Christmas Fayre with the Yorkshire 2018 Committee

We'd offered to help out at the Yorkshire 2018 Christmas Fayre today so we made our way across the Pennines to Halifax.  It's only about an hour away from where we live so we were soon there.

M62 summit in glorious sunshine

Arriving in the fog

We arrived at 9.30am and got stuck in straight away helping to set up.  I got the children’s craft corner ready and we were given the task of blowing up nearly 200 balloons.  I’m pretty hopeless at balloon blowing, Mark used to play the trumpet in his youth so has the technique just right and along with Big Fish they blew up all the balloons between them, along with some really keen little 'helpers' .  I’m better suited to tying the balloons so that was my job..... I never want to see another balloon!

The room was soon starting to take shape and before we knew it 11.00 came round and the doors were opened.

To paraphrase Meat Loaf...
I'll buy anything purple but I won't buy that!

This is more like it!

I then moved into the kitchen to help prepare bacon butties with the rest of the kitchen team.

Who was responsible??!

The bacon butties were a massive hit and went down really well, it was lovely when people came back to say how much they’d enjoyed them, well worth the effort and a good fundraiser too.

Also another great success was that you could by a mega mug for £6 and have free refills of tea or coffee all day – this was hugely popular.

Santa put in an appearance later on but it would seem I was on the naughty list so didn't get to sit on his knee!

Regional hampers

The best one (Lancashire)

Another good idea for a fundraiser was the hamper raffle.  Cachers from different counties could contribute to a hamper to raffle off at the fayre.  A few of us got together in Lancashire and put together a fab hamper – it was hard coming up with original ideas but I contributed some Uncle Joe’s treacle caramels, Lancashire Sauce and a book of Lancashire recipes.  There were hampers from Scotland, Essex, Warwickshire … oh and Yorkshire of course

Purple is my favourite colour so I didn’t take much persuading to buy lots of mega merch.

On Friday evening I got in from work about 7pm and just about had time to decorate the cakes ready for the buffet.  There was a lovely spread of food that cachers had generously donated.

The event was so much fun, we enjoyed every minute of it, we made lots of new friends and it was great to catch up with some old friends too.

As much as I don’t want 2018 to roll around too fast I really can’t wait for the 2018 Mega event.

SUNDAY

We stayed overnight in our camper van and on our way home from Halifax we’d planned to take a detour to do Soldier’s Lump virtual.  On the way we stopped off to do Xanthic Rock in Beaumont Park an earthcache in an amazing Victorian Park.

Beaumont Park was Huddersfield's first public park and was opened in 1879, this was such an amazing place and great to explore.

Now

Then

Unfortunately all the old buildings have been demolished.  The council decided that due to the cost of renovating the buildings it was best to demolish them.

This was definitely another one of those ‘if it weren’t for caching’ places.

Then next stop, Soldier's Lump Virtual.

Thoroughly enjoyed the walk to Soldiers Lump virtual across the moors.  The route took you along a short section of the Pennine Way and was paved most of the way but the flagstones were quite slippery in places.   There were large patches of snow on the route which were left over from a downfall earlier in the week.

Another fun weekend in the campervan….. we’re hoping next week to get back up to the lakes weather permitting.

Yorkshire Weekend

A little break from Wainwright bagging for a few weeks as we have other plans.

We visited Scarborough and Filey a few weeks ago and ran out of time to do some of the caches on our to-do list, so made a mental note to have another trip out to Yorkshire in the near future.   This weekend seemed like a good a time as any for another visit.

We set off early afternoon on Friday. The plan being to go up to Dalby Forest area to do some virtuals and stopping off on the way to various other bits and bobs.

The nights have drawn in really quickly and the sun had set by 17.30.  The clocks go back tomorrow so it will be darker even earlier from then.

This meant that by the time we reached Withernsea it was already dark.   I'd spotted a trigpoint on the map which was next to the gas terminal in Easington, it was only a short walk from the road so we parked up and off we went.  There's a funny story though, when we got home I looked it up on TrigpointingUK to log it and read some of the previous logs, one of the logs mentioned they'd given it a miss due to Police patrolling the area and another said they returned to their car to find armed Police checking their car over.  Good job I hadn't read these beforehand as we probably would've given it a miss, especially as we went in the dark- here's a photo of me not giving a monkey's with the high security floodlit gas terminal (behind 3 rows of barbed wire fences and CCTV at every post) to the left of the picture.  It's all good fun.

Waiting for the sun to come up

We were up before sunrise ready to head to the first cache of the day, Prime Meridian North {East Yorks} from September 2001.  We'd decided against doing it in the dark last night as we wanted to be able to see the coastal erosion, we'd visited a different part of Spurn Head last time and the effects of the erosion are quite dramatic.

The best things about having the camper van is the sense of freedom, the peace and quiet, making a brew whenever we feel like it, waking up to a fantastic sunrise and going to bed watching a wonderful sunset.  We have found so many times that when we try to book accommodation it's either too far away from where we want to be or ridiculously expensive when all we want is just somewhere to sleep with none of the extras that you end up paying for a don't need or use.  It really is brilliant.....

Next stop Dalby Forest.  We last visited Dalby Forest on a family holiday in 2004 so it was good to come back again.  We had great fun doing a couple of virtuals, Holy Cow and Bridestone.  A lovely autumnal walk in the forest.

