17th May 2010 – Archie’s Walk #5 – In the Wood GC1HHBM – cache #508
After succeeding to the 500 mark with several days to spare it was time for a new challenge, and getting to 1000 by my second anniversary seemed to be planning for a long time in the future, so I decided that I would start to clear all the caches near home, starting with all those under 5 miles away, then after that 6 miles, then 7 miles etc.
A list of the caches within 5 miles brought up about 40 caches, four of these were the last few of the Archies Walk series that I started about 6 weeks ago, so as it was a fine Monday evening I decided on a little stroll to clear these ones up.
The first of these was hidden in the roots of a tree, covered with a rock…
17th May 2010 – Archie’s Walk #6 – Rooted to the Spot GC1HHC6 – cache #509
Walking under trees the GPS signal is a little inaccurate, so when you get a cache called rooted to the spot you kind of know that the cache is hidden in some tree roots, but when you have accuracy of 30ft it means you can have a lot of trees to look for in a 60ft diameter circle… and when there’s a stream in the middle of it all you are almost bound to start searching the wrong side of the stream first, and I did.
17th May 2010 – Archie’s Walk #7 – Which way? GC1HHCE – cache #510
Three paths come together at the corner of a field, with a 3 way stile… that’s where the title comes in, which way do you go ? The cache was hidden under the stile, but you have to get onto the side that is the wrong path to get the cache.
17th May 2010 – Archie’s Walk – Bonus GC1HHEZ – cache #511
Having now all ten clues, gathered over the course of now 6 trips I quickly programmed the final co-ordinates into the gps and as with most of this type of bonus cache the cache site is somewhere between the final cache and the car park they encourage you to start from, so it was no surprise that there was a big rock with a cache under it near where my car was parked.
17th May 2010 – Tee’d off but in a hole – 3 GC1J7QV – cache #512
It was still almost daylight, and as I was only a couple of miles from this cache that I had failed to find 6 weeks ago I decided that I would go and have another go at finding it, as I had checked the logs and had been looking in the right place, just had failed to spot the blighter. A short drive and a short walk across the golf course later and I was at a spot I’d examined closely before… this time though I spotted a wire shining in the fading light… on the end of the wire was the cache.
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A couple of nights later, before I went to the pub quiz I decided that I would go and see about multi cache GC109PY – Chevin Chase, which hadn’t been found for over a year and someone who had found it before had checked to see and the final cache was missing. As it was the nearest cache left to my house and I had been ignoring it as it was reported missing I thought I’d better clear it off the list… there are 8 clues to find, three of them are missing… as is the final cache, so I just had an hours walk round.
I reported my findings to the cache owner and it was checked out and archived the next day… Clears it off my list even if I couldn’t find it !
21st May 2010 – Bryson’s Bluff (West Yorkshire) GCJPAD – cache #513
Friday, and it was a nice sunny day so I decided that I would go for a little drive at lunchtime, a drive that happened to take me down a road that had several caches along it. Unfortunately I only really had time to grab for one of them, and it was this one I chose as it was only about 40 yards from the road. It was easy enough to find hidden in the overhang of some tree roots, though well camouflaged and I found it by feel rather than eyesight.
