Having been a bit under the weather with a cold for the previous few days I didn’t really fancy going for a walk on Saturday afternoon, so I thought I’d take a drive instead.
Drive-by caches on a Saturday afternoon can sometimes be problematical as there is a lot of sightseeing traffic filling up the country roads so I thought I would do a series called Service With A Smile which is situated on the A6055 – a road that is really the Southbound Carriageway of the A1, at least it was until they built the new A1M alongside. My reasoning was that as the road went from nowhere to nowhere and as there was a much faster road next to it the road would be nice and quiet for pottering along stopping regularly for caches

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 1 GC444P1 – cache #2806
It didn’t start of that way with Cache Number 1 – a white van was parked next to the cache while the two occupants stretched their legs and made a phone call or two… I pulled off the road a couple of hundred yards away and waited for a few minutes till they had finished their break and driven off before I went down to get the cache.

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS – 2 GC444P6 – cache #2807
The co-ordinates seemed to be leading me to the saplings planted on the verge, but I didn’t think they could possibly fit in with the hint so I decided to look nearer the hedge… and quickly spotted something that looked suspiciously like cacheouflage

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 3 GC444PA – cache #2808
Plenty of places to hide the cache here, so it took a few minutes searching before I picked out the cache.

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 4 GC444PB – cache #2809
A quick find, with the clue it was easy to work out which potential hide the cache was at.

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 5 GC444PR – cache #2810
This one rook me the longest to find of any on the route… and even then my search was made easier as I wasn’t the first cacher on the day to look for it, so all potential hint matching places had had the grass trampled down around them. But I couldn’t find it… In the end I went back to the car and got out my walking pole so I could poke around in places where it wasn’t easy to reach by hand, and turned up the cache. (hadn’t been signed by the other cachers that day so they obviously hadn’t got a walking pole with them !)

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 6 GC444Q6 – cache #2811
A straightforward find once I had worked out the correct place to stop, all the road drains had me confused as to which notch in the kerb was the gateway I should be stopping at !

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 7 GC444QP – cache #2812
As usual when there are two potential places to look I will always pick the wrong one first

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 8 GC444QY – cache #2813
I was glad that I wasn’t looking for one of those fake stone key holders here… The entire gateway was laid with stones like railway ballast, so many stones here that it would have been like finding a needle in a haystack ! Fortunately the hint led me to a much easier find

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 9 GC444R8 – cache #2814
If you walk down past the cache here you cross the bridge that took the original road over the stream to get to the stone and plaque commemorating the opening of the new A1. Three versions of the Great North Road running parallel to each other… and I know which bridge looks the best !

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 10 GC444RJ – cache #2815
This was the furthest walk I had to do on the series as I couldn’t find a sensible place to stop by the cache – though I guess that is because the cache has had to be moved from it’s original position

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 11 GC444RQ – cache #2816
I spotted the cache quite quickly, but getting my hands on it was looking problematical, so I again reverted to my walking pole to fish the cache out with… Amazing how useful a walking pole is for drive-by caching !

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 12 GC444T3 – cache #2817
I do wonder what the drivers going round the roundabout thought I was doing poking about in the crash barrier

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 13 GC444TA – cache #2818
No problems working out where this cache was hidden as it was exactly the same as the last one

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 14 GC444TJ – cache #2819
Cracked my head on the fence here while looking for the cache, I was trying to look behind the fence posts and ‘forgot’ the top rail of the high fence (well it was out of sight, out of mind !)
While hopping around holding my head I spotted the cache – totally not what I was expecting

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 15 GC444TQ – cache #2820
Well I found the cache… at least I found what was left of the cache… the photograph shows clearly what happens when cache meets ride on mower…

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 16 GC444TV – cache #2821
Having already found three or four caches hidden in similar place there was no problem finding this one

14th September 2013 – Service with a Smile – SWS 17 GC444V0 – cache #2822
The last cache of the series, and pretty obvious where the cache is going to be hidden… by the biggest object in the vicinity !
It took me exactly 90 minutes to go from cache#1 to cache#17, and I found it very enjoyable to do a drive-by series on a road that’s not too busy and caches with sensible places to park.

14th September 2013 – Close to Roughly Corner GC3W9CG – cache #2823
Just the other side of the A1 at the end of the SWS series is this cache… When I got to the coordinates I wasn’t too excited at the thoughts of having to poke about in the nettles but then I found the cache in the first place I looked

14th September 2013 – Close to the End of the Road GC2B96K – cache #2824
This one took longer to find than it should as there aren’t that many places to look in at the coordinates

14th September 2013 – Close to Ash GC2BAQA – cache #2825
Glad this was a quick find as there were a lot of tractors passing along the road and I didn’t want one of them to stop and a farmer to ask me what I was doing poking around in his field… the GZ is obviously a place often used for fly tipping and I didn’t want accusing of that

14th September 2013 – Close to a Large Oak GC2BC6B – cache #2826
Ooo-Err Missus, that’s a biggun ! Oak Tree that is !
As with other finders it took me a couple of circumnavigations before I spotted the blighter

14th September 2013 – UNDER STARTERS ORDERS GC4JYNW – cache #2827
What better way of finishing off an afternoon of drive-by caches than spending the evening discussing tupperware hunting with like minded folk – and this was a great event at which to do that.
With cachers from over the border in Scotland and from over the other border in Wigan I felt positively local only having a 40 miles drive back home !