Another sunny autumn weekend ...... hope it lasts!

Hairy humbug

SATURDAY

As the forecast was for dry, sunny weather today we decided to head out to the Stamford area, we'd spotted a couple of IzaacWilson series that would be perfect to combine and do part by bike and part on foot.  We parked up near O.M.V.7. just outside Barnack to start the day.  We were much later starting this morning at 10.30 than our usual unearthly hour starts but hoped we'd still have time to complete the caches we had planned berfore heading home.

Enjoyed a really pleasant ride on our bikes.  The route was fairly flat and took us through the very pretty village of Barnack.  After 5.2 miles we left our bikes and continued on foot for 4.5 miles until we arrived back at the car. The route on foot was really easy going, no cows or ploughed fields and it was very well marked.

Interesting bus collection

The route took us 4 hours to complete and has to be one of the most enjoyable ones we've done for quite some time.

 
SUNDAY

 
We have been looking forward to doing the CBA series just outside Worcester since it was published last month, today was the perfect day.

We hadn't read any of the previous logs so we didn't realise that the hides were mostly tricky ones.  If we'd done our homework properly we'd have realised this and would've set off much earlier in the day, as it happens we set off at midday and started at quite a leisurely pace, estimating that we'd be finished within 3 hours.  Hmm ..... best laid plans and all that

The first few finds were straightforward enough and we even stopped at the Church Micro and ate our lunch in the churchyard before continuing on.  At #11 we realised we should've allowed a lot more time as the hides were getting trickier. 

Although we are pleased to say that sheer determination paid off at some of them and we found all the caches without resorting to PAFing for any of them (although came very close to it at #15).  A lot of the hides were quite novel and very well crafted, one in particular was the first we'd seen in all of our 15,000+ finds. 

We made the walk to be 5.3 miles  and it took us 4 hours to complete.

A lot of hard work has gone into setting up this series which we really appreciate.  We throroughly enjoyed the challenge of finding them all.

Arrived home just in time to see this a beautiful sunset

Nights are drawing in rapidly

Since we got back from Prague life has gone back to being its usual hectic self but I'm trying to find time to update the blog a little more often, might get a little easier now the darker/colder/wetter days are here.

We took our son off to uni in Wales last month so decided to make a weekend of it and finally got round to visiting Mumbles Lighthouse Island, this has been on our to-do list since we spotted it when we went to the mega event in Swansea but we weren't able to fit it in.  In May 2012 it was Geocache of the week on the Geocaching blog so we made a mental note to visit last year but couldn't fit it in. 

Then back in early September we planned to go but the tide times would've meant leaving the house at 3am or some other such stupid time so we looked again for the weekend we were taking our son to uni and the tide times looked perfect so we knew we had to go.  So glad we did, it was brilliant fun and the weather was lovely and dry and sunny.

Without Whitemoor Wander

Wherigos

Mark managed a short break in Cornwall last week, we'd been planning our return trip since our last visit in May but unfortunately I wasn't able to go this time due to work commitments but he had a great time finding all the Wherigos in the area. That brings us up to 127 in total.

I remember when we found our first one back in April 2008, the Whitchurch Wherigo, Mark really enjoyed it but I found it was a very solitary caching experience only having one Wherigo compatible device between us.  Over the last few years we've found them as an when we came across them but were concentrating on other targets such as old caches and D/T grid etc.  Now we've virtually completed all these challenges we tend to look out for more unusual rarer cache types such as virtuals, webcams and Wherigos.  Back in February Mark upgraded to an Oregon 550 so it meant we could both partcipate when completing the Wherigo, hence having found 113 this year!  Not that we're addicted or anything

Having an iPhone and Android smartphone has been a big help too as the players on these devices are excellent.  For some reason Wherigos haven't really caught on in the UK but in Europe they are becoming increasingly popular and increasingly inventive in gameplay.  Such as Domecek jednim tahem which is a 'play anywhere' Wherigo.  As the name suggests this type of Wherigo can be played anywhere and you end up with the final location.  Mark did this one over several evenings in our local park and it was all the more challenging as it's totally in Czech!  Then we were able to find the final whilst on holiday in the Czech Republic.

Shrewsbury

We'd been  monitoring the weather all week and rain was pretty much forecast for all areas but as luck would have it we were planning to do the new Wherigo in Shrewsbury and that seemed to be the only place in the country that didn't have rain forecast.

