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.