Spring Bank Holiday Monday – The day that last year I set off out with my PDA to find my first Geocache.
I’d not managed to make head or tail of the puzzle I had been working on the day before, at least I had managed to make a head, but not a tail… and that was leading me further and further up the wrong path. So eventually I gave in and asked the puzzle setter for a hint, and his email back to me showed I was trying too hard and the answer was something totally straightforward – but that I had little chance of recognizing apart from by random chance… the codes I was trying to resolve into cache co-ordinates are actually Travel Bug ID’s !
A quick check of where these travel bugs are showed that one was in the hands of a cacher and another was in a cache only 4-5 miles away from home, and coincidentally was in a puzzle cache that I had worked out the answer to only a couple of days earlier, and even more coincidentally was in the cache next to the one I had intended to try and find that evening, although I had intended to attack it from another cache to the south rather than this one to the north. But anyway, I had planned on heading in the right direction.
31st May 2010 – Picture Perfect – The Lindley Wood Reservoir GC1FFNN – Cache #538
This was another puzzle cache that I hadn’t solved the puzzle to, it had a set of four possible answers to find a micro with the co-ords of another micro, then this had the co-ords of another and then another and that had the final ones in.
I just read the logs and found that one person said “after finding the cache I went back across the bridge and clmbed the hill to the next cache” knowing where the next cache was it wasn’t hard to trace back down the hill, and over the bridge… I went to the bridge, crossed it, looked around and there was the place described in the hint with the cache behind it.
31st May 2010 – The Keys to Sudoku GCQGE1 – Cache #539
There is quite a lot of forestry commission land around the reservoirs, and it was to one such wood that I was heading. I had worked out the Sudoku puzzle to this cache and had the co-ordinates, so quickly found the cache.
At this cache I collected the Travelbug Leeds / Bradford Traveller 1 TBHQYB – and the key to the Burke and Hare cache
31st May 2010 – The Hunters Stones GC40F8 – Cache #540
The Hunters Stones is a 4* difficulty 4.5* terrain cache… I don’t think it’s that difficult at the end of the driest spring for many a year !
The woods are thick and with conifers they have low branches, so it is dark just a few feet off the path and with it being a drained and planted moor underneath the dark floor is just a row of ditches and fallen branches.. keep on the path if at all possible.
Memorymap provided me with the tracks through the woods – so I had no problem getting to within 50 feet if the cache, then the area immediately around the cache is quite rocky (the Hunter’s Stones) and so the forest is quite thin, so I only had to push through a couple of rows of trees until I got to a less wooded area. Finding the cache was easy I had better than 20ft accuracy on the PDA and I didn’t even need the hint to spot where the cache was obviously hidden. A few paces the other side of the cache I could see a trail that had obviously been ised by a quad bike, so I followed this out to the main track and walked the best part of a mile back out of the woods.
In wet conditions this cache would be a nightmare, as the ditches in the forest drain out onto the tracks and they are obviously very muddy at times, then it would be a 4.5 out of 5* difficult terrain cache, but it should only have been a 3* when I did it
31st May 2010 – Endeavour GC1E9E5 – Cache #541
It’s 9:20 on a Bank Holiday Monday night, beginning to get dark, I’m in the middle of nowhere coming up to this large rocky outcrop where I have worked out the co-ords of this puzzle cache to be, when from the other side of the rock comes walking a chap with a rucksack. He climbs the rock, sits down and starts looking in his rucksck. I am sort of expecting him to be another cacher out looking for the cache, so I sort of hang around the rocks a bit looking where the cache might be but not getting to involved in the search, then this guy just gets up and walks off.
I find the cache easily as the co-ords were spot on and away I go the other way, back to my car.
31st May 2010 – Burke and Hare GCMW56 – Cache #542
It was dark, but I had the key and I knew where the cache was, so I just had to go and open it and sign the log straight away.
