A day out in Aylesbury

GC171 - View from Coombe Hill

Our main reason for our trip to Aylesbury today was to bag the two joint oldest (active) caches in England (placed Jan 2001) as one of our ongoing targets is to fill in the 'Finds by Placed Month' grid on our stats.

And also to tick off Bedfordshire on our county map.

An enjoyable walk around Coombe Hill, making a detour to the monument before going to find the cache.

Coombe Hill stands 257m above sea level. The monument in memory of the men of Buckinghamshire who had died in the Boer War was erected and unveiled on 4th November 1904. In 1939 it was struck by lightening nearly demolishing it, it was restored but then during World War 2 it had to be camouflaged to avoid it being used as a sighting landmark.

Fab views for miles around, you can even see Chequers, the Prime Minister's country residence.

GCB52A - Gravity Hill? (Bucks)

An interesting little detour, we'd heard about these unusual magnetic hills before but had never experienced one for ourselves.

A gravity or magnetic hill is a place where the layout of the surrounding land produces an optical illusion so that a very slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope. The ideal being if you leave the car out of gear it will appear to be rolling uphill. Very unusual, would like to visit some others, there are lots of them all over the world but only 2 other known ones England.


GC177 - Tim & Jon's 1st Re-Stashed

Joint oldest active cache in England.

A very enjoyable walk in the woods of the Ashridge Estate which is a National Trust Woodland on the Herts and Bucks border, between Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead.

Everywhere we turned there were squirrels, we have never seen so many in one place and we saw lots of deer too. A lovely area to walk in.


GC1MNTV - Studham Church Circular


A series of 12 caches plus 1 extra en route on a 4 mile walk around Studham village in Bedfordshire.

The walk starts at Studham Church, parking available in the church car park. The walk is along good paths with only a couple of stiles, ideal for dogs, there was only one path that was quite muddy due to the recent rain and the walk takes you past the boundary fence of Whipsnade Zoo!

GC2C7HQ - Our Common Goal
A series of 8 caches around Studham Common.

Light fading fast and the sun has set but still time to fit in this short series around Studham Common before we head off to do a night cache. A nice series all with good sized containers, packed with goodies and with spot-on co-ordinates.

GC1PPDH - The Night Mail

This was unfortunately a DNF for us, it had been on our to-do list for about 18 months, finally had the opportunity to visit on our way home. Solving the intial puzzle was really good fun, an excellent idea but finding the cache was very difficult, we thought it would just be a case of following the fire tacks but they were very sparse and we soon lost the trail see DNF log for full tear stained account. Hopefully we can revisit in the future armed with more information.
All in all a fab day out, great caches and great weather!