On the Spring Bank Holiday two years ago I found my first geocache, I ended my first year of caching by looking for the 5/5 cache Burke and Hare GCMW56 – which was the nearest 5/5 cache to my house. To mark my second caching ‘birthday’ I thought I would find the next nearest 5/5 cache to my house. However I also wanted to make it my 1,150th cache so I went to find a few others first.

28th May 2011 – Toft Gate Lime Kiln GC135ZK – cache #1142
Saturday afternoon and I was passing this cache so I thought I’d just pop in to find it.
Toft Gate lime kiln was built in the 1860s, ceased operations in 1910 and is now a scheduled monument that has been opened up for the public by English Heritage, although I’ve been along the road dozens of times, this was the first time I had stopped and had a look round.
The cache is hidden in some rocks, I actually walked past it, stopped to check my GPS, realised I’d gone past, turned and spotted the camouflage stone straight away as it just wasn’t in the place a loose stone really would be.

30th May 2011 – Super Hero Stop GC2KA8Q – cache #1143
Sunday, and I was going to end up at the 5/5 cache but first I needed to find a few around the west side of Harrogate. This one was easy to find, I mean where else was a cache called Super Hero Stop going to be ?

30th May 2011 – Love it or Hate it.. Which for you? GC2H7EZ – cache #1144
I needed to find half a dozen more caches before getting to the 1150th, so I planned a short walk around Birk Crag woods and then back through the Pinewoods. This first cache on my walk was the most awkeard of the lot to find as it was well off the path, with poor GPS accuracy under the trees and had no clue to guide you in. After a few minutes searching around the wrong trees I turned round and spotted it in the roots of a tree I hadn’t searched around. The love it or hate it name is because the cache is in a Marmite jar inside a plastic box…. personally I love it !

30th May 2011 – From Cubs To Scouts GC15RFY – cache #1145
The problem with Birk Crag Woods is that there is a crag in the middle of them and I was unsure of whether the cache was going to be near the top path above the crag or near the bottom path below the crag, as it was I chose the top and was wrong and had to retrace my steps to get down to the bottom. The cache itself was easy to find with an experienced eye as the camouflage was obviously not a natural rock formation.

30th May 2011 – HikingBare’s Den GC36C7 – cache #1146
Then of course when you are at the bottom of the crag the next cache is at the top, so there was a climb up a seemingly endless flight of stone steps to get on top of the rocks. I was quite amused by the helpful signpost that said the path was a bridleway, you might get a mountain goat up the steps but there’s no way you would get a horse or pony up them !
The cache itself was a small micro, hidden in the cracks of a rock and contained the co-ordinates to the second part of the multi-cache

30th May 2011 – How Tickled I Am (aka HikingBare #2) GC14GQ4 – cache #1147
And the secon part of the multi-cache was a few hundred yards further on down the path. The clue said to stand on the path with the tree on your left and walk forward… what it didn’t say was which path ? which tree ? I mean I was in a wood with lots of apparent paths ! Anyway I just got near the cache site and used the ‘where would I hide a cache ?’ thought process to spot a rock with a hole under it big enough to hide an ammo box.

30th May 2011 – Pinewoods Panorama GC207E0 – cache #1148
This cache was no problem at all to me, I knew it was 10 feet away from the path opposite the information board… and the only things in the vicinity were a couple of large bushes, so the cache had to be round them. Assuming that the cache would be hidden at the roots I was looking for a way in between the branches and as I had my hat on I looked up to see whether there were any branches that would knock my hat off and nearly hit myself in the eye with the cache

30th May 2011 – Cache in a flash GC2EYFA – cache #1149
Perhaps the easiest cache find of the day, the clue said ‘behind the plaque’ and there’s only on plaque so the cache was easily found

30th May 2011 – The Lost Cache GC2C312 – cache #1150
And so we get to the anniversary cache. A 5/5 puzzle cache. It wasn’t too hard to work out the key to the puzzle, but this then just led me to more puzzles to get 4 coordinates in the middle of which was the cache. Once I had the four points I tried to find a mathematical solution to where the centrepoint and thus the cache was, but although there must be one I couldn’t find it on the internet and so had to resort to drawing approximate lines btween the points on Memorymap (approximate as the scale of the map to get points 10 miles apart on the same screen did not lead to any great accuracy !)

Fortunately there is a very accurate description of where the cache is and a spolier picture, so even from the rough position I had worked out it was easy enough to work out which path I needed to be on. So it was just a case of trudging a mile and threequarters along the track until I got to somewhere that looked like the spoiler picture then using the precise clue finding the cache… and then after one panicky moment when I couldn’t spot the cache and thought I might have got it all wrong I pushed back some vegetation and turned up the cache and basked for a minute in the warm glow of finding my 1,150th cache, a 5/5 cache to celebrate my two years of caching….

Then it was a one and three quarter mile trudge back along the track to where I’d left my car