Today had been planned for a couple of weeks now but due to some unfortunate new Lou (thehorde) had to pull out :(. So at 6.10am myself, Andy (Citrus-Lizard) and Shan (the Griswalds n dogs) left my house and we picked up Julia (the Bedfords) on the way.
We did one drive by on the way and as we parked up to do it the car temperature gauge ready -13 doh.
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| A shot from GZ of first cache of day! |
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Bagged our first cache of the day!
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We moved on and made our way to our first planned cache of the day, which was
Aragog's Lair . It was a D2.5/T4.5 which a couple of us needed towards our D/T grid. The only difficult thing regarding the cache was jumping over a narrow stream.
We did 4 drive by's on the way to the highlight of the day Cold War Cache....
Cold War Cache by mailboxmonty
http://coord.info/GC1782Z
I had this cache bookmarked for quite a while now and over the last couple of weeks we have all been planning a day down here. We parked up very close and GZ was within a stones throw.
We were all very excited and I personally was a little nervous too, but I needn't have been as it was quite spacious down inside the bunker. The cache itself was an easy find.
This really was a fabulous experience and highly recommended.
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| The cache. |
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| Shan liked going down! |
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Mission complete!
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We moved the car a short distance for the first series of the day.
The Quest for The Blowing Stone by The K9 Crew
http://coord.info/GC2WFRC
A series of 23 smilies with 1 of them being the bonus, where you need to take info from the lids of other caches in the series. The walk is approxiamately 5 miles long with mixed terrain. There are a few uphill bits to the walk but nothing too strenuous. There is one other cache on the route but this was disabled at the time.
There is parking for 3 or 4 cars near the first cache.
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| Lovely snow :) |
We really enjoyed this series and had lots of fun along the way, we even had a break and made snow angels at side of one of the fields.
We collected all the numbers needed and it was great as they were repeated incase you couldn't find all the caches. We failed on one but have since discovered that it wasn't there. :(
At cache 22 we worked out coords for bonus and I then drove us all to somewhere that we knew was wrong. I had made an error in calculations but thankfully Shan had photos of them all and they took us to GZ and the stone.
The cache was a nice big one to finish off with, we then took some pics of us blowing the stone.
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| Shan doing Badger dance! |
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| You can just tell, we'll be mates forever :) |
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| Julia blowing the stone! |
We bagged 22 of the 23 caches on offer :)
We got back to the car where we all had a bit to eat and Julia made us a coffee, I love how organised she always is :) Next on the list is another single cache, a multi named Splash and dash.
Splash and Dash by williewandering
http://coord.info/GC2XR9M
We parked up close to this one and were all smiling as we could see a bit of what was ahead for us, there was a medium sized pond with large rock type platforms running down the side of it....but they had gaps to jump over and one had eroded a lot so needed to walk across it or don wellies and wade through the water.
I managed to get over by balancing and Julia returned in her wellies, but it was Shan who found the well hidden stage one. We entered the coords for stage two and realised it was back and on dry land.
At GZ Andy made a quick find but we let Julia carry on searching for a while haha.
We really enjoyed this cache that had been recommended to me before we got here.
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| Job done! |
We got back in the car all dry and then proceeded to bag 13 cache and dashes on the way to what was to be our final series of the day. After the last cache and dash and close to where we needed to be for the parking on the series we hit black ice on the road and slid towards another car that was sliding towards us. I managed to take foot of brakes and hit some deeper snow off the road which enabled me to brake and come to a halt phew!!!!
However we were now stuck and couldn't get car out. Thankfully Shan took to the wheel and we all pushed along with 3 - 4 other people. Thankfully that was enough to get us out so that we could turn around and go back the way we came to find somewhere else to park. It was a big diversion but thankfully we managed to get there in one piece.
The Chocolate Series by Cache and Cake Club
http://coord.info/GC2YAWH
The Chocolate Series is a walk of 23 caches over a distance of 4 miles.
The series begins up on Hendred Down where there is ample free parking. The circular walk takes you over the Downs towards ‘Lands End’ then back up via the Isley Downs Riding Route where you will get some amazing views. The return stretch takes in Scutchamers Knob, here you will find an existing cache. Scutchamers Knob is an early Iron Age round barrow. If you are interested in Trig Points, then you will pass Fore Down pillar (S5826) just near Scutchamers. A memorial stone to Penelope Betjeman is the location for cache 17, the stone has been placed at an excellent view point.
We couldn't get to park where series begins due to ice on the roads going upto it, so we parked very close to cache 9. The series got off to a bad start as we couldn't find this one :( but we were soon celebrating as we found the next. The area around here really is fantastic with stunning views everywhere you look, it is very popular with walkers!
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| Stunning, everywhere we looked. |
All the rest of the caches were very easy to find and lots were hidden at the bases of posts, however don't let it deter you as the walk really is fantastic.
We had another look at number 9 on return but still no joy, so we decided to move on.
Once at car we realised that unfortunately some low-lifes had broke into our car and stole Andy & Shan's rucksacks. It was on noticing this that the rest of the caches planned came to an end.
We bagged 23 out of a possible 24 smilies :).
I had to get in touch with my wife to let her know what had happened as where she works you have to follow set procedures when such an occurance happens, but none of us on 3 different networks could get a signal doh. I drove on and eventually Kate got through on Andy's phone.
I then reported the crime and we discussed maybe bagging a couple more smilies at the nearby services.... and so we did.
Well what a totally awesome day we had. It was very cold but glorious Sunshine all day, some great views, great caches and the greatest in company. :) :) :)
Todays haul was 68 smilies with 2 DNF's
