Tebbit Caching, Signature Items, Maintenance & The Blog TB

767
Tebbit Caching

As you can see from the numbers above, we have found another 20 caches in the last week. A big improvement over the last few weeks.

This has been down to a couple of factors:~

work is quiet at the moment, and more importantly

I need to lose some weight!!!

So I decided that we should do some Tebbit caching. This isn't an official geocaching term, one that I have made up, literally it just means getting on our bikes!

For any younger readers Norman Tebbit was an 80's MP famously known for telling the jobless to get on their bikes and find work.

Having once again used the services of http://www.geocachetrails.com/ to find some bike friendly circular routes we decided on doing the fairly new CCP series around Cotgrave Country Park by cacher Colonial Sin. This was a nice series of 6 caches + bonus. When the notification of a CCP series first pinged on my emails I was a little confused, and wondered what was going on. Simply put this was because I have my own CCP series out ~ Colwick Country Park.

The Calverton series starts with CCP 1 Last Post http://coord.info/GC2W9JQ Bikes loaded, dogs loaded and off we went. This was a really enjoyable series that took us to a country park that we didn't know. The second cache in the series brought us to a familiar type of hide, I've got a couple of this type out myself............



Wonder Where The Cache is!

To get the bonus cache coordinates we had to collect information from each of the caches. I'm not going to give the game away as to the bonus cache but all I will say is that although I knew this type existed, I hadn't actually found one before. It took us both a few minutes to locate it, even with spot on coords. It was a really enjoyable afternoon out.

Tebbit Caching


Following the closure of the Nottinghamshire Collieries, Nottinghamshire County Council and the Forestry Commission entered into a partnership with British Coal to restore 8 former colliery sites.

Cotgrave is one such park.


 This series was put out by local cacher ken.brown66 who should be congratulated on such an enjoyable and varied series. He has another series out which is also on our list to do before summer ends.

Part of the circular route took us to the nearby canal where we had to find a cache. This cache took us the most time to find, it shouldn't have done as it was really easy (there again isn't it always once you have found it)


Whilst looking for this one I looked up to see a familiar face approaching us. It was one of our caching friends RoPeHe. We spent a pleasant few minutes nattering away, discovering trackables that he had on him, and he looking at the trackables we were hoping to move on. RoPeHe (Rod) has been caching a lot longer than we have and has 3780 finds under his belt!

RoPeHe

We have a long way to go before we have found that many.
Once home from this series we had three very tired dogs and had a quiet evening without them asking to go out for a walk.


2 out of 3 tired dogs


A couple of days later we decided to do another circuit by bike. This time we did a series that had been on our list of to do's for a long time. This lovely circular was a little more challenging on bikes, and we did do part of it by walking. Just under 6 miles in total we did this series on another lovely sunny day. In fact we set off at 8.30am to do it, realising that it was going to be very hot later in the day. The first in the series was called Chapel Lane (Epp #1) http://coord.info/GC19WR7

This series took us around some lovely countryside and past some very nice (expensive) properties, alongside wheat fields, 


View from 2nd cache GC19WR9

  Over some lovely wooden bridges,

Another log signed

and alongside fields laced with poppies




Wemnog beside the poppies



A lovely series which we both enjoyed doing

Signature Items

So do you have a signature item that you leave in caches when you have found them? We do, in fact over the last couple of years we have had a few. We started with military buttons which we bought locally at a place called Anchor Supplies. This is a brilliant place, an Aladdin's Cave in fact. So much so that our friend and fellow cacher Northking has a cache placed nearby, guess what it is called........Aladdins Cave http://coord.info/GC20EBP If you go to find this cache you may just bump in to some other cachers around including the Two Anchors and Charlie Chuckles.

We have also used calling cards in the past which we made ourselves, these also proved popular when we made them for others and we did for a while sell them on Ebay. However, more and more people are complaining about calling cards  being left in their caches as they go soggy if a cache is prone to dampness. Since then we have used marbles (always an old favourite with cachers) trolley coins and lately keyrings with this blog address on.