The starting point for the Wherigo is a pay and display car park but we decided to park a short distance away in a side street and do the Wherigo by bike, we keep our bikes in the cachemobile at all times so we can use them whenever the occasion arises.

This was our first visit to the medieval town of Shrewsbury and we loved it.  The old buildings, quaint alleyways and individual little shops were amazing.  

The Wherigo was an interesting tour around the town and we loved the ghostly theme and humour - 'Is that bacon I can smell?'

We picked up a few other caches around the town before heading out along the River Severn to do the Tinkerbell series which was really enjoyable on our bikes.

Then it was time to leave Shrewsbury and head over to Middleton Scriven, just south west of Bridgnorth to do Pen and Ceri go walking, which was a 4½ mile series which we did on our bikes as it was all on quiet country lanes.  The rain held off until about the last half mile or so then the heavens opened which then scuppered our plans to do the night cache near Kidderminster on our way home.  Oh well, never mind, at least we've still got that one to look forward to on a dry night.

A Mega Time in Prague

 

A Mega Time in Prague

After attending the Brugge Beer Mega Event in April we decided to see what other Mega Events there were  in Europe and spotted the Geocoinfest in Prague.  Some cachers local to us had visited Prague not long after we started caching and we’d always thought it would be a nice place to visit.  So, within days our flights, hotel and car hire were all booked.

In June the Maze Event was published and we couldn’t believe our luck.  This was the first Maze event ever outside of  USA and would be a new cache type for us. Would a CITO be published as well we wondered, thus raising the possibility of 12 different cache types in one day?  A few weeks later the CITO event was published but the start time was 7am and our hotel was quite a distance away.  No problem!  Booked a room at a hotel a short walk from the park and cancelled our original booking - sorted.

Czechs seem to be crazy about Wherigos - and we quite like them too.  There are more Wherigos in the Czech Republic than there are in the UK.  There are only 130 active Wherigos in the UK (11 of which are owned by us. We have another 2 which we've archived) out of a total of over 155,000 caches.  In Czech Republic there are over 211 Wherigos out of fewer than 35,000 caches.

We were planing to arrive on the Tuesday evening.  Spend Wednesday finding caches to the south, spend Thursday in the centre doing the town trail Wherigos and generally sightseeing.  Saturday would be filled with side events and Sunday would be the main Mega and attempting to find 12 types in one day.  That leaves Friday 'spare’…. Not for long!  It just so happened that there was an event in the evening just over the border in Germany just to the left of Dresden.  Hmm…. We also have only found five different cache types in Germany so we identified a Webcam, Letterbox and Multi to bring the total to nine types!  A too good a chance to miss surely…

Love locks

CACHING IN PRAGUE

Back in May, the Groundspeak Blog mentioned two caches in Prague which were the world’s most visited.  So those went on the to-do list. There are four bi-lingual Wherigos starting near the main tourist area so we decided to do those as well although we’d opted to leave the easiest looking one for the Sunday to ensure finding the 12 cache types.

Scooby Doo Wherigos

Wednesday: Headed through the horrendous rush hour traffic in our hire car to an area South East of Prague to find a set of nine Scooby-Doo themed Wherigos which really appealed to us.  We'd been in contact with the CO over the possibility of providing us with English translations and rather helpfully he told us that he would provide English versions in time for the Mega event and luckily they were published just in time.  A pleasant walk around a forest although we were initially un-easy about the number of people wandering around. More cachers?  No; it seems they were gathering wild mushrooms!  Next we headed West to another Wherigo which had a 'play anywhere' puzzle.  There are a few of these in Europe and they are great fun because you can take your time solving it before actually heading out to find the cache.  Basically you go to any open area and the zones are automatically plotted relative to where you are. This particular one was all in Czech and Mark had spent several nights wondering around trying to complete it and translating key instructions then trying again etc.

Ticket machine took some fathoming

Thursday: Left the car at the hotel and headed off to catch a tram. The hotel receptionist advised us that we could use the ticket machine or buy tickets form the post office. Unfortunately the Post Office staff weren’t aware of this! :D

Ta-da! We have the tickets!

 
Finally managed to rustle up enough change to buy a couple of tickets from the bewildering ticket machine.  It’s actually easier than it looks once you understand it and the public transport system is so efficient and cheap to use - a 24hr ticket to hop on and off trains, trams and metro only cost around £3 each.

Lennon Wall

We started off by doing a short Wherigo which follows the river and after having a coffee returned to Charles Bridge to start the longer Tourist Guide I Wherigo which was about 6kms long and seemed to take forever.

