30th May 2009
Today marks the first anniversary of my geocaching hobby. To mark this ‘birthday’ I decided I ought to go and find a 5/5 cache – one given 5stars for difficulty and 5stars for terrain, the hardest type of cache there is.
The nearest one of these to me is a puzzle cache called Burke&Hare GCMW56 and looking at the puzzle I hadn’t got a clue on how to solve it.
So I looked at the logs and found lots of clues, including a cacher who had put that he did the cache as part of a series of caches up on the moors… so looking at what caches he had done that day I could work out where he had been, so I knew what part of what moor he had been on… then another cacher had logged a photograph of her kid holding the cache with a good deal of background scenery visible… now you don’t go more than a few yards away from the cache site when you are taking photographs, so I knew what part of which moor the cache was to be found and what it looked like from within a few feet of the cache hide…
I sort of recognised the place from being up on the moors the last couple of weekends, and so I went this morning to see if I could find the cache using the clues from the log and not solving the puzzle…
And I did, the background in the photo was the view I thought it was and it took me about 2 minutes to ascertain the exact spot that the picture was taken from, and from there it took me about another 2-3 minutes to find the cache.
HOWEVER… as the picture shows, what I didn’t find is the key to open it and let me sign the log ! !
I’m guessing from reading the logs that the puzzle leads to an intermediate cache and in that I will find the key to open the final cache (and it’s co-ordinates which I don’t need !)
So now I have found the cache all I have to do is solve the puzzle to be able to open it… that or pick the lock ! ! !
May 30th 2010 – Calf Rock & Roll GC1G4RK – Cache #531
On my way to the Cache I had to pass the Cow and Calf so did the requisite things for logging this Earthcache… take a picture of the Calf, count how many steps it takes to walk round the calf and estimate how many times the Calf rolled over to get from the place it was to the place it is… It took me 48 paces to walk round, and I don’t reckon it rolled at all, I reckon it came off as the glacier melted in the last ice age and was cushioned into it’s current position by the melting ice
May 30th 2010 – Josh’s jaunt GC1CNKZ – Cache #532
After finding but not finding the 5star cache I had still some nearby caches that I needed to clear up, so I set off for the first of these, which was easy enough to find under a big rock on the moor
May 30th 2010 – Moorfield Treasure Trove GC1V8B9 – Cache #533
A few hundred yards further on across the moor I came to the next of my caches… which was easy enough to find hidden under a big rock on the moor…
May 30th 2010 – White Wells GC1KJQA – Cache #534
This cache is a multi cache that I had got the co-ordinates for a couple of weeks ago from the Find Of The Milenium cache… wasn’t actually hidden under a big rock on the moor, but hidden under a pile of moss next to a big rock on the moor.
May 30th 2010 – Little Green Man Landing Site GC1HT06 – Cache #535
A cache that comemmorates the fact that Ilkley Moor is supposedly the centre of Alien sightings in the UK… not that I have ever seen any or heard of anyone who has seen any and I can see the edge of Ilkley moor out of the window of the house I have lived in for over 40 years… however, the cache itself is sited in a wollow pretty much on top of the moor, and as I walked into the hoolow I saw a large rock up in the banking to the left… I bet myself that the cache was going to be hidden under it as it was the most obvious rock in the area… and it was
After the Green Man cache the next nearest one is GC 237E3 ‘Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It Again’ which is a multi cache in the fact that the cache itself is hidden down a deep crack in the rock and the given co-ordinates are for a box containing a hook on a string to retrieve the cache… I had no problem finding the box of tools, and no problem finding the crack with the cache in, but it was far too windy to mess about on the edge of a crag and there were far too many people about on a Sunday Morning to be able to mess about up there without attracting attention, so I decided to leave this one for another day.
May 30th 2010 – Rachel’s Roam GC1DWJJ – Cache #536
This cache had gone missing, and although I walked past the spot it was in last weekend (between Stone Nose and Where The Ducks Play Football) it was not there to find… it was replaced last Sunday and today I was the first person to log the new cache… which is hidden under a large rock on the moor…
May 30th 2010 – roadside moor cache GC1EXGC – Cache #537
Last cache of the day, a 35mm film cannister hidden under a rock at the side of the road. The problem being is that this rock has been put there by the owner of the house it stands in front of to stop people from parking on the verge in front of the house. The garden in front of the house is also used as a hen pen, so when you go near the cache you excite the hens, which make a fuss and make it even more likely that you will attract the attention of the people in the house. Not really the type of place I like to do caching
