Sunday afternoon, and I’d looked at the Geocaching map and decided that there was a big chunk of unfound caches over in Bingley that really needed changing into the smiley faces that indicate a found cache.
So I headed over to Bingley to sort them out – another advantage of doing Bingley on a Sunday is that the car parking is free !
19th June 2011 – Don’t jump the fence! GC2P2HQ – cache #1201
I started off by parking in the train station car park and heading over the road into Myrtle Park. It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon and I was expecting the park to be quite busy (the only time I have been there before is for the concerts that Bradford Council put on there where there are a couple of thousand people in the park) but the park was relatively empty, except for a couple of teenagers sitting on the river bank at the end of the fence along by the weir… of course that’s the bit of fence that this cache is hidden on.
However the hint for this cache is very specific about exactly where the cache is, so there was no messing about
19th June 2011 – Beckfoot Oak GC15ZN6 – cache #1202
This cache had been trashed ! it had been in the roots of a tree covered by a stone, but the box had been broken and the contents scattered a few weeks earlier, so the next cacher along had gathered the bits up and put them in a plastic bag back under the stone… But this too had been trashed, and I even managed to get a photograph of the cache trasher !
The cache has now been archived
19th June 2011 – Poor man’s seat.. GC2P803 – cache #1203
Walking along the path in the wood you come across this tree with a strange root shape… presumably once upon a time there was a large stone here that the roots went over, but now it’s just a good place to sit and sign the log
19th June 2011 – Flintstones Old House… GC2QHQ4 – cache #1204
Tree, roots, stone… you get the picture
19th June 2011 – Flintstones House! GC2PAVC – cache #1205
There’s a large area of stones at one end of the park (dumped by the ice age glacier I expect, and the cache is hidden in them. Fortunately the co-ordinates were spot on so it was an easy find
19th June 2011 – Hoops in the Park GC2NJHB – cache #1206
This took longer to find than it should, it’s on the outside of a basketball court (hence the name) and the description of the cache tells you exactly where to stand to find it… and it still took me about 10 minutes to locate it !
19th June 2011 – I’ve Got Your Number! (Bingley Exchange) GC2NW5A – cache #1207
Out of the park and down the road to the telephone exchange – which is overlooked by a row of terraced houses the other side of the street.
The cache is a magnetic keyholder hidden in the window louvres, I decided to just face away from the houses and not look at them so anyone who was watching would see I was doing something, but not know what it was as I was hiding the cache with my body, and not looking round I couldn’t make eye contact so couldn’t appear to have a suspicious look on my face !
19th June 2011 – Towpath Walk GC14KGJ – cache #1208
I’d failed to find this cache on a previous attempt because of a fisherman sat right next to it, this time I just had to wait for some cyclists to go by
19th June 2011 – The Fifth ~ Top Lock GC2MXRT – cache #1209
Bingley 5 rise locks are the steepest multiple locks in the country, with the tallest lock gates in the country and boats navigating require the services of the lock keeper to go up and down as the potential for getting it wrong could be catastrophic – so the locks are a bit of a tourist attraction and loads of people watch boats go up and down, which at times would make this a difficult cache to find. Fortunately late on Sunday afternoon there was nobody much but me about and I soon found the cache hidden behind some rocks just off the towpath
19th June 2011 – 4 RISE SURPRISE GC2MWEX – cache #1210
The surprise is that there isn’t a four rise lock. There is the five rise and the three rise, and this cache is right in the middle between them. Hidden in the crutch of a tree, it’s about 6ft off the ground but I found it easy enough to spot
19th June 2011 – The Bingley Winkle GCP992 – cache #1211
At the Bingley Three rise lock there is a footpath into the edge of the town that was cut by the building of the bypass in the 1990’s So they had to build a footbridge, and it is on this footbridge that the cache is hidden. Fortunately an easy find as a previous logger explained that it was down at floor level
19th June 2011 – Britannia Bridge Bingley GC2NTX5 – cache #1212
Another ‘new’ footbridge across the bypass, and a cache hint that said exactly where the cache was so an easy find
19th June 2011 – SideTracked Bingley Railway Station GC2NYGW – cache #1213
This cache would have been difficult without the hint being as prescriptive as it is, the GPS was sending me half way down the car park, whereas the hint said that the cache was hidden on the armco support at the top end of the car park – where indeed it was to be found
19th June 2011 – PRINCE OF WALES GC2QPNW – cache #1214
On my way home, I stopped at another of Bingley’s parks – The Prince of Wales Park – to pick up a few more caches. This first one is hidden in a tree by the gate
19th June 2011 – BERTIE’S PARK 1 GC1P95K – cache #1215
This is a little series of three caches where you need to find one and two for the co-ordinates to the final. This first one was a bit difficult to find as it is about 100ft off the path in the middle of the trees with no apparent way to get to it, until I walked a bit further up the path and came across a small trail leading off in approximately the right direction, which did eventually get me to the cache
19th June 2011 – BERTIE’S PARK 2 GC1P96K – cache #1216
The second cache was also difficult to find as it was off the path, there probably was an easy way to get to it until someone had dumped a load of tree / hedge clippings at the side of the path which meant to get to the cache I had to force my way through some fairly thick undergrowth, a lot of which was prickly holly
19th June 2011 – BERTIE’S BONUS GC1P94J – cache #1217
Once I had the co-ordinates it was easy to find the bonus cache, I didn’t understand the hint (apparently it refers to a name carved in the tree, which I think must be hidden by new growth) but the coordinates were correct and I could see the cache camouflage material without any bother
19th June 2011 – Ye Ole Survey Monuments GC45CC – cache #1218
Another of the trig points that is covered by this cache number This time I logged YSM371, Baildon Hill.
It’s about half a kilometre from the road, last time I was up here was to find the nearby “A story for which the world is not yet prepared” cache GC16Y3G last August