We saw an exhibition by the river which was all about the June 2013 flood, we remember watching it on the news and hoping that there wouldn't be too much damage for our visit, but it's very hard to see any signs of the flood now.  This is a rather interesting photo:  On the left shows the statue of Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, partially submerged by the rising flood waters from the Vltava River at 16:40 on 2 June 2013. The statue was completed covered by 19:30. The photo on the right I took and we were able to walk to it easily today.

We picked up a few other caches en route and visited the astronomical tower.  I'd seen a photo in our Rough Guide book that taken from the top of the tower, so we decided to climb to the top to take the same photo .

After having a bite to eat and despite being totally worn out, we even made a start on the second tourist trail Wherigo but had to stop when we got to a park that was closed for the night.

Friday:  Destination Dresden.

We’d read about Terezin in the Rough Guide and decided to make a detour off the motorway to visit the town. The history of the town is shocking. The inhabitants were evicted during the Second World War and the Nazis commandeered the entire town as a transit camp for prisoners en route to numerous concentration camps including Auswitz, Trelenka etc. The numbers of prisoners held there and the conditions they were held in, is beyond comprehension….

We visited the Ghetto Museum and barrack house before finding a couple of caches and heading on our way. There is a series of caches around the outskirts of the town each called by a child’s name. The cache page simply says the date of birth and death of each child. The simplicity of each cache page is disturbing in itself:

Narozena *08. 04. 1939

transport Cv, c. 613 (06.03.1943 Praha; Terezín)

Zahynula +21. 03. 1944 Terezín

Back on the route. After another short detour to find another  'Play Anywhere' Wherigo, we headed back to the motorway.. or so we thought. TomTom had different ideas and directed us down a very windy lane for several miles before finally getting to the motorway. Progress was swift then. Very swift ;) but no matter how fast you drive on the German Autobahn someone will still want to overtake.  The journey involved driving through the Panenská tunnel, the longest tunnel in the Czech Republic at 2058 metres!

Letterbox Hybrid – Nice and easy and Mark had identified one which was located at the given co-ordinates.

Dresden Webcam – parked in a side street and Mark asked a woman who was just going to a nearby house if it was OK to park here. The reply was a bit surprising. She asked if he spoke English as her German wasn’t very good! Yep she was Norwegian :D The webcam had a painfully slow refresh rate and we had to wait for about 20 minutes before being able screen grab the picture

Multi next, we had a short list of three - good job two as the first two were DNFs.  The third one actually had a higher difficulty rating but was a nice quick find.

Event in Freiberg

Event – this was about 20 or so miles out of Dresden and road improvements meant we had to double back a couple of times because Tomtom lead us to dead ends etc.  The event was just a small regular meet for locals but it was very well organised with a couple of marquees , beer tent and barbecue. We chatted to a few of the other cachers for a while before departing for the two-hour drive back to Prague. Well, that was how long we thought it would take but it was along endless winding tree lined country lanes. It would probably have been very picturesque in the daylight but we just wanted to get back to the hotel.  Eventually we saw a sign giving directions to the Dresden-Prague motorway. ‘At Last’ we thought but Tomtom was insisting that we go its route instead.  Having trusted Tomtom’s lies earlier on, we decided to follow the signs to the motorway. After about fifteen miles in the wrong direction we reached the motorway. Progress was better now but the motorway seemed to fade away about 40 miles from Prague and we ended up going through a town. All the signs said Prague so it probably wasn’t our mistake this time; just the way it was!

Saturday: The Side Events

Left the car at the hotel and hopped on a tram to the centre.  No problem with buying tickets this time. The first event was a presentation by some crazy Czechs who made an expedition through south America with a couple of Trabants, a Fiat 126 and  Jawa 250 motorbike. The presentation was all in Czech but we got the gist of it and the photos were amazing.  On the way in we met a Swedish cacher and sat and chatted with him whilst we were waiting for the presentation to start, we swapped interesting stories of our caching trips and it was interesting to speak to someone who embarks on similar crazy trips to us.

Logbook for GC49B1A

Next event was  in the viewing area 93 metres up the TV Tower.

Yep the event is at the top of the Tower!

 While trying to decide which tram(s) to take, a local lass asked if  needed any help and she helpfully advised us to take the underground instead. The stations on the underground look like something from an old film where they imagine what the future will look like.

Like something from Dr Who

Meet the Danes was next. No problem with the location as the turnout was massive!