I must admit, I like finding trolley coins in caches and tend to pick them up when I find one. I am considering having some made, again with this blog address on, that's a future plan for now though.

I have heard of all sorts of signature items that people have found, from pieces made from Fimo to wooden discs with a cachers name on. Let me know what your favourite signature pieces are, either found or ones that you leave in the comments section at the end of this blog.

Maintenance

It was time once more to get on our bikes yesterday and do some maintenance. Nothing frustrates me more than having caches out that I know need some TLC and not having time to sort them out quickly.
The same goes for caches that I find where maintenance logs have been reported from months back yet nothing has been done about them. If people put caches out I wish that they would take the responsibility of looking after them.

I had a couple of my CCP series that needed new logbooks, Silver Birch http://coord.info/GC22FKX and Parachute Tree http://coord.info/GC22FJJ One cache Stuart Reilly's Benches http://coord.info/GC22EE5 had been muggled and needed replacing.

Then it was on to another site to replace Meg & Rum's Circular # 3 http://coord.info/GC1YEEB which had also done a disappearing act and finally Meg & Rum's Circular ~ The Final http://coord.info/GC1YRVW which needed a new logbook.

The Blog TB

The blog TB is ready to go, dipped in and out of The TARDIS http://coord.info/GC1WGEQ I will be moving it on soon. If you want to follow the progress of the geocaching TB you can do so by searching for TB3ZM9G

Finally

I have just done pocket queries for this week. It still amazes me just how many caches that there are locally. I did a query for 1000 traditional caches over a 25 mile radius from my home coords. When the results came in that 1000 caches only took me a few miles away. We could certainly be kept busy doing nothing but caching over the next few years.

This is my caching chronology up to today as copied from the stats page on GC.com


You've found 767 caches (767 distinct) since your first cache find on 01/09/2009.


You find the most caches in January and usually on Saturday.


Find Rate 0.8726 caches/day


Longest Streak 9 consecutive days with finds from 01/11/2011 to 01/19/2011


Longest Slump 44 consecutive days without a find from 09/16/2010 to 10/30/2010


Best Day 24 caches in one day on 05/25/2010


Best Month 66 caches in January of 2011


Best Year 376 caches in 2010
 
Until next time....happy caching.




 
 
 

Happy Christmas

Forgive Me

Just a quick apology to say forgive me readers for I have sinned. I haven't added to the blog for 3 weeks now.
I guess that you all know the reason for this, I have hardly done any caching. The weather hasn't helped, of course.

I have done four caches in  3 weeks, terrible isn't it?

The best one that I found was another FTF, called Secret Santa by caching friends Baira + Darkfonz, this was a memorable cache. The guys had loaded it with wrapped christmas gifts and labelled them, boy, girl, adult boy and adult girl. It was a really nice touch to a christmas cache. I met up just before Christmas and Steve had even been out to the cache to top it up with gifts again. There have been some good logs for this one, have a look. http://coord.info/GC2K580

Wemnog and I met up with Northking in mid December, another cold and snowy morning. We decided to go and check out the Two Anchors new series, Hills View. These were a follow up to their original Hills View series. These proved a very challenging set of caches. The first one took us an absolute age to find, and then we couldn't retrieve the cache itself, it hadn't so much frozen in the ground as something else. I can't say any more as it would give too much away!  After phoning Rob from 2A he did let us have it as a joint FTF and went to sign the log on our behalf. This is Hills View # 3 http://coord.info/GC2K580. We then looked for another in the series Hills View #2 The Sequel http://coord.info/GC2JHQG we had no luck with this one at all and will have to return at some other time to find it. After leaving Northking he did decide to go back and try to find it. After another long period of searching he was lucky and managed to get a FTF on it. The easiest one in the series to do had already been found by some other well known cachers and proved easier to find, mainly because we know the Two Anchor's style. Jeff actually had his hand on the container first. This one is called Hills View The Sequel, just having looked at it again, it is still getting DNF's on it! http://coord.info/GC2JHR1

We decided that we would do one cache on Christmas Day, well you have to don't you? We went for Mainline To London http://coord.info/GC18T1F It really hasn't been the best caching few weeks, we didn't find it. We are off to Wales for New Year, hopefully we will have a lot more finds then.

