Past week's caching.

On Saturday we went to Berkshire to a place called Mortimer as part of some commissioned work. We walked a circular route of about 6 miles which goes through a Roman town called Calleva Atrebatum. Before we got to Mortimer we had a quick look for a new cache near Paddington. This one was in a street beside some important offices (either government or nhs) with a security guard and in front of a spa. We didn't find it and since then there has been some semi heated discussion on the cache page.

The first cache we found near Mortimer was a sidetracked cache.

This was an easy find then onwards to a multi starting from the nearby church. The co-ords on my garmin etrex didn't point towards the bench that we were supposed to obtain information from and then when plugging the info into my gps, the arrow pointed to the middle of a field which didn't match the clue. As we had a long walk ahead of us, I decided not to retrace our steps and try again.

The next cache we diverted slightly off our route to. This was Elf yourself. Had to avoid muggles walking their dog while grabbing this one. We then continued onwards to a rather muddy bridleway which led to the next geocache which was in the grounds of a Roman ampitheatre.

Another cache was nearby beside the churchyard of St Mary's.

We then diverted again across a muddy field to grab a puzzle cache that I had solved on a previous evening. I really enjoy puzzle caches, although half of them I have difficulty with and pass over to my husband. Disappointingly though the cache was a film canister, a poor reward in my opinion for a puzzle that you have spent sometime solving.

I liked the location for the next cache which was in a tree on the Roman walls. My son found this one.

We then headed onwards and shortly came to a field with several horses in including a large shire horse. Between us and this huge giant was a flimsy one strand of electric wire. This horse followed us the whole length of the field making me feel very nervous and then when he could get no further reared on his back legs and galloped speedily over to another smaller horse whom he seemed to be bullying. I did not feel comfortable with electric wire as protection at all and as I have been kicked by a horse while following a public footpath in the past, was rather nervous. However a bit later on we met some cute very curly alpacas.

The last cache of the day was in a pleasant woodland. It had been placed rather recently but was soaked inside. I drained the water out but as I didn't have any tissues with me, I couldn't dry it any further.
On Sunday I tried for an FTF on a cache that was local to me. Myself and my daughter spent about 3/4 hour searching for the cache, my gps hates woodland so have to search a larger area if we are under tree cover and there was no hint! Came home rather annoyed. Yesterday a hint was added to the cache page and then later on the owner ammended the co-ordinates as he'd made a mistake. He was extremely apologetic.

Today myself and my husband grabbed a clue for a multi-cache near Ware. We saw a very odd cut out in the woodland nearby.



We then went for the cache that I tried for last sunday. Someone had beaten me to FTF but as I've already had 2 FTF's last year I wasn't quite as bothered about it (tongue in cheek). My husband found this in 5 seconds in a spot where I had looked previously. Grr!! Anyway got my first geocoin in 2 weeks. There seems to be a distinct lack of trackables recently in the caches I have visited.

This picture is of a sculpture that a child in my son's class created as part of a sculpture trail between Hertford and Great Amwell. Can you spot it in the photo? Every child from the school created their own sculpture with minimal assistance from local artist Maxine King. There is a leaflet available from local attractions and can be downloaded from East Herts Council.