It was a dull but dry Sunday, and the Grand Prix wasn’t on until tea time – so it was a good day for caching !
I had a couple of options as to where to go, a 4 mile hilly walk or a 3 mile flat walk… guess which one won !
October 18th 2009 – The Turnaround GC1FJ17 – Cache #158
This cache is at a bus stop, it’s not just a bus stop but it marks the end of the line for the bus and so there’s a loop where the bus can turn around – hence the name of the cache.
It was a cache where I couldn’t actually sign the log because I couldn’t open the container, a magnetic nano so there was very little to get a grip on and it was shut on tight and I had no pliers or even a cigarette lighter to open it with. So I’m claiming a find and will go back and sign it next time I am passing with a mole grip !
October 18th 2009 – River Walk 2 GC14KHE – Cache #159
I couldn’t find the next cache I looked for GC14KH5 – Dowley Lock View, in fact I couldn’t find it twice !
I walked down to the cache site, spent half an hour searching at ground zero… couldn’t find it… so I went and did the rest of the walk and came back after the walk two and a half hours later and spent another half hour searching… the GPS still said that ground zero was in the same spot I was looking. However, if I’d had access to older logs I would have found that what I had as GZ was not the right place !
The River Walk cache series is a strange set as they are in no particular order, if you do them going downstream you go 3, 1, 2, 4. But I was starting at the easiest one to get to from a convenient parking space so I did 2 first, a fairly easy find, hidden in the roots of a tree by a stone.
October 18th 2009 – River Walk 4 GC1R7V5 – Cache #160
The previous logger to mine said he couldn’t find this one which surprised me as it’s exactly where the GPS and the hint says it’s going to be. I did have to get a stick to poke it out of it’s hiding place as I hadn’t got gloves on and wanted not to get my hands too dirty !
October 18th 2009 – A Wier-d One GC14ZTV – Cache #161
This was more difficult than it could have been as the rowing club had just finished their practice on the river and so were all milling about in the car park next to the boat house… which is right by the cache site. It’s an easy cache to get to when you have spotted where it is, and spotting where it is involves a bit of crawling around in a place where you wouldn’t normally see people crawling around, so I had to wait while the coast was clear before doing it… I took some photographs while I was waiting, the headline shot being one of them.
October 18th 2009 – Walkies GC1JE4X – Cache #162
A cache in a wood popular with families and dog walkers, fortunately there weren’t any people around when I was at the cache. At this cache I dropped off the Travel Express Geocoin
October 18th 2009 – Over and Under GCNR93 – Cache #163
The name of the cache refers to the bridge which takes the canal over the river at this point. It was an easy enough cache to find, but what with people out walking in the woods, people out walking on the river bank and people out walking along the canal tow path it was a case of dodging them to retrieve and replace the cache.
October 18th 2009 – River Walk GC14KG7 – Cache #164
For some reason although I had downloaded the same file to my PDA and my GPS I had the co-ordinates for this one but no description or hint as to it’s hiding place. Fortunately it wasn’t hard to find, just look round for an obvious spot – Hidden in the roots of a tree under a rock !
At this cache I collected the travel bug TB1F35P – POODLES IN NEED ‘Puppy’
October 18th 2009 – RIVER WALK 3 GC1FJ17 – Cache #165
It is between these two caches that the railway goes over the river on the bridge shown above, the path is quite high up out of the water behind the pillars on the left.
This cache is a few hundred yards beyond the bridge and is quite cunning in that it isn’t hidden at ground level, but as the hint implies it is up in a tree.
October 18th 2009 – A Wednesday One GC1J974 – Cache #166
This is one where you could look very guilty to muggles, there’s this path, only about 4 foot, wide between two high stone walls. At one point one wall is broken down and you need to climb over the broken bit into a bit of clear space to find the cache. The thing is when you are behind the wall you can’t see who is coming along the path, so you can easily be surprised by someone coming upon you squatting down in a hole in a wall… looking suspicious !
October 18th 2009 – And Two Fingers to You Too…………. GC1FJ17 – Cache #167
A two fingered salute that awaits you as you pass under the huge bridge – well viaduct really – that takes the dual carriageway bypass over the river. Another cache that’s not at ground level, and you need to be pretty tall to get it ! fortunately my 5’10” is tall enough.
And that was the end of my 3 mile, 10 cache walk… trouble is it was a mile back to the car !