GAGB Coin Race

The GAGB coin race has really taken off, a lot of people have now registered to see what it is all about. I won't go in to too much information here, nip over to the GAGB site and have a look. http://www.gagb.co.uk/

So that's it, last blog of 2010, I hope that you all have an enjoyable New Year and that you manage to keep caching throughout the year.

Take care and.............................happy caching.

Weekend In Derbyshire

Wemnog and I had a weekend away in the campervan in Derbyshire. We had the three dogs with us of course, it was Fen the puppy's first time camping, she soon settled in to it.

We decided to stay at the site which we are going to use for the Summer's End camping event in September. That way we thought that it would be good to suss out some caches that we can point campers towards doing.

The photo above shows Peters Stone, the location of the first cache we did, C.O.D. Petrus,GC7A06, there is a cache there somewhere! We picked up our only TB of the weekend in this cache.Following on from the first cache we did the next one, Beyond Peters Stone, we had a bit of a scramble down to this one GCG6W0.

Then it was back to the campsite for some well earned food, and an early night.

Another very hot day on Saturday, so after a cooked breakfast it had to be a full day of caching. We did a lot of the C.O.D. caches (Curiosities Of Derbyshire) by Cats-Eyes. They have put some brilliant caches out that are well worth visiting. The first of the day though was a little way out, I Want To Be Wanted, a cache by the Wanted Inn, not too far from Chapel en le Frith. The only thing that I picked up there, apart from the cache was a load of dog poo on my shoe (not the best start to the caching day)

Then it was on to Monsal Head, well worth a visit at any time of the year, caching or not. The views here are spectacular. After stopping for an ice cream we ventured off to the cache and soon had it located and the log signed.

So the caching continued, one of the next caches we found was in the village of Great Longstone, a beautiful little village, not too far away from Monsal Head. The old water pump in the village was the location for this cache. Even with caches eyes, and knowing exactly what we were looking for, this cache took a couple of minutes to find, I blame the bright sunshine!

We carried on and bagged a few more caches including GC1G9E9 C.O.D. All Saints RC Church, Hassop. This one certainly was a curiosity. Hassop is another smallish Derbyshire village, but there, in the village itself is a massive Roman Catholic church. The size of it and the building material used certainly didn't fit in with the village itself!

We have heard a lot about the Skeg to Ness series from our good friends NorthKing and also Two Anchors, but we hadn't planned on doing any in the immediate future. However, the next cache on the GPS that flagged up for us was, in fact #129 in that series. As it was so near we couldn't resist doing it and we were glad that we did. It was another clever cache container. I have got similar ones out there, but this one went just that little stage further, we spent more time retrieving the log than actually finding the cache!

A few more caches around Stoney Middleton and chips from the chippy there and then it was time to return to the campsite for a cuppa and bask in the evening sunshine.

On Sunday we did a couple more C.O.D. caches, C.O.D. @ The Races and C.O.D. Well Fancy That, which is pictured below before driving on through the plague village of Eyam and on to the wonderful Grindleford Station for a well earned Sunday lunch.

Finally, below is a photograph of the campsite where the Summer's End event is going to be held. As you can see, it is basically just a field. Having stayed there though, we feel sure that people will enjoy it, pure back to basics camping, one sink, cold water, one loo, but loads of fun. Roll on September, there is already the promise of people bringing musical instruments, so although we aren't allowed to have campfires, it should be a brilliant atmosphere. If the weather is good, there is every chance that we will have a barbeque as well.

I wonder where caching will take us next? I'll let you know.