Geocaching is great fun, and I enjoy going out and meeting other geocachers, but after 4.5 years to make caching trips worthwhile I have to drive a long way from home to start with, which is putting a dampener on my enjoyment. So I have been looking around at something else to do.
I tried Munzees but that was so terribly uninspiring due to it’s repetitive nature (walk to next lamp/sign post. scan sticker… repeat) that it wasn’t the right thing for me, even though there are a whole load of munzees local to me – well there are a whole load of lamp posts and sign posts !
So I wanted something interesting and something near home… the answer came easily. I was doing some research into the Trig Points on Geocache GC45CC – Ye Ole Survey Monuments and found that there were 6,800 pillars and a further 7,000 odd other survey points used for either triangulation or height leveling…. and then there are the innumerable further survey ‘cut marks’ some of which are listed on various websites and many of which are not, only being listed on old maps. Far too many points to visit and catalogue, so I have to narrow it down to my local area.. ,and thus Project 297 was born… I live in the middle (roughly) of OS Explorer Sheet 297 Lower Wharfedale & the Washburn Valley (the corners are 12.3, 10, 10.1 & 12.5 miles away from me, so nowhere is more than 20 mins drive from home.
There are 27 Trig Point Pillars on 297 – although some of them no longer exist… also there are about a further 60 Ordnance Survey primary / secondary bench marks, mainly flush brackets along the Skipton to Wetherby levelling line which runs through Ilkley and Otley – finally there are hundreds of cut marks, far too many to search for over the whole map area so I will concentrate on the ones in the area I can see from the windows of my house – all Otley and a bit more.
The plan is to walk and cycle locally to visit and record these survey locations, there is searching to do to find them, and research both on line and elsewhere to do to find the cut marks… might even have to buy an old map or two… beats spending a fiver on petrol to increase my cache numbers by a couple of magnetic micros stuck on sign posts.