Nice shiny new Oregon!

SATURDAY

Last year I was very tempted to upgrade to the new Garmin Oregon 650 but couldn't really justify it as my trusty 300 was working perfectly and hadn't let me down in over 5 years - also Mark has never been 100% happy with his 550 as it doesn't record distances anywhere near as accurately as mine.....  Well, unfortunately my 300 has now reached the end of its useful life so I decided to treat myself  to a lovely new Oregon 650.  After a bit of Googling of all the local shops, Go Outdoors seemed to offer the best deal (with Quidco) so I reserved it online to collect in the store.  When we went to pick it up we noticed they had a Price Match Policy - they'll match any price +10% off if you find it anywhere else cheaper in the UK, this includes online.  So whilst I was trying on some walking trousers Mark had a bit of a Google (where would be be without smartphones?) and found one cheaper - so they agreed to knock £60 off the price - Whoo hoo WIN!!!!

I was really keen to try it out so on the way home we stopped off to find the Church Micro at Rushock ....So far so good...... I particularly like the fact I can now take photos in the rain!!

Then it was time to go to Saza's 18th Birthday Bonanza.  Really enjoyed a meal and meeting up with caching friends old and new and as always the time just flew by ...........

SUNDAY

The forecast was for rain all day but due to other commitments we hadn't been able to get out caching yesterday so we decided whatever the weather we were going out.  We chose the reindeer series at Hatton as it looked like a nice walk.  We hadn't read any of the logs before we set off and very soon we realised that a lot of the hides were very well hidden and hard to find with a fair few DNFs on some.  We're not fans of tricky hides on a walk as we prefer to keep walking, especially when it's cold and wet, so we decided to give each one 2 mins and if we hadn't found it in that time we would move on.  At the end of the short series we had 15 finds and 4 DNFs.

There was a short stretch of caches along the canal that were set for the 2013 Midlands Mega Event that we hadn't yet found so we got the bikes out the car for a muddy ride up the towpath to the little cafe at Hatton Locks for cake and coffee.