A Tour Of Africa

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We have been quite busy caching since the last blog.

Beat The Devil

As mentioned in the previous blog we were struggling with the Devilishly Difficult cache by stormjak and MFB Tracker. http://coord.info/GC3FVZW  I am pleased to say that after numerous visits in all weathers we finally found this well crafted and crafty cache. We even got he shirts to prove it!

The prize

stormjak and MFB Tracker have kindly given these embroidered shirts out to the first few to find the cache. It saw us out in all weathers and, as with all caches, it's obvious when you have finally found it!

Africa

Looking at some circular walks to do to try and help with the fitness programme that I am on at the moment I came across a great series in Yorkshire that sounded fun to do. Spud's African Series http://coord.info/GC2X8PD takes in various terrains and gives you a good walk through woodland, hills and a little bit of road.

I decided to offer this out as a GeM (Geocaching Midlands) group walk. Sadly I did this at rather short notice so a lot of people couldn't join us. It ended up with just four of us, Wemnog, stormjak, MFB Tracker and myself, plus two muggle family members setting off on Saturday morning to attempt the series.

  We also had 8 out of a possible 9 Border Collies with us. The weather forecast for the day was good so after all the recent rain it seemed like the perfect opportunity to go and do this series. #1 in the series was supposed to be the most difficult one to do so with the CO's number in my phone we set off. Another caching team were just ahead of us so we let them grab another cache that wasn't in the series and set off ahead of them.  We arrived at GZ and thankfully found the first cache really easily. This put us in a good frame of min for finding the rest. During the course of the day we found all the caches really easily. We encountered all sorts of weather though and did get quite wet during periods of the day. I would recommend this series to anyone who is in the area, either living locally or visiting the area on holiday. Although a lot of the containers are the same there are a few different ones to break up the series. Whilst doing it there are a few more that you can divert to without going too far out of your way.                                                                                                                                 

This included the first guide stoop cache that I have done outside of Derbyshire. Thurstonland Guide Stoop http://coord.info/GC1ZVXW  gave us a chance to catch our breathe before continuing with the series.

Rest Stop

As the series continued the rain became heavier but it didn't stop us from enjoying the day. We knew that at the end of the walk we were going to meet the CO in the pub. It wasn't only us humans who enjoyed the series though, the dogs had a whale of a time, paddling in the streams and getting muddied up to buggery.

Woodland Stream



The end of the series culminated in a puzzle to solve having gathered clues from every container in the main series. This gave us a chance to sit down in the pub by the blazing log fire whilst we steamed and worked out the answers. Then it was off home to dry out completely and have a good soak in the bath.

 To date, that is the most caches Wemnog and I have found in a day. No doubt we will beat that amount at some time, but we aren't racing to do so.

  



Another beautiful view

 

Golden Favourites

Sometimes, for one reason or another, whether it is because of how devious it is, or how well constructed a cache is, it seems to beg for something more than just your run of the mill favourite point. For that reason I have devised a Golden Favourite award that members of GeM can give out to caches that feel are deserving. Basically, they just add it as a photograph to the cache log when they feel it should have one. I don't know if it will catch on or not, but a couple of recent caches that I have done, namely Devilishly Difficult (as previously mentioned in this blog) and A Pit Extreme 1 http://coord.info/GC39AZ0 definately deserved this award.

I don't expect to give many of these out, but hopefully they will catch on and people will hand them out.                                                             

Signature Items

A while ago I heard about a cachers signature item being sold for a fair amount of money on Ebay. I couldn't understand this so decided to look further in to it. This turned out to be the story of long time cachers Tim & June who started putting teddy bears in to caches as their signature item when they found their 100th cache. These bears became legendary in the caching world when it was much smaller, back in the realms of time, and people would go out of their way to find one to add to their collection. Six different marks of bear were placed over the years and it is one of these early bears that sold on Ebay to raise money for charity. I won't go in to too much more detail here, but let you read the story of T & J Bears for yourself by following this link. http://www.geocaching-bears.co.uk/index.html

Finally

As I sit typing this edition of the blog I am looking out on the garden. It is a fine sunny day, with washing blowing on the line, the hens pecking in their pen and the dogs playing on the lawn. However, the forecast is not so good for the next few days and with a bank holiday coming up a week today we can only guess at what it will be like then. Whatever the weather, I hope that you get out and get some decent caching done, whether urban or countryside, enjoy yourselves and keep safe.

