The Church Micro series also has a ranking award system for finding the caches, for finding between 10 and 24 you are ranked as a Reader, From 25 to 49 you are ranked as a Deacon, from 50 to 99 you are ranked as a Curate, and that is where I am now with 64 Church Micro finds… I do have a desire to get to be a Vicar 100 – 249 finds, getting any higher will be pretty difficult as I would need to find every Church Micro within 50 miles of home to get to 250, and that is not really a practical proposition.
So I will just have to get all the local ones I can and pick up others when I am elsewhere in the country, so two in Keighley were high on my list for finding. Continue reading →

Bank Holiday Monday and the weather looked promising and I had nothing planned so I decided to go and do a tour of Church Micros in the East and South East of Leeds area. I did a bit of planning first of all… wherever the caches were multicaches with answers that could be gleaned from the Church websites I sorted out final co-ords before going, and I downloaded a GSAK macro which determines the best route around a set of caches – something it did well, I will probably do a write up on it for the Cache Mag for a later issue… so I knew I had 82 miles to drive and 18 Church Micros plus another 6 or 7 caches that were drive-bys en route. The headline picture shows a Church Micro geocoin that is now available, I did think about buying one, but I have several coins already and don’t use them so not really point in buying another Continue reading →

If you look back you will see that last year I completed my calender months caches for February, March and April and that in May I got annoyed with myself as I forgot to get a cache to fill in May 24th which left a blank day on my calendar grid (see caches 2568-2572) So this May24th I was determined not to miss it and so even though it was an awful wet Saturday I rushed off out to find a cache – and a cache I didn’t really have any co-ordinates for, just that I knew roughly where it had to be – I hadn’t co-ordinates for it as I had refused to look for one of the feeder caches (see caches 3104 & 3105) Continue reading →

I was thinking more about putting out Church Micro caches and looking at all the wonderful Yorkshire village names I could put caches in, Blubberhouses, Kettlesing Bottom, Hubberholme, Yockenthwaite etc, one quite near me is Kirkby Overblow and there is a church in the village and a couple of unfound caches nearby so one evening I decided to go and investigate. There is a public footpath running through the Churchyard and then out into fields behind, but unfortunately this is too near caches on the Snape Sneak (caches 1451 – 1457) so I had to look village side of the church for a spot, and if it was away from the church look for numbers in the churchyard to make a multi out of it. Continue reading →

Having put out a cache I was thinking that the World Cup was coming up and that it must then be 4 years since I put out my last cache before that… so I decided it was time for another puzzle cache, and I decided to make it an impossible one for people to solve.
It is sort of along the lines of Jacaru’s Kryptos cache (find no. #2064) which I am pretty sure I was the only person to solve without a nudge of any sort from anyone else. A combination of two cyphers with a visual twist… that’s similar to the Gamma Charlie Encryption, and I only solved Kryptos by accident ! Continue reading →

The Coldstones Cut is one of the biggest and highest piece of public artwork in Yorkshire. The sculpture was commissioned by Nidderdale visual arts and Hanson Aggregates, who run the Coldstones Quarry, which the sculpture overlooks. Designed by Andrew Sabin and completed in 2010 it stands 1,375 feet above sea level on the edge of a working quarry. The Coldstones Cut sculpture is a mix of both old and new, as it combines ancient stone blocks with a contemporary streetscape. The streetscape is complemented by winding paths, and there are platforms which allow the visitor to appreciate different views from the sculpture. Continue reading →