Caches No’s 829 to 848 – Dales Drive By

Another Saturday afternoon, and this time a cold, damp miserable one, not the sort of day I wanted to be going out walking so there was only one thing for it – Road Trip !

There had been a new set of caches put out up in the Dales a couple of weeks before, so I thought I’d go and find them, there didn’t seem to be much logic to the route, in fact it was hard actually working out where some of them were in relation to the last one, but on the map I worked out where they were and what other caches I could get to along the way.


9th October 2010 – Jellybean Jaunt GC1Q341 – cache #829

This first cache wasn’t in the new series at all, but was conveniently just up the road from the start of the Dales Drive, easy enough to find hidden in some stones by a gatepost

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 1 – Bedlam GC2G529 – cache #830
The start of the Dales Drive, and a cache that appeared to be little more than dumped in the bottom of a tree. There is so much of the Dales to choose from that this hide seemed a little poor really – and didn’t excite me about the rest of the series

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 2 – Summerbridge GC2G52N – cache #831
This hide was much better, a cache hidden in a hole in the wall behind a bench, previous cachers had remarked about getting muddy knees crawling under the bench, the secret is that the bench is not actually fastened down, so you can move it out far enough to reach the cache easily

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 3 – Low Laithe GC2G532 – cache #832
A magnetic cache hidden on the back of a roadsign, there was a woman feeding the cows in the field who had her 4×4 parked near the cache, but she was too busy with the animals to pay any attention to what I was doing

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 4 – Glasshouses GC2G53T – cache #833
A cache in a layby across the road from some much needed public toilets, pity they require crossing a very busy road to get to !
The clue for the cache was totally wrong, it was supposed to be hidden under a stone near the millstone that forms the village name board, but the grass verge had been recently cut and there were no stones for the cache to be under, however I do wonder whether the grass cutter had found and moved the cache to a safe (and easy to spot) place at the base of the wall a few yards away (covered by a stone of course)

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 5 – Wath GC2G548 – cache #834
Another cache hidden by a village name board, again a nice big layby to park in, but I had to wait for Dog walkers to leave the area before I could grab the cache

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 6 – Pateley Bridge GCG54W – cache #835
I missed the turn off onto the minor road for this one and had to drive nearly a mile before I could turn round… maybe this drive by series is best not done on your own, a navigator would have helped at several points !
I was held up a bit at this cache by some people drinking a flask of tea in a car parked by the cache, so I wandered off down the footpath to a quarry while they finished up and left… Pity it was a bit foggy because the views up there were pretty fine even so, I’d never been up here before but I might go back one day when it’s nice and sunny as the view from there must be stunning.
The cache itself was hidden in the base of a bush, but the view from the parking spot made up for the basic hide

9th October 2010 – Moor to View GC1B1V8 – cache #836
This cache is not part of the Dales Drive series, but the route does go almost right past it, it’s by a cattle grid and there are many places to hide a cache, the logs said that it was qute a difficult find, though after a look around I realised fairly quickly that the fence support wasn’t actually holding anything up and the large bolt in it was not actually fastened on to anything… so I pulled it out, and there was the cache… a nice imaginative hide that must cause head scratching for some

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 7 – Laverton GC2G55D – cache #837
This was the cache I liked least on the series because I wasn’t happy parking anywhere near the cache, and a driveby cache should have a good place to park nearby as it was I had to park in a gateway on a narrow road about 50 yards away from the cache, and walk down the narrow road under tree cover between a wall and a banking, it may just be me, but the weather was dull and gloomy, so it was pretty dark under the trees, and the road was quite busy on a Saturday afternoon, and I just didn’t think it was a good place for the cache to be, The cache itself was at the top of the banking at the base of a tree

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 8 – Kirkby Malzeard GC2G56R – cache #838
A good place to park, a nice little green space with a bench on it and a magnetic nano hidden on the bench – only 2 bits of metal so not hard to find !

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 9 – Galphay GC2G575 – cache #839
In the ivy at the base of the wall… lots of wall and lots of ivy, and signs that most of the ivy had been disturbed by cachers investigating whether there was a cache behind it !

9th October 2010 – Winksley “The Church” GC1EP89 – cache #840
Another cache not on the Dales Drive, but that is on the route, an easy to find cache hidden behind a gas main marker post. There must have been a band practice going on in the Church as I’m sure I heard a brass band playing Christmas Carols

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 10 – Winksley GC2G57C – cache #841
The co-ordinates for this cache were a little off, which had caused some cachers difficulty in finding it, I assume they had been trying to find it without the clue, as with the clue and ignoring the published co-ordinates I went straight to it

9th October 2010 – Winksley “The Picnic” GC1EP8V – cache #842
A slight detour brought me to a picnic table on the edge of a wood, with this cache hidden underneath. I nearly ripped the exhaust off my car turning round in the narrow road, the verge I backed onto wasn’t really designed for cars

9th October 2010 – North Wood MK 2 GC2EMXA – cache #843
Another cache that I made my Dales Drive route go by, and a cache that has caused some experienced cachers difficulty in finding it. I got to the GZ and looked in all the obvious places, and there was no cache apparent, so I stood and looked around, and saw a piece of tree branch, a sawn piece of tree branch, in an area where there were no other bits of sawn branch and with a type of bark that didn’t match the type on the trees it was under. Suspicions aroused, I investigated and found a nicely hidden cache

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 11 – Grantley GC2G57N – cache #844
magnetic cache hidden in a telephone box, the telephone box is across the road from a row of houses, so anyone looking out of the window can see strangers going into the phone box, but I guess there’s not a lot of mobile phone signal up there so maybe people using a phone box isn’t as rare as it now is in cities

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 12 – Sawley GC2G584 – cache #845
A straightforward base of a telegraph post hide, by a Village Green next to a litter bin, so at least you have some excuse to stop your car there and get out – as long as you have some litter to dispose of !

9th October 2010 – Big and Red.. But not a bus GC1FB05 – cache #846
It’s big and red and not a bus, it’s a stand of huge Redwood trees, not as big as their American cousins grow, but pretty impressive for an area that is mainly plantation pine trees.
The cache is easily found hidden at the base of the tree nearest the road.

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By 13 – Markington GC2G58H – cache #847
Previous cachers had reported that they had had trouble with this one due to the presece of the local farmer. He was out in his tractor ploughing the field by the cache when I arrived, so I parked a little way down the road and sneaked back along the hedge, grabbing the cache when he turned to plough a furrow going away from me and returning the cache the next time his back was turned.

9th October 2010 – Dales Drive By – Bonus GC2G5AM – cache #848
I had remembered to collect all the clues to find the bonus cache and although I drove past it before I found somewhere to stop and figure out the calculation for the bonus co-ordinates it didn’t take me too long to work out where it was and drive back to find it, and that was then end of my four hour, 20 cache and about 30 mile Dales Drive.

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