Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I hope that everyone reading this had a very happy christmas and some enjoyable new years celebrations.

It was certainly busy for us, in the caching sense! Following on from the distinct lack of caching in the last blog just before christmas, since then we have done 42 caches.

Just after I published the last episode Wemnog and I decided to go out and do a relatively new series that was pretty local to us. By svk616g the caches were placed around the old Gedling Colliery site. I have to admit that I have never visited the site before and didn't really know what to expect. It is quite a place. Brilliant for dog walking and cycling. We didn't complete the series on the day and there are still more to do. The weather got the better of us, it was windy, very cold and then the snow started again. The dogs loved it though, as usual.



Dogs enjoying caching in the snow again

The first cache that we did in the series was http://coord.info/GC2KEVA a simple first one of the day. As I said, it was a good series and we will finish them off soon.
It was good to get back in to action again after the lull over the last few weeks.

Then we were off to Wales to spend new year at the Travelodge at St. Clears. We did a couple of nowt too special caches on the way down, including my 600th. I would have liked it to be something a bit more special, but you can't always have what you want.

Then the serious work of caching began. We were both amazed that there actually very few caches in the St. Clears, Saundersfoot and Tenby areas. In fact there are none in Tenby itself! We thought that there would be at least a couple of nano's around. The first one we did in the area was Birthday Boy by Mushroom Mike. http://coord.info/GC1TA3X In fact, over the next few days we got to know his caches pretty well as he seems to be the more prolific of the cachers in the area, thank goodness for him we say!

We did a few more in Saundersfoot, including Muggle Mayhem http://coord.info/GC270JG a very simple cache and dash within a sensory garden. I have a similar one in place here in Nottingham, again in a sensory garden.




Muggle Mayhem ~ Saundersfoot

 Then we went on to Manorbier, this had been the one that I had been planning to do for my 600th. This was one of my favourites of the weekend. Now there is something strange about this one.
I tried to contact the owner to compliment them on the cache, however if you try and email them through their GC profile you come up with some strange things, there is no way of contacting them, they haven't been active since 2005! yet their caches that are active keep going. In fact in this cache there was a new logbook. Most peculiar. As I said this was one of my favourites of the weekend, just choosing which hole should say it all, it almost made it in to a puzzle cache. If you are ever in the area, it is worth doing this one. http://coord.info/GC1BEJP Here are a couple of photos, of the outside and inside.


As the hint says
It's In There Somewhere!




13th Century Manorbier






















So yes, the cache was in one of those holes. glad we had a torch with us as it was quite dark in there, feeling around we came across a fair few spiders webs as well.

At least the few caches that we did were successfully found.

Then it was New Years Day and really time to get caching seriously. Having looked at some maps, we decided to do a few series that were around. Again these caches were mostly by Mushroom Mike, hat's off to him, he has put some serious effort in to his caches and locations.
Firstly though we did some more one off's including Green Castle Woods by Munch Bunch http://coord.info/GC251C1 We arrived at this cache at 9 minutes past 11.00am. We decided to wait for a couple of minutes as it was too irresistable, and stamped the log at 11.11 on the 1 1 11
So that was our first cache of 2011.


11 11 on 1 1 11!

Here is a pic of GZ.

Continuing on we did far too many caches to name individually, but there were certainly a few that received favourite points from me, including Litter Bug http://coord.info/GC1YTP1 a very simple drive by, but with a container that I hadn't seen before.

Litter Bug

The first in the series that we did was called Magic Roundabout http://coord.info/GC259YP most of the caches in these series took me back to my childhood with all the TV themed names. Another cache worth mentioning is this one, only for the fact that I loved the view from GZ http://coord.info/GC252RN

View from Leat 1

We did a whole load of these and then went on to find H2o http://coord.info/GC2624Z This one took a bit of searching for as the tree cover had the GPS all over the place, but once found we managed to retrieve the logbook, without the use of water, but it would have made it more fun.
We had one DNF http://coord.info/GC252RC but I think that was a combination of the cold beginning to get to us again, plus the fact that we were getting cache blind as we had done so many.
The next day we did more caching well only two in fact ~ including two more ingenious caches of Mushroom Mikes, one called Hook Line and Sinker, a variation on a theme, and the other that I am not going to mention here due to the fact that a replica will be making an appearence here in Nottinghamshire in the next few weeks and I know that I do get some local readers so don't want to give too much away.
The reason that we didn't do too much was because the weather was glorious, 3rd January, 2011 we actually spent the afternoon on the beach, we even had sandwiches and a coffee there is was so warm, some folk were even in shorts. Here is the pic to prove it.

So that was it, our New Year's caching adventure was over and it was time to head home. Wonder what the year ahead will bring. My aim is to reach 850 finds by the end of the year, maybe it will be more, maybe it will be less, I will have to wait and see.

EVENTS

There are already a couple of  camping events that I am planning on attending this year, the first one being Spring Madness 2011 http://coord.info/GC2G817 by old caching buddy StaffsGeo. This one is at the end of March, the weather should be warming up then, but we will be ok as we are taking the good old camper van.
The next is The Annual South Wales Geocaching Event, this one is being organised by Mushroom Mike and I am really looking forward to it. http://coord.info/GC2KBWH

May is going to be a busy month as towards the end of it we are attending A Chough-ing Good Weekend, this one is down in Cornwall http://coord.info/GC2HB9P So we will be doing a fair few miles this year.
Sorry to those folks reading who are in the GAGB mileage challenge http://gagb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=3715 good job it is only for fun!

I am planning on organising another camping event as well, somewhere in Derbyshire, I have got to visit a campsite over the weekend to have a look and see whether it is suitable or not.

That's it, sorry if I have bored you with such a long one. I will be able to get back in to the habit of blogging again on Mondays now. Until next time, have a good one.