Meet the Danes Event

The next one was a D1/T5 event.  Just getting there was more than a D1! It took us ages as the location was off the map given to us by the hotel, so after walking a mile or so and hopping on and off a few different trams and underground trains we eventually arrived.   It was really great fun with me doing the belaying and Mark doing the climbing for our team.

We had planned to go to a few more events but decided to finish off the Tourist Guide II Wherigo instead.

This one led us round the West side of the river including going up the funicular railway. Amazingly the tram/underground/bus ticket is also valid on the funicular!

Funicular Railway Station

We also happened upon a mountain bike/BMX competition. The whole area was buzzing with excitement and action. We stopped to watch a few of the crazies going over the jumps but soon decided to press on.

Cito - Cache Type #3

Sunday morning we were up at 5.30 and out before breakfast to attend the 24 hour TB relay Event, followed by  a visit to the GPS Maze (luckily we were nice and early so no queuing)  and the CITO starting at 07:00. We found a puzzle cache and a couple of Trads during the CITO. Five types before breakfast!  Not bad. Now back to the hotel for a well earned breakfast!

Puzzle- Cache type #5

After breakfast we czeched , I mean checked out and walked down  to the Geocoinfest Mega event where we bumped into Monki, Unowho68 and Blue Nora our caching friends from the Midlands.  The Mega event was extremely well organised and we thought the maps were a great idea, where visitors had to stick a pin in the place they had come from.

The ‘logbook’ was the Groundspeak logo make from tile pieces, another great idea.

'Signing' the log book

The Meet the Germans event near by was more ‘join the queue of Germans waiting to sign the logbook’  EarthCache next followed by the Wherigo making it eight types. No problem with the Virtual but DNF on the Multi which meant we had to resort to the back up plan.

Cache Type #10

Time to head North to the Letterbox Hybrid – cache type number ten.  Where we bumped into some more cachers.



Time for the Multi next, in a strangely quiet area of the city in another very well kept park.  We enjoyed a peaceful sit down before heading south to the small town of Zbraslav for the webcam. Cache type number 12! Yay!  MISSION COMPLETE.







Just as we were sitting relaxing after completing the challenge we were surprised (although not too surprised) to see Monki, Unowho67 and Blue Nora arrive, they'd caught the bus from Prague to find the webcam!  Enjoyed a chat before going our separate ways as we were heading back to the airport.  At the airport we bumped into Spooky Luke and friends, some cachers that had visited Geocoinfest for the weekend from Cornwall.  Had a good chat about all things Wherigo and general crazy caching trips before going off for different flights home.

Cache type #12

We had a great time in Prague, it was exhausting though as we were on the go all the time and I did joke saying that it was like being on a Geocaching bootcamp as there was no time for relaxing but we have many fond memories of our trip to such a beautiful city and would recommend a visit to anyone.

New stats summary
1 new country - Czech Republic
1 new cache type - the GPS Maze
Additional 4 cache types found in Germany making a total of 9 types
12 cache types found in Czech Republic
100th Wherigo found
100th Event attended
....I think that's about it...



Right, now where to next?............

Another Crazy Caching Trip

Sweden and Denmark

We have always set ourselves personal geocaching challenges other than just purely number hunting, such as the 366 day calendar, D/T grid, county map, oldest caches in UK, cache types/countries.  We became aware of the Jasmer challenge a few years ago and have been slowly filling in the grid.  The Jasmer challenge is to find at least one cache placed per month since Geocaching started in May 2000.  

We decided at the beginning of this year to make a concerted effort to fill in as many as we could on the grid.  Mark's crazy trip to The Netherlands back in March was to fill in March 2001. 

Plenty of this needed in Sweden

We had 5 months left to fill only 2 of which are possible in Europe.  September 2000 near Copenhagen and August 2000 near Stockholm.   So back in January we booked our flight to Sweden. While looking at what other caches to do in the area we spotted some challenge caches in Copenhagen which required finding a certain number of cache types per country.  The highest being 6 types in 6 countries.  This really appealed to us and we decided that from then on we'd try and find as many different types as possible when visiting other countries and even set our own similar challenges.

We flew from Stansted on Sunday to Malmö in southern Sweden picked up a hire car and drove to our accommodation.

Our hire car

On Monday we drove across the Oresund bridge to Denmark found Kippers in the Jungle, really pleased to finally find this one as we've been looking at this cache for so long now, we even met some German cachers just as we arrived back at the car.  It's always great fun bumping into other cachers when abroad, 'we all speak the common language of Geocaching', this is a quote from a Dutch cacher we met whilst in Belgium a few years ago.

