After the success of the Cycle caching last time I thought I would go back to the Ferrybridge area and do another series the following weekend, this time I chose the Ledsham and Fairburn walk, around an area of ponds and wetlands that is an RSPB nature reserve. This time it would be walking as the paths weren’t all cycleable.
First though I had a date empty on my caching calendar so while out shopping I grabbed a cache
April 6th 2012 – ‘Maryland Caches – 6 – Harrogate Water’ GC12J6M – cache #1536
How do you hide a magnetic nano in an area with no metal ? This is a question that has confused many, many cachers over the years… some people have logged DNF’s 3 and 4 times… maybe it’s because it was winter and the trees were bare that I spotted it !
April 7th 2012 – BBC Drive-by Series #5 GC2RV4T – cache #1537
On my way down to Ledsham for the walk I thought I ought to finish the Drive bu series I started last week… so I went to the co-ordinates… ‘In the trunk’ said the unhelpful hint… unhelpful as there were about a dozen large tree trunks laying in the area… some on either side of the road… but I found the right spot eventually
April 7th 2012 – BBC Drive-by Series #1 GC2RV4P – cache #1538
Second time lucky finding this one – by which I mean there were two identical places and it was in the second one I found the cache… it’s never the first one for me
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #3 GC2XJ6C – cache #1539
So I got to Ledsham and parked up in the indicated parking place, and set off… I had to miss the first two caches as there were a couple of blokes with a dog right behind me… and although I made a show of going back to the car to get something I’d forgotten they had let the dog off the lead and had gone nowhere when I returned so I had to miss two caches to start with. #3 however was fairly easy to find as the clue says exactly where it is
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #4 GC2XJ6E – cache #1540
When you see a pile of old logs on the floor just off the path… you can almost bet there’s a cache hidden in them
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #5 GC2XJ6F – cache #1541
There’s a hawthorn bush, all by itself in the middle of a field at the cache co-ordinates – with a rock at either side of it… and I still had to move them both and look under them both twice before I found the cache !
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #6 GC2XJ6G – cache #1542
After a while you get to be able to spot strange objects (like stones) protruding from the top of aging wooden gateposts (where the heart has rotted away leaving a void for the cache to hide in)
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #7 GC2XJ6J – cache #1543
It was here that I remembered that I was supposed to get a bonus number from each cache to give me the co-ordinates of the bonus cache ! Still it was too late to go back now and start again, I’d just have to wing it !
April 7th 2012 – MMC – Go to Jail GC2Q9WF – cache #1544
An amazing little place, god knows how big the cell behind the door is, but it was the village jail for many years apparently
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #8 GC2XJ6K – cache #1545
Another demonstration of my sucess rate… a large green metallic box at the side of the path has two sides which the cache could be hidden at… it’s always the second one I try. It ought to be the first time as often but for me it hardly ever is.
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #9 GC2XJ6M – cache #1546
Another easy find.. once some walkers had passed
April 7th 2012 – Twitchers Paradise GCMJP6 – cache #1547
This took a while as the o-ordinates under the trees were not accurate… and in the end I had to use my eyes not my GPS and found the cache well outside the area my GPS told me to search in
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #11 GC2XJ6R – cache #1548
Cache #10 was missing so I didn’t have to look for that. As I was walking along the path to cache #11 I spotted a tree stump that looked a likely hide even though the GPS was showing that the co-ordinates were a few yards further on, but after the last cache I trusted my instincts more than my GPS under the trees and my instincts were right
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #12 GC2XJ6V – cache #1549
As you walk towards the co-ordinates you see a large area of, well, nothing – mud and clumps of short grass… but with a huge boulder in the middle… guess where the cache is hidden ?
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #13 GC2XJ6W – cache #1550
There was a bench a little way along the path and I walked past the cache expecting it to be hidden, then realised it was too far for the co-ordinates, turned around and spotted the camouflaged cache straight away
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #14 GC2XJ6X – cache #1551
After getting lunch at the RSPB Visitors Centre I carried on with the walk, and to this cache hidden in an old tree trunk
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #15 GC2XJ6Y – cache #1552
This one took me a while to find as it was in a wood and with a hint that said ‘Ivy covered stump’ I did consider the place the cache was hidden but discounted it as it was an ivy covered fence post, but eventually I exhausted all other possibilities and there found the cache
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #16 GC2XJ6Z – cache #1553
base of a tree covered by a rock…
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #17 GC2XJ71 – cache #1554
This one will be difficult when there are more leaves on the hedge, as it was it took me a while to see through the camouflage paint
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk the bonus GC2XJ72 – cache #1555
This turned out to be a bit weird…
Due to forgetting about the bonus until I got to #8 I only had the West co-ordinates, but I figured that with these I just had to follow the path back to the start and where the path crossed these West co-ords I would look for the cache…
So I’m walking along the path and I came to this fallen tree trunk that was beginning to rot down, and there was some disturbed bits of wood in it… Aha ! I thought, a likely cache hide if ever I saw one… so I rummaged around, and spotted the lid of a Screw top beaker… ‘Got It !’ I thought, and pulled it out… only to find it was an empty, brand new 400ml beaker hidden in a fallen tree. What is that about ?
After looking at the hint I realised that it couldn’t be the proper bonus cache so I rehid it and walked on… and examined a few places that matched the hint and eventually found the cache
April 7th 2012 – MMC – Park Lane GC2Q9WN – cache #1556
The MMC stands for something like Motorbike Monopoly Cache, a series of caches that all ‘match’ places on the Monopoly board, like the Jail in Fairburn, or in this case Park Lane
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #2 GC2XJ6B – cache #1557
I got back to the car and thought I ought to complete the series by finding the two caches I had had to miss out on at first, so I wandered on down the path again to find this cache in the base of a tree covered by rocks
April 7th 2012 – Ledsham and Fairburn Walk #1 GC2XJ69 – cache #1558
And so the first of the series turned out to be the last cache in the series for me… hidden within feet of where my car stood at the gate into the field
April 7th 2012 – Motorway Mayhem M62 J30 – MkII GCTQKN – cache #1559
On my way home I stopped of for a few more drive-by’s, this one magnetic and hidden in an armco barrier
April 7th 2012 – The Beatles – Long and Winding Road GC34GYN – cache #1560
This would have been more of a cute little cache if it hadn’t been under a bush where the ground was strewn with empty vodka bottles and beer cans
April 7th 2012 – BIKE N’ CACHE Brotherton GC2QW49 – cache #1561
I had to stop the car in a rather bad place on the side of a fast road to grab this one as a cache and dash… easier on a cycle to get off the road onto the pavement, but I’m not sure I would like to ride my bike on this road at a busy time
April 7th 2012 – MMC – Electric Company GC2Q9W7 – cache #1562
Another of the Monopoly caches, this time outside a large electricity substation. the cache was much harder to winkle out of it’s hiding place than it was to spot it’s hide in the first place
April 7th 2012 – BBC Drive-by Series – The Bonus GC2RV4V – cache #1563
Having found all the 5 feeder caches – and noted down their bonus numbers I calculated the co-ordinates and then on my way back home I stopped off for the cache
April 7th 2012 – En route to Leeds GC311ZW – cache #1564
Another drive-by hidden in the hedge at a layby… I had driven past a couple of times in the past but there were always vehicles parked here, but Saturday teatime the lay-by was empty and the cache quickly found
