Saturday afternoon after the wettest week in April since records began 140 years ago… and I decided that I would do better walking on tracks and lanes rather than over the fields, so I chose to go to Green Hammerton where there were several caches and from the maps and Google satellite seemed to be a minimum of walking over fields. There is a cache walk there, but it appears to be a shorter walk that has been lengthened because I did it in the obvious route from cache to cache, but it certainly wasn’t the order the caches are set out in !
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no1 GC39GDX – cache #1648
It all started off so well too, I parked up in the village and walked along the lane to find this cache hidden on the verge at the side of the road
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no2 GC39GE4 – cache #1649
And then I carried on down the lane then onto a farm track, a nice dry farm track to a public footpath that headed over a stream and into a field, the cache being hidden under the bridge
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no7 GC3A27N – cache #1650
From no2 it was then a walk around the edge of the field firm underfoot but after the rain in the morning the grass was wet so the bottom of my trousers got a little bit wet… then I got to a gateway which was a bit muddy, but passable and then to get to no7 I had to walk across a boggy field, but the grass was short so it was okay.
Unfortunately the cache was not… well it might have been okay if I’d found it, but where it was was a) just a large puddle in the middle of thick mud, and b) in the hedge at the end of the puddle were the cache log sheets (as the picture shows) so I didn’t bother looking too hard for the cache container
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no 6 GC3A27D – cache #1651
And there it got worse… the next cache was across a field. A field that was basically just a puddle and it got too deep for my boots so I ended up paddling and getting my feet soaked inside my boots which made the rest of the walk cold and uncomfortable. The cache when I got there was in a hollow in a tree about 2 ft off the ground so was at least dry !
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no5 GC3A273 – cache #1652
A well defined footpath across a field (well the path had been planted and then weedkiller used to kill the crop so the path was well defined !) which was okay until there was a dip in the ground and the field was waterlogged… rather than wade through the water I bashed my way through the crops… I’m not going to be the farmers favourite person for doing that.
This cache had fooled a few people and some had failed to find it at all… but why would there be a sawn piece of thick branch in this field ? oh, to hide a cache of course !
28th April 2012 – button it GC3E414C – cache #1653
The route from Number 5 led straight across the field to a marked track. There was so path across the crops so it was more trudging through the vegetation getting my feet and trousers even wetter… at least when I got to the track there was short grass and firm ground to walk on.
This particular cache was a puzzle cache I had solved easily with the aid of google ! and was in the fence at the side the track
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk helensfield GC3A0EQ – cache #1654
Back out onto tarmac at last !, even if only for a short time. This cache took me a while to find, mainly because the description and hint was giving nothing away, not evem the cache type and so I was reduced to poking around the fence bottom in the brambles, nettles and bags of dog pooh to find the cache, which eventually I spotted on the gate post
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no 3 GC39GEC – cache #1655
This cache was up a little track off the road, which for a change was quite firm and not muddy… the cache obvious from it’s camouflage in the roots of a tree
28th April 2012 – G/H Walk no 4 GC39GFH – cache #1656
After the last cache I was presented with a choice, whether to retrace my steps back out to the road, or to proceed across an obviously muddy field for 40 yards until I got to a track that would lead to the cache… I opted to try the mud, which to be fair wasn’t too hard to navigate across. The problem then was that the track was more of a bog than a track and in a couple of places I was in serious danger of sinking knee deep – but it was too late to go back so I persevered and eventually got back out to the road and to the cache – which had an obvious cachers trail to it and was an easy find
28th April 2012 – Bernards Box GC3DYXZ – cache #1657
When I had got back into the village I still had a couple of caches left to go for. This one took me a while to find as there was poor GPS coverage under the trees so I had to check all along the hedge bottom at one side then force my way through the hedge to check all the way along the other side… When I found it and opened the box the cache was full of water… so I couldn’t sign the log
28th April 2012 – G/H drive by GC3DGK2 – cache #1658
This calls itself a Drive By but there isn’t really anywhere sensible to park nearby… so I walked the 200 metres down from the village to the cache… which took me a long time to find event though it was right under my nose (it was a lot lower down than I was expecting !)
28th April 2012 – Cross Roads GC3DGHY – cache #1659
On the way home I stopped off for this drive by cache, which a few people had reported was difficult to find and also was a well constructed hide… so when I saw a length of tree branch with two cut ends and of a species that didn’t match the trees nearby I thought that must be the cache…
28th April 2012 – DON’T LOSE COUNT GCZCFB – cache #1660
Due to a barbed wire fence enclosure I had been unable to get to this cache in March, but since then the cache hider had made it accessible from both sides of the fence… So as I was passing and it’s only a hundred yards from the road I decided to stop off and go and grab it.
