of course driving through Norfolk and Lincolnshire is always likely to take longer than you expect, the journey which should have taken an extra 55 minutes actually took an extra 2 hours excluding a further hour spent stopping at caches and rest stops… lorries tractors and caravans, the bane of rural drivers everywhere… and a tractor towing a caravan is your worst nightmare, fortunately the only one I saw of them was in the camp site car park
Continue reading

Caches No’s 3022 & 3023 – Geocaching in Space

Geocaching Rockets into Space (Again) – On 7th November Astronaut Rick Mastracchio took off from the launch pad in Khazakstan to go to the International Space Station. With him he took a Travel Bug (TB5JJN1) which he will be using as an educational tool to help teach students around the world about geography and provide other educational lessons.
This isn’t the first TB to go into space, back in the early days of caching the first ‘space tourist’ Richard Garriott, (who made his millions designing video games) also known as Lord British in the geocaching world took a TB into space and left it on the ISS. Continue reading

Caches No’s 3018 to 3021 – Trigpoints on the Way Home

After raining all night it was surprisingly nice on Sunday morning, so I thought I might go back to the forest and see if it was practical to get to the Trig Point in the field next door to claim another YSM… but the field had been ploughed only a week before and then it had rained loads, so the field was not really possible to cross without getting exceedingly muddy.
Because of this I decided not to bother with the Salcey Forest YSM and headed off to the next nearest one, and then the next, and the next, and the next until I got home. Continue reading

Caches No’s 3000 to 3017 – Halloween Hides & Creepy Caches 2013

There were over a 1,000 cachers at the Halloween Mega. The organisers put out almost 50 caches during the daytime all of which were in an are no more than 2 miles square, some cachers walked 15 miles to get them all, spiraling round the footpaths. I spent all day in the hall helping on the UKCacheMag stall so didn’t get to do any caches during the day.
In the evening a further 20 or so caches were put out, so Adam and I went and had a walk round doing a combination of daytime and nighttime caches until it started raining, fortunately then we were in a location that made it convenient to quit and head back to the Community Centre where the event was based. It had rained heavily in the days before the event and there was the occasional shower during the day, and the paths in the forest suffered from 1,000 cachers waalking over them so it was very muddy in places… and I do not like mud – so I wasn’t too bothered that we didn’t do that many caches. Continue reading

Caches No’s 2989 to 2999 – The Way South to 3,000

I had written the numbers from 3000 to 2980 on a piece of paper and filled in all the caches I intended to find on the way down to Northampton in order against the high numbers and all the caches I had found in order against the lower numbers… the theory being that when there were no blank spaces left I would have just the right number of caches to get to he 3,000 milestone at the Mega.
But then on the night before I realised (fortunately) that I had missed out number 2988… so on my list of interesting caches on the way down to Northampton I had to fit in another cache  Continue reading