We found 7 other cache types and rounded off the day sight-seeing in Copenhagen before heading back across the bridge (about £40 each way!)  to Sweden.

Kippers in the Jungle

Tuesday we hired some bikes and spent a great day cyclo-caching.........  That's what we'd like to say but in fact it was....... Tried to hire some bikes. We were staying in Lund which is one of the most cyclocentric towns in the country.  Everyone has a bike and every second shop is a bike shop (or so it seems) so you'd think it would be easy to hire bikes. Wrongo! Why would anyone want to hire a bike if they already have one?

The hotel had bikes for hire but someone had already hired them out to. The receptionist told us that there used to be other hire shops but they had all closed down.  The shop just down the road didn't hire bikes nor did another shop we tried. We eventually located another bike shop which was rumoured to hire bikes but it was closed. The very helpful lighting shop owner next down assured us that the shop did hire bikes but they didn't open until 10:00... if we were lucky.  By about 10:30 we were finally ready to set off for a great day cyclo-caching.  The cycle paths and routes are amazing, you can cycle for miles without seeing any cars.

Wednesday.
Checked out of hotel and made our way towards Malmo stopping to do an Earthcache, Letterbox and a Wherigo on the way.  The Wherigo was around an immaculately manicured park which we later discovered to be a horticultural university. Once in Malmo we filled up with Diesel and returned the hire care and explored on foot.

Alnarp Castle

Then it was off to catch the night train to Stockholm.

This seemed a good idea when we booked it because driving to Stockholm and leaving the car there would have incurred a £100 fee. We would also have had to pay for another night's accommodation either in Stockholm or on the way and it would have been a day of solid driving. Taking all that into consideration the night train seemed a good idea :-)

We left Malmo at 22:35 and arrived at Stockholm at 06:00 having had the worst night's sleep in ages. In all fairness, it's the first time we'd been on a night train but we have been on a night ferry and assumed the compartment would be a similar size to the ferry cabin. It was not!

Thursday

Luckily we were able to check into our hotel straight away so without further ado we dumped our bags and headed off to hire some bikes (no time for relaxing).

Stockholm have a City Bike scheme where you can hire bikes for three days for £16. You are given a card which you have to swipe at a machine to access a bike. The bikes are at various locations in the city and you can leave the bike and walk if you want or just swap bikes if it seems too noisy, uncomfortable etc.  There's even an iPhone app so you can see where the nearest bike station is and how many bikes are there! The only proviso is that you have to 'check in' to one of the many locations every three hours. The cache we wanted to do near Stockholm is 'Match Stash' - a cache placed in August 2000 - one of only four in the whole world from that month! TomTom reckoned it would be about 7.5 miles and take about 40 minutes - this was with 'cycle route' selected. Not sure why but it was a lot further and took a lot lot longer! 

Match Stash

We had swapped bikes at the last City Bike stand before heading out of the city and made it back just outside the three hour time limit. Mark got a 'warning' for being late. Three of these warnings and the card is blocked, or so we were told.  It was just over a 20 mile return trip on the 'city' bikes!  I doubt the bikes had ever been taken that far out of the city before and we feel sure they weren't meant for taking into the forest!

Making new friends at the event

It just so happened that there was an Event at 16:00 at Central Station.  Four brave/crazy Swedish cachers were heading off on an eight day backpacking/caching expedition somewhere up North and had arranged the Event so mere mortals could see them off. We had a really pleasant hour or so chatting to lots of  other cachers and making new friends.

Friday

Spent the day exploring Stockholm/sightseeing and caching on the dreaded City Bikes  ;-) before catching  a coach to the airport. When we booked the plane tickets we hadn't really considered where the airport was - it has 'Stockholm'  in the name after all! Stockholm (Skavsta) is 100km from Central Station and the coach takes 80 minutes to get there! Luckily we had found this out earlier in the day when inquiring about coach tickets so we knew to allow plenty of time!

New stats summary

Two new countries visited
August and September 2000 'Jasmers' ticked off

A new 'most northerly' cache at N59° 19.957 (we actually found a Wherigo whose final location was further north than this but the listed co-ords are 0.19 miles south so doesn't count)

Eight cache types found in Denmark

Nine cache types found in Sweden

All in all an amazing, exciting and fun trip.  Although it was exhausting to say the least and we could've done with a bit more time to relax so Donna has said she is definitely organising the next trip

~~~~~~~~~
Mark