Happy caching.
 

Tangling With The Devil!

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47 caches on since the last blog. With the long weekend of Easter we were lucky enough to have some time to spend on caching.

Not wanting to travel too far because of the usual bank holiday busy roads and also the ridiculous amount that diesel is costing at the moment, plus the fact that we haven't got any of our own bio diesel ready we were pleased on Good Friday when a new series was published that was only a couple of miles from home.

The Ron's Round (RR) series by GOGMT and R ambler took us on a two and a half mile walk which took in walking through peoples gardens (yes it was allowed) and an airfield. Again, the airfield had a public footpath so again totally within Groundspeak rules. http://coord.info/GC3G43W  The series had a nice varied collection of containers and a couple of hides that took a little bit of working out, mainly the first and the tenth.

Not quite ready for takeoff

Easter Sunday saw a tease come out on our local Facebook book page GeM https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/groups/137568269677358/ asking who was going to be up early on Easter Monday ready to go caching. With no more than that from our local pair NottsPenny and her husband mono78v it was left to us to set the alarm and wait.

Sure enough the first notification came through at 7.00am in the morning. The next trickled through at 7.30am and then 8.00am. We knew that with previous caches set by these two that we were in for a fun time. Armed with GPS, dogs and smart phones we set off for the first in the series. The CS Code series, here's a link to number one http://coord.info/GC3GDZ7 was again nice and local to us, in fact it tied in nicely with the RR series and both could actually be done at the same time taking in a figure of 8.

Arriving at GZ we saw a couple of familiar faces searching for the first cache, fly2live2fly pair Barbara and Steve were already well ahead in searching for the first. As we joined the search we realised that we may be in for a tough time. After some while they decided to leave us searching for it whilst they headed off for number 2.

Wemnog with fly2live2fly

A little while later we were chuffed to find the container and once we had signed the logbook as FTF's we headed off to number 2. We were again surprised to find that Barbara and Steve were still at GZ not having much luck. Between four of us searching and the coords pointing all units to one place we still couldn't find the container. By this time the phones had already pinged up the next couple in the series. With heavy hearts we resorted to a PAF to the owners and armed with the information needed we still took some time to locate this difficult one.

I was pleased to note however that it wasn't just us who had difficulty with this one and cachers throughout the day and subsequent few days also struggled. So much so that Penny has now upped the difficulty rating on it.

At this point it seemed reasonable for the four of us to team up to continue the series. Our success rate continued and we got 11 out of the 12 FTF's on them. Why not 12? We met up with Eviepops who had seen our log on number 1 and decided to try and nab a few FTF's by doing some of the series from the opposite direction.

The notifications popped up every half hour and by the time we had got to number 9 we were up to date and hanging around for the next one to come through. By the time we got to number 11 the rain had started but it wasn't going to put any of us off. Number 11 in this series is by far the most challenging and certainly had 3 of us laughing whilst poor old Keith had the task of retrieving the container. I didn't know that anyone could get quite that intimate with a tree!

Armed with all the clues needed for the bonus cache it was time to retreat to work things out. Now here was a twist. Without giving anything away I will say that we were unable to complete the bonus without some additional research and had to abandon the search until later in the day. Sadly by the time we had the coordinates worked out Barbara and Steve weren't able to join us to go and retrieve it. So one shiny new logbook later and an FTF prize of a new TB we were really pleased with our day out.
One week later and the four of us are still the only ones to find the final, although the rest of the series has been found by quite a few people.

