Monday, and I was alone in the office so decided that lunchtime could go on for a little longer than it’s really supposed to, so that allowed me to have a little stroll across the moors to reach a couple of caches that are really outside the range of lunchtime caches, but hey, while the cats away and all that !

9th August 2010 – Lonely Tree GC1P4VA – cache #677
I hadn’t got my normal GPS with me, so I was caching using just my mobile phone which fortunately has a built in GPS receiver, so running an app called c:geo I set off for the first cache. The GPS on the phone takes a while to lock on to the signal so I set out across the moors in the direction I knew to go in from looking at the aerial photographs on Google. And I’m looking on the moor for a cache at a ‘Lonely Tree’ – shouldn’t be too hard to find even without a GPS really !

However I am glad the GPS did lock on and give me a signal to tell me where the cache was as the lonely tree wasn’t really what I would call a tree, I have bigger weeds in my garden than this tree !
But it had a mesh rabbit fence round it and inside the wire was a cache.

9th August 2010 – “A story for which the world is not yet prepared” GC16Y3G – cache #678
From the lonely tree the next cache is under 0.4 miles away, but in the direction away from my car ! I found the cache easy enough… it was on a moor so was almost bound to be hidden under a rock !
Lunchtime was up now, but I still had best part of 3/4 of a mile to walk back to my car and then a drive back to the office… I was only about 23 minutes late !

9th August 2010 – Fairy Dell Walk GCXXE5 – cache #679
In the evening I decided that I would go and clear up another two local caches, ones that were not just a drive-by but involved a 5 mile walk to get around them both, the walk involved starting at the bottom of the hill, walking up to the top walking down the hill on another path and then walking back around to the car. The first cache was on top of the hill, but was also in a valley and hidden under a bridge ! I didn’t see any fairies in the fairy dell, in fact I didn’t see a fairy dell really, it was all a bit overgrown.

9th August 2010 – Picnic on Hunger Hill GC1NPGC – cache #680
The other cache was at the bottom of the hill on the other path, hidden in the roots of a tree, covered by a rock !

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 1 GC1E566 – cache #681
Friday, and although it had been raining during the day I decided that I needed to make the most of the last few evenings where it would be light enough to go caching after work, so I headed out to the hamlet of Nessfield just past Ilkley to find the caches I hadn’t already done as Roadside drive-by’s from the Nessfield Round
The first cache of the series… hidden in the roots of a tree, just off the path. I realised that I needed to take note of the clues in the caches to find the bonus, but I had nothing to write on with me, so I took a train ticket out of the cache (?) No idea why someone would put a train ticket into the cache, but they had and so it formed my notebook for the walk.

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 2 GC1E56P – cache #682
The second cache of the series… hidden in the roots of a tree, covered by a rock.
Find the cache, photograph it, sign the log, rehide it, walk 50 yards… then realise that you haven’t written down the clue so go back and drag it out of hiding again !

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 4 GC1E57E – cache #683
There isn’t a number 3 to the series… as the farmer has changed the footpath access, so there is now a ‘4’ and a ‘4A’
Number 4 was hidden under a rock at the base of a fence post, quite difficult to find as it was overgrown with nettles and brambles, it is at times like this when I am glad of my walking pole, I don’t actually use it properly for walking (well you need two poles for that) but it does come in useful for prodding under bushes and scything down undergrowth !

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 6 GC1E584 – cache #684
It was about now I was realising that as I had done 4a and 5 many moons ago and had no idea of the clues hidden in them that I might have trouble finding the bonus cache, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to add an extra 15 minutes to my walk to go round these two that I had already found, so I carried on.
Cache 6 was possibly the easiest to find of the whole lot as it was hidden under a big rock… in a place where there is only one big rock for it to be hidden under !

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 7 GC1E58K – cache #685
Number 7 was probably the hardest of the series to find, the hint said something like “OOPs Gate Post” now I have no idea what the ‘OOPs’ means so I read the few logs that I had on my PDA, and they didn’t help… so I was down to the hint ‘gatepost’ there were 4 gate posts to choose from, but none had obvious caches around them, in the end I was just about to give up when I noticed a black plastic cap in one of the holes on on of the gateposts… and there was the cache… unfortunately it was impossible to get out and damaged and the log was just mush, so I couldn’t sign it and there was no clue left to find, so I was now 3 clues out of 7 down.

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 8 GC1E58Z – cache #686
I had spent so long searching for the previous cache that it was getting pretty dark by now, and I still had 2 caches and the bonus to find. Number 8 was another where the hint said gatepost, this time there were 5 to choose from, two on each side of the track and another old one that was a relic from when there used to be a gate across the track…
None of them seemed to have a cache anywhere around them, and this time no holes in the gateposts to hide a tube in.
So I read the previous logs one of them said it was a tricky hide and they’d spotted something that didn’t look quite right, so I had the thought that I had seen caches hidden in the tops of wooden gate post where the centre had rotted away… and there, in one gatepost was a stone stuck in a rotted hole… and under the stone, was the cache

13th August 2010 – Nessfield Round 9 GC1E596 – cache #687
Totally dark now, and I’m walking down a rutted farm track between two tree lined bankings, can’t see a thing hardly, I should have taken a torch !
The final cache was in the roots of a tree, and fortunately was easy to spot using the screen of my PDA as a torch !
I did then take the numbers I had and made a Westerly co-ordinate for the bonus cache, I didn’t have the numbers for the northerly co-ordinate, but as it was on the path from the final cache back down to the start of the walk I didn’t need that really , just had to look wherever the path met the westerly co-ordinate. Unfortunately it was far too dark for searching around anything, so I left that for another day and went home.

14th August 2010 – It’s a Gas! GCNP8N – cache #688
The next day I was in Keighley doing a bit of shopping, so I decided to come back via a couple of caches on the St Ives’ Estate. The St Ives’ estate is the grounds of a large house and is rich in caches, (there are about 30 caches in the estate itself and another dozen in the area around it) Not having a great deal of time available I pulled into the car park and walked up the first path I came to, the caches were chosen on no more basis than being on this path, the first one was behind a gas main marker post, not exactly where the co-ordinates said it was going to be but the name of the cache and the hint led you to it without co-ordinates

14th August 2010 – BARNEY RUBBLE 2 GC1F5T5 – cache #689
The second cache I found was opposite a derelict barn, hidden in the roots of a tree, covered by a log. There were a couple of other caches I passed on the path, but they were in areas that were so overgrown that on a sunny Saturday afternoon when the whole world and his wife were out walking their dogs I didn’t have the desire or opportunity to go trampling down the brambles and nettles to find them, they’ll be there another day when I have more time and fewer onlookers.