22nd September 2012 – St Robert GC196WD – cache #2065
One of the other guys I was on holiday with, Joe, has moved up to the other side of Leeds from Birmingham and joined a social group  there and had arranged a walk around Knaresborough to which he invited me to come along. Now Knaresborough is a pretty place so I decided to go and so on Saturday afternoon we met by the Castle and had a pleasant walk along the river. Continue reading →

After rushing to get to 2,000 caches for the Mega Event I found I had lost a bit of enthusiasm for just going out and getting large numbers of caches, my trip around Burn Airfield had confirmed this, There were caches I just couldn’t be bothered finding. I needed to change tack a bit and look at a different aspect of caching. My success with The Impossible Enigma cache gave me the idea to do some other puzzle caches that were proving difficult to solve, so I made a pocket Query of all unsolved puzzle caches in the country and set off to solve them starting at the oldest one… and a couple of weeks later after getting nowhere with the older puzzles I worked down the list until I got to a cache in Nottingham called Kryptos, which had been published about 7 weeks earlier and despite lots of trying by the local cachers had not been solved. Continue reading →

Summer holiday time again, and unlike last year where I was in the cache desert of Turkey, this year I went to Gran Canaria where geocaches appear to be common, but appearances aren’t always what they seem, especially in places that get as many people visiting as major tourist resorts.
I went on holiday with a group of friends, 16 of us in all, but only Adam (UKCacheMag) and I went caching while the others went sunbathing ! Continue reading →

This trackable tag was a FTF reward from ‘The Lambs @ 9’ for being FTF on their the 5* puzzle cache GC3HXM8 – The Impossible Enigma.

The tag is attached to an old 1966 penny and will be released on my holiday to Gran Canaria with the mission to visit puzzle caches on it’s way home to the first puzzle cache I set out GC24NHA – Looking For Percy

As this trackable will likely pass through several countries on the Trackables page I have explained that the ‘The Penny Drops’ is an English phrase for the moment when you realise how to solve a puzzle – what the Americans call the ‘lightbulb moment’

RAF Burn opened in 1942. It’s first major Bomber Command squadron was No. 431, a squadron made up of Canadian airmen, flying Wellington bombers. 431 left in 1943. In 1944 578 Squadron moved in to Burn flying the Halifax heavy bomber. During their 14 months at Burn they flew 2722 missions and lost 40 aircraft. The distinguished crews were awarded 79 Distinguished Flying Medals, 144 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 2 Distinguished Service Orders and the ultimate recognition for valour, the Victoria Cross. The only VC ever awarded on the Halifax to Pilot Officer C.J. Barton.
219 airmen lost their lives operating from RAF Burn during 578 squadron’s tenure.
The airfield was closed in 1945 after the end of the war.

A new cache series was put out so a couple of days later I paid it a visit, I checked on the map that it was all bridleways and roads so I decided to take my bike a cycle round (after all airfields are flat !) Continue reading →

The 3rd Saturday every August is International Geocaching Day, the Saturday nearest the anniversary of the start of geocaching as a hobby – when the US Military took off the deliberately introduced error into the satellite system and allowed accurate GPS fixes to be used for pin point navigation

As the official Groundspeal blurb says “Geocachers unite on August 18 to celebrate International Geocaching Day. It’s a day devoted enjoying what you love – geocaching. There’s even a digital prize. Geocachers who log an “Attended” at an Event Cache or a “Found it” for another cache type on International Geocaching Day earn a souvenir for their Geocaching.com profile page. International Geocaching Day is the perfect occasion to hike with family and friends, enjoy the outdoors, and log one, two, or a dozen caches. ” Continue reading →