The next virtual on our to-do list was Trainspotting Folly.  The description on the listing makes us smile, it says the cache is only a virtual due to snow causing problems with finding a good hide and if anyone wishes to upgrade to a physical cache then the CO will happily archive! Strange to think of this now, virtuals are seen as something special as they are so rare. 

We arrived about 20  mins before sunset so wondered whether to leave it until tomorrow morning but we as we were heading up to Whitby tomorrow we were keen to fit it in this evening if possible to give us more time in Whitby.  From where we parked it was about a mile to GZ and we made it about a minute before sunset.  This has now gone to the top of my favourite virtuals, absolutely loved the location, so peaceful, we didn't see another soul.

By the time we got back to the camper it was dark and we headed off to Whitby ready for more fun and games tomorrow.

SUNDAY

The clocks went back this morning and this is the first time I’ve ever forgotten all about it, I was about to cook our breakfast and thought I had an hour until sunrise – as I was keen to take a photo of the sun coming up over Robin Hoods Bay – anyway I noticed the sun was already coming up then it dawned on us both at the same time that it was because the clocks had gone back.  Seemed really strange how much lighter it was this morning compared to the same time yesterday morning.  Inside the house it's something you hardly notice really.

We weren’t far from a YOSM so after our breakfast we enjoyed a short walk over the moors to bag the trigpoint there.

We hadn’t been to Robin Hoods Bay before.  It’s somewhere I’ve been aware of for quite some time, ever since I heard about Wainwright’s coast to coast walk.  The Coast to Coast walk is a 192 mile route from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hoods Bay in North Yorkshire. It's a walk that I would love to do one day. 

It was fun exploring the little streets of Robin Hoods Bay and when I stood at the sign where the walk finishes I imagined for a moment what a lovely feeling that would be to complete such a walk.

Next on the list was a few virtuals.  These are my favourite kind of cache and it will be a shame when there are no more in the UK for us to find. The first one was Bram Stoker's Whitby cache this was in a really cool location overlooking Whitby. Then it was Heinkel 111 and Filmset 10 Harry Potter. 

This place has been on my to-do list for such a long time and it was fantastic to finally visit as I love anything to do with Harry Potter.

While we were in the area we were really keen to find the LQ  for North Yorkshire, really great to tick this one off finally and it was such a coincidence that our caching friends Stillroaming from the Isle of Man had also visited today!  It would’ve been so lovely to have bumped into them.

Then it was time to head home... so much more to see in the area and I'm sure we'll be back again before too long.

A day out in the Peak District

Monsal Dale

One of our favourite areas of the country to visit is the Peak District but we don't visit anywhere near as often as we'd like to.  Our daughter is at Uni right on the edge of the Peak District and has enjoyed many walks with the uni walking club and is always showing us photos of the fantastic places she's been - when we go there it's usually just to pick her up or drop her off, or most recently to move her belongings from her flat to her house so there's usually very little time to go on any decent walks.

We were only free on the Saturday this weekend so decided to visit Piratemania just for the day and at the same time take the opportunity while in the area to find some must-do caches.

Harry's Place

This was a virtual at Monsal Dale.  The car park at Monsal Head wasn't free so we managed to find free roadside parking further down the road.  The view from Monsal Head is breathtaking, we have driven this way before but have never found time to stop so it was great to finally be able to explore the area.  The walk down into Monsal Dale was simply beautiful and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk.  We made a circular walk of it which took us back along Headstone Viaduct and into Headstsone Tunnel which is part of the Monsal Trail. 

The Monsal Trail runs along the former Midland Railway line for 8.5 miles between Blackwell Mill, in Chee Dale and Coombs Road, at Bakewell.  The route was opened to the public in 1981 but four of the six railway tunnels remained closed due to safety reasons and reopened again in 2011.  We walked through the tunnel and back again before heading back up to Monsal Head.

The Tunnel is one of six on the Monsal Trail.  We will definitely be back another day to cycle the full Monsal Trail as it looks amazing.

Then it was off to Froggatt Edge to do Jonah's Journey.  This has been on our to-do list for many years, in fact we originally had the plan to come here when we were at the first Piratemania back in 2008 but ran out of time, since then it's been pushed down the to-do list but finally, today was the day - and also it meant that it would tick off the Geocaching Road Trip Let's Get Extreme Souvenir rather nicely.

Then it was back to the mega event to finish finding the lab caches and to play the Wherigo, Pegleg's Treasure (which we'd finally been able to download after driving around to find network coverage for our phones).  This took quite some time as we were stopping to chat to lots of other pirates along the way so by the time we'd finished it was time to set sail and head back home.  Stopping on the way to find LQ: Derbyshire.

Little Quest

We're making quite good progress on this series - the last few months we've been combining trips to National Trust properties (another of my many interests) with ticking off more LQ caches.  It's been so much fun and has taken us to some great locations.   Our latest find, LQ: Derbyshire, was in a great spot next to Riber Castle which overlooks Matlock - a great location with fantastic views.  Incidentally, Riber Castle was used as one of the filming location for the 2004 film 'Dead Man's Shoes', I remember watching it back then recognising the location from a previous visit to the area in 2001 so I was really pleased to see this cache was near to it.  Unfortunately the area is fenced off so we couldn't explore.

We had such a fantastic day and we are definitely going to make the effort to explore this area more often in the future as our visit has left me craving for more.