Three out of the last four years I have made an entry that starts “I was travelling down to Brean Sands near Weston Super Mare for the weekend, so I thought I’d do a few drive by caches, it’s a 250 mile drive, 230 of that should be on Motorways so it should have been about a four hour drive… it took me”… well this year my first stop was picking up Angel78 in Tamworth and then we went geocaching so the four hour drive took me 9 hours.
Angel78 has decided that her ‘thing’ is going to be Church Micros – a little odd as there are very few CM’s in the Midlands and she hadn’t found any when she made her decision, but there are so many worthless caches these days that it’s good to have some sort of speciality to go for, so many of the caches we did over the weekend were Church Micros. Continue reading →

A new series of 3 caches and a bonus had been recently put out in Bramhope 4 miles from home which I thought I would have a go at.
First off I didn’t look for GC5074Q Tudor Queens – Mary I – I made a decision soon after I started caching that I wouldn’t be happy with someone poking about the garden hedge / fence / wall at the bottom of my garden for a cache so it was only right that I didn’t going to look for caches in other peoples garden wall / fence / hedge.
So this one got put on my ignore list… When I got home from reading other peoples logs I realised that the bonus cache was going to be on the same path as the three normal caches and that even though I hadn’t got the full numbers to work out the co-ordinates I do know where it is going to be hidden… I’ll go and get it one day Continue reading →

Geocaching.com had put out a message that they wanted people who were expert hiders of caches to hold ‘Maker Madness’ events to pass on their insight in hiding caches on to others. Now I don’t hide caches but my friend Ian – PrinterFixerMan does and he decided to hold one of these events… so I decided to show some support and go along.  On my way to the event I thought I would go and have a walk round a cache series near where he lives… basically a trial to see how I was recovering from the debilitating trapped nerve in my back – I had only found 8 caches previously in 2014 and none of them more than 10 yards from Tarmac ! So a steady 4 mile walk along reasonable footpaths would be a suitable next step. Continue reading →

As I have said on many occasions previously I’m not interested in FTF’s so I don’t bother dashing out for new caches, and when 2 caches popped up down in the town I didn’t pan on going to find them, I thought I’d just leave them until next time I was down there… but 15 minutes later another one appeared just 400 yds from my front door so I thought it would be rude not to go and find it… Continue reading →

At the end of January I suffered from a trapped nerve in my back, not sciatica like in 2011 but a different nerve cluster. I guess it is because I spent January sat down hiding indoors instead of doing any exercise but anyway there was a week where I could hardly move at all (coudln’t even roll over or get out of bed without a lot of effort and pain) and another week where I could hardly stand up let alone walk… So caching wise February was a complete write off – fortunate that I filled all the dates in on the calendar last year then !
My caching stats say my longest ‘slump’ was 81 days without a find from 17/11/2009 to 06/02/2010… This time my slump between finding caches really was from 14/12/2013 to 07/03/2014 – 83 days, but because I went to the pub once in that time it doesn’t appear as my longest slump Continue reading →

January 2014… the wettest January since wet weather began or something like that anyway. At least living on a hill we were spared the flooding that affected the entire South of the country (well 20yds either side of the Thames but as far as the media are concerned that is all that matters.
Anyway with my well known dislike of being out in the rain, and even worse dislike of caching in the mud the new caching year got off to a very slow start…

23rd January 2014 – 23.01.2014 A FEW DRINKS GC4WB3C – cache #3072
My first cache of the year… When the weather is cold, wet and windy (or indeed snowy as it was earlier today) I do prefer caches that are to be found inside a nice warm dry pub !
After chatting about winter tyres it was quite funny to be sliding around on the icy roads on the way home