Celebrating the Olympics

Today we popped out on a rescue mission to recover a TB from an archived cache on the other side of Harlow. Apparently it had some placement issues with the landowner/ranger and had been archived. The cache owner has only 1 smiley and hasn't logged on since 2011 however previous logs suggested that the cache would still be in situ.

Upon arrival, my daughter grabbed my arm and said "Is that the cache?" It was lying on top of some recently cleared branches in full view of the adjacent footpath. Surprisingly the cache was in good nick and contained a trackable but sadly not the one I'd come to rescue. I decided to take the cache home with me as the cache owner hadn't addressed the issues with the landowner, it was archived and would otherwise be geo-litter. I've offered to post the cache to the owner if s/he contacts me.

We then headed over to Harlow to grab a recently published cache at a golden post box repainted to celebrate Laura Trott's win in the Olympics although her home town is actually at Cheshunt so the lucky lady has two painted in her name.

This evening we retried a cache that we searched for earlier in the week. No luck, must be very well hidden especially as it's big enough to fit 3 trackables in :(

Hoping to do a cache in a tunnel this week and to get to 600 by the end of the week! What are your caching aims for this week.

International Geocaching Day

Yesterday after taking the kids to the outdoor swimming pool, decided to head out and grab a cache for the International Geocaching Day souvenir. This would be the second one of these I have acquired so far. Last year I did Jack the Ripper 1 - Mary Ann Nichols while my husband had a hospital appointment nearby.

My immediate choice for the evening was to grab a puzzle cache which had been released a few days before and I'd solved on the day but didn't go for FTF. This was The Defector on the edge of Hertford, convenient for the bus stop and would have been home within an hour. However when we got to GZ, people were sitting out in their gardens and a dog was alerted to our presence so decided to try for an alternative cache. The Stairway to Cache Heaven was our qualifying cache, there was a bit of a scramble to obtain the cache and the contents could do with a bit of tlc but it was a relief to find this cache so we could get our souvenir.

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.

8th and 9th of January

On Saturday I placed a new geocache GC2M63X which is an ammo box that I received as a Christmas present from Secret Santa. Inside I left a FTF badge as a present to the first to find and started off two trackables a hamster travelbug and a Welsh Lovespoon geocoin. Hope these last a little longer than some of my other trackables I have released. I'm not sentimental about my trackables and I don't expect them to return to me but I do hope for a decent mileage and logs before the trackables go awol. The first to find was within two hours of publication, impressive!

Today we went looking for 3 geocaches near Cheshunt, 1 along the River Lee and two at Holyfield Weir. The first cache, a micro, was one I have looked for previously. Unfortunately it was rather busy on the river path as it was a lovely Sunday and we were struggling once again to solve the hint. This was a cache by P Smithy Clan who has created some difficult hides in the River Lee series. The next cache we arrived at was Holyfield Weir. I think I have figured out the location for this geocache but there were too many twitters at gz so we had to leave it for today. I decided to also leave the cache across the water until the next time we come. I dropped off my husband's trackable at Waltham Abbey Scouts 1.

Moral of today's posting is to go out caching at popular locations on weekdays or rainy days and to head somewhere quieter.

Today we did another walk from Hertford, this time the whole family came. We followed the Cole Green Way, a former train line, to Hertingfordbury where we found one of the Church Micros. Inside the church yard I got a clue towards The Last Witch. I now need two digits to find the cache but the clue for these are at Walkern and as I don’t drive it’s awkward to get to. I have however tried guessing the location and I think/hope I’m right so I may have look at said location in the next few days. Here’s hoping I’m right!

My nearest 4 caches are multi-caches, I know roughly where two of them are and the other one is a group of 7 caches which you need to find to get your smiley…. I keep putting this one off as it sounds like a lot of hard work to get it.

We then headed onwards to Footpath Fumble: Tree Treasure which was a fairly easy find between muggles. One doggy stole a sandwich out of our bag, the poor owners were mortified!

We continued onwards towards Where’s Wally?. The mud along the footpaths were quite bad and we had a few centimetres added to our heights.

Where’s Wally is located in Roxford Grotto a Victorian garden with a pheasant feeding wagon still in situ. Picked up a car tb which is in a race so shall drop that off shortly maybe in my cache that I got for Christmas.

Hopefully will be out caching again later on in the week.

Winter caching

Over the last twenty-four hours I have been doing what a lot of cachers do during the winter months when they can't get out - solving puzzles. Admittedly some of the harder more mathematical puzzles I passed over to husband to solve but so far we have hopefully the right co-ordinates for 14 puzzle caches which I will endeavor to go out and find before the summer. Most of the puzzle caches that I have been solving have been by the infamous duo bill&ben who have created a large of number of puzzle caches in my area.

Tomorrow we're intending to go out grab two traditionals and one or two clues towards The Last Witch. This will be another date off the Finds for Each Day of the Year section of my statistics. I've discovered shamefully that I've never cached in December, something which I intend to rectify this year. I would also like to increase my average difficulty and terrain score. Does anyone have any new year resolutions for geocaching? Mine are to find 5 a week at least and to update this blog at least weekly.

Good luck for 2011

Happy New Caching Year

Today is the start of a brand new year and a new year of caching. Today, myself and two of the children decided to grab some nearby caches as I was feeling housebound after the recent snow and festivities. We headed over to Hertford intending to find 3 caches and a clue towards a multi cache - The Wicked Lady.

The first cache was 7th Hertford Guides "All Saints". This cache is in the grounds of the Guides meeting hall adjacent to All Saints church. I'd previously looked for this cache twice before, the first time there were too many muggles and then the drainage ditch was swollen with molten snow. However today the cache was an instant find as I'd taken advice from previous finders' logs.



Then we headed uphill to find an old driveway for Brickonbury Hall called Morgan's Walk. Here my daughter easily found 7th Hertford Guides "Morgan's Breather".

We carried on along Morgan's Walk to arrive at an imposing gate with barbed wire around it and the following sign.


We then found White House Whereabouts. My son found this one as my daughter was too scared to poke her hand around under the leaves and sticks.

We lastly tried to find one of the clues for The Wicked Lady which is located near a housing estate on the outskirts of Hertford. My gps got us within 30 ft of the micro cache so we tried to find a likely spot fitting the clue. The next minute my son is screaming that he'd found a gun, on further examination it turned out to be a 1960s replica Lone Star P38 automatic which looked very real. We gave up after this but will return at some point once I've got over the shock of finding a gun of any type!