I started working out how many caches I was going to look for on the way down to the Halloween Mega. I could easily expand the 5 I was counting on to 10, 15, 20 even – though that would mean an early start on my way down as each one would add time to my journey. In theory the journey to Northampton can take as little as 3 hours as it is straight down the M1 from Leeds, but in reality every cache you go to adds about 10-15 minutes to the journey so 20 caches would add 4-5 hours to the trip… so the more I find before the better Continue reading →

It was a couple of days after going to Whixley that I could go caching again, and this time it had to be a shorter trip as it was mid afternoon before I could set off… 16 days and 38 or so caches to do – down to 2.3 or so a day. There were a couple of puzzle caches of Team MX’s that I had solved but hadn’t gone for in a nearby place called Dawson Woods – which joins on to Buck Woods, a place where I have been caching many times before, and there were up to about 10 caches I could go for if I had the time Continue reading →

Monday, and I was down to 62 caches needed in 17 days, but with forecast of the weather getting iffy later in the week I decided to take the afternoon and go and do a series I’ve had on my radar to do for 6 months, but never got round to doing, but now with the numbers required and the weather turning, it was a case of make hay while the sun shines, or at least go walking before it rains and the paths all turn to mud. Continue reading →

The next few days after doing the Timble series I was either busy or it was raining, I had had 92 caches to do in 23 days, 4 caches a day… but as the days go past I was recalculating the avarage number of caches I needed going up day by day, by Saturday it was 92 caches in 20 days, over 4.5 per day – and no guarantee that there were going to be many days when I wasn’t busy or that the weather was going to be fit for caching. What I needed was to plan some places to get a large number of caches – 20 days at 4.5 caches a day is the same as 4.5 days of 20 caches… and 4.5 days of caching in 3 weeks is a lot more likely than 20 consecutive days !
So I worked out some locations, the furthest away of which, a 21 cache drive by series north of York was both the furthest away and the one I decided to do first. Continue reading →

It was about this time I realised that I had found just over 100 caches in September, was nearly at 2,900 caches, and that the Halloween Mega was about three and a half weeks away… So as I had made the 2012 Mega at Cartmel my 2,000th cache, could I make the Halloween Mega my 3,000th cache ?
My reckoning was that with the Friday night event and four or five drive-bys on the way I needed to get to 2,994 caches by Thursday 24th, so between now and then I needed to find 113 caches.
Then on the evening of the last day of September a new cache series was published which made the task a lot more likely… 21 caches only three and a half miles from home !
Continue reading →