Our final series came a couple of days ago, a bit further afield this time we decided to attempt The Bonhams SC series, a nice simple set of 16 caches that only took a couple of hours to complete. We had mixed weather but a very pleasant walk. The views were good as well. Rape is just beginning to flower in the fields adding some colour to our walk as well.

The dogs have certainly been enjoying the extra walking that we have been doing and, I think that the final walk has given me the next collie TB to boot.

The next collie TB?

Tor gets the log!

One cache that has been getting all the locals going over the last couple of weeks is Devilishly Difficult ? by our friends stormjak and MFB Tracker. This cache isn't for the faint hearted and has had numerous visits from lots of the local dignitaries searching in vain for it. In fact it took an extra clue before it was finally found. http://coord.info/GC3FVZW  I am embarrassed to admit that we have now visited three times and are still no further on with finding it, and yes, we do know what we are looking for! At the time of writing this blog it has only four finds on it with an amazing 16 DNF's. It is certainly driving people around here potty.

Speaking of stormjak and MFB, we joined forces with them to put a new cache out at the beginning of April. 'Ouse Dyke Is It? is a fun cache for people to do with a D rating of 2.5 but a T rating of 5. We put it out under the caching name StormtracarunoG. So far it has had 6 visits and 5 favourites on it. We are really pleased with this one and all of us look forward to reading the logs for it. http://coord.info/GC3FZ4Z 

That's it for now. We are planning on doing another local series this morning, just to start the week off nicely before we have to think about doing some work. Have a good caching time everyone, until next time.

A Little Caching

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Since the last blog there has been a little bit of caching by us. We have been busy again reposessing lots of vehicles. However, finding time to cache while we have been in different areas has proved extremely tricky. You click on the phone, find that there is a cache nearby and then something happens and you don't get a chance to go for it. Very frustrating!


One nice new series that we managed to do though was local cacher Benpob's new B Movie series http://coord.info/GC3F699 around the local Netherfield Lagoons. It was one of those hot summer days (in the spring) and was also the new geopups first caching and walking outing.

Tor In The Lead

I have put a few new caches out as well over the last few weeks since the last blog. La Gazza Ladra http://coord.info/GC3EV3K  Hole In One http://coord.info/GC3FKWQ and Lord Webber http://coord.info/GC3FEDG


I can't say too much at the moment but Keith and I are involved in a team cache that should be published in the next couple of days. Four of us are involved and we went and placed it yesterday. More of that next time.


The new TB's arrived the other day and I am pleased with the way that they have turned out. The good thing about these is that they are cheaper than any of the geocoins that I had for sale and people are more likely to buy them. Geocoin sales certainly went downhill last year which is the reason why I closed the Ebay shop.

Border Collie Version 3

Photos of the new tags are below. If you do fancy buying them contact me directly, daryl@jacaru.co.uk and we can arrange to get them to you.


We have just been saying how good caching has been in the Nottingham area over the last few months. With some challenging caches out there, Pit Extremes, the stormjak and MFB Tracker caches, as well as great new series like the Golf Series by Spire67 + many more. Nottingham is in a really good place at the moment with it's caches and there is something for every taste. So just a quick big up for all our local cachers.

Titanic 100th Anniversary

Kinder Trespass Anniversary

We held another successful breakfast event yesterday which was really well attended. This was the fourth brekkie event and judging from the popularity of them I am sure that we will be holding another one at some point soon.
I did worry that the same venue would become a bit staid for people. However, the fact that the pub is so laid back, the food cheap and the staff bend over backwards to help, I think it will be the place to stick with. It is also very central for people. This time we had visitors from the North West as well as Tracey and Pete from the Podcache show to talk to people.


Well, that's it for now. Easter is coming, with the forecast of snow. However I hope that it doesn't stop you getting out and about and finding a load of caches over the bank holiday weekend.


Until next time, happy caching.