Cole Challenge

Cole Challenge

A 15 cache series along the paths by the River Cole.

After having a lot of fun caching by bike on our family holiday in Belgium this year we agreed that when we got home we'd try and do more caching by bike so we set off this morning with our bikes on the back of the car to do this series.

Parked up near Argos and off we went.


Caches 1 to 12 the path was very good and suitable for any bike, caches 12 to 15 you really need a bike with good tyres as the path was muddy and uneven.

It's a shame it's so windy today, in the next few days all the lovely autumn colour will be blown from the trees.


Enjoying our bike ride so much we decided to continue on along the River Cole and take in the Riverside Ramble caches.



On our way back to the car we stopped off and had another look for a cache we'd DNFd on the way and hey presto we found it! Then it was back to the start of the trail and back to the car. All together we cycled just under 13 miles - watch this space for our next geo-cycling challenge :D

Peopleton Ponders

Peopleton Ponders -
  
A series of 8 caches and a bonus on a 4.6 mile walk. No dog proof stiles, no cattle on the day we did the walk and only 1 field with horses which were no problem at all.

We had a free morning so decided to head off with Poppy and Whisper to do the new series around Peopleton. Parked up near #6 and off we went. We met cachers Cagney37 and Waterford Wander on our way round, always good to meet cachers out and about.

The Westbrook and Chittoe Ring

The Westbrook and Chittoe Ring - A 21 cache series on a 4.5 mile circular walk (approx. 5.5 if you include the bonus).

Arrived at the Premier Inn Swindon on Friday evening for an early start the next day in the hope of completing 'The Westbrook and Chittoe Ring' and 'Count Katie's Quavers' in time to pop into A Wiltshire Event on our way home on Saturday night.

A very enjoyable walk although a couple of scary encounters with the dreaded bovine beasts. About half way into the walk the heavens opened and it rained until midday.


Lots of interesting
fungus to see and more
pheasants than we've ever seen in one place before.

Always nice to come across a well stocked cache.

COLD WAR CACHE

Into the bunker

We saw this cache when browsing through the 'photo of the month' photos on the Groundspeak Forum and decided it had to be worth a look.  Our teenagers were keen to come along too so we had to wait a while until a date that we could all make it and today was the day.

Entrance

The cache is placed in a Royal Observation Corp (ROC) underground observation post.  Over 1000 of these posts were built to enable the ROC to observe the effects of nuclear weapons being detonated over the country and to measure radioactivity in the event of air attacks in a future war.  Towards the end of the 1960s the bunkers were all decommissioned.  You can find details of other observation posts in your area here.

We parked down the road so as not to draw attention to our activities and then it was a short walk to the entrance of the bunker.  On arrival I took one look at the hatch and the ladder that disappeared down into the dark and I said 'no chance, I'll stay above ground and keep watch' .  The rest of the family were keen and soon disappeared down into the dark with their head torches.  They were very quick to shout up that it was fine and that I should join them.  I decided that this might be the only chance I get to see one of these places so not wanting to miss out on all the fun I was soon down the ladder and really glad that I did.  It was much smaller than I was expecting but really interesting.  Well worth a visit and like it says on the cache listing........... all you need is a torch and a sense of adventure!

Pegz & Mr D signing the log book

Six Countries in One Day

Mark:
While planning what caches to do during our holiday at CenterParcs near Peer in Belgium, we realised that on the final day it might be possible to find caches in five countries in 24 hours.
I was also keen to find GC40 Belgium's first Geocache but this was quite a way South from where we were staying.

Donna wasn't too keen on making the journey back to Calais longer than it was already going to be but once I suggested going via Luxembourg to take in yet another country she agreed.

So, at about 07:00 on our day of departure, we left CenterParcs and headed EAST for about 20 miles to:

Country #1: Netherlands

GC233ZX Echt-Susteren en zijn kernen (Roosteren)

#1 - The Netherlands

Next stop Germany

OK, we passed an EarthCache before reaching the border so we just had to stop for that one as well.

GC1DH1Q The Fluvial Caberg Terraces

Netherlands (again)

Country #2: Germany

GC1DEQ9 Lost Place Koningsbosch

This cache is in a wood just off the road which is the Dutch/German border.

#2 - Germany

Stopping on the way to stretch our legs

Country #3 Luxembourg.

GC1PHKY Kapell "Notre Dame du Maquis"

#3 - Luxembourg

Time to load a new PQ into the Oregon...

Stopped for lunch

While Donna was taking this photo I checked TomTom to see how long it would take to get to Calais ... 5 Hours!!
I asked Steven and Beth how I was going to break it to Donna.
"Mum! We're five hours from Calias!",shouted Steven.
That's solved that dilemma :-)

Back into Belgium again to make it country #4
GC40 Geocache Set in July 2000 this is our oldest find to date!

#4 - Belgium

Back in the car, select next cache... Gulp! 205 miles!


France next GCFC9D End of the Holiday country #5

#5 - France

It's a cruel name for a cache!

Onto the Channel Tunnel Shuttle back to England..

Back in England and after visiting McDonalds we found
GC23PAJ Nautical Procession for country #6

#6 - England

Mission Complete!

Six countries in one day

We had planned to stay overnight in Folkstone and have a more leisurely drive home the following day but we decided to continue straight home stopping off at GC27YDV Welcome to Warwick! just before midnight to set a new personal 'Maximum distance in a day'

Total distance from CenterParcs to home: 617 miles!

Certainly a memorable day

Highest and Oldest - Caching in Scotland

GCF0 Scotland's First has been on our to-do list since 2007 when we noticed that a pair of local(ish) cachers had found it as their 800th cache.

The Mega Event being held in Perth gave us the excuse we needed to go to Scotland.
However, nothing's quite that straight forward with us.
The whole family were keen to climb Ben Nevis and while there we thought we may as well do GC1T7V1 Three Peaks Challenge Bonus

But! In order to do the TPC, we needed to visit GCY0N0 on Snowdon and GCWMVG Scafell Pike

We managed to do a day trip to Snowdon in April and we'd planned to visit Scafell Pike in June but a sudden bout of sickness in the family meant we had to call it off halfway up the M6!

So, the plan was revised: call in at Scafell on the way to Perth. Simple!

Wendesday 28th July: Left home and travelled up to Kendal arriving at caravan site at about
10pm

Thursday 29th July: Left caravan at site drove to Scafell Pike. Climbed Scafell and returned to the caravan via Hardknot Pass.

Scafell Pike Summit

View of Wast Water

Friday 30 July: Continued North into Scotland, set up camp at Milnathort before heading to the Mega In The Park event.

Saturday 31 July: Attended the very well organised Mega Scotland: The UK's 3rd Mega event with a few thousand other cachers!

Signal and friend...

Sunday 1st August: Continued North to a camp site near Crainlarich. We paid our site fee (an extortionate £20) and set up camp and headed up the road to GCF0 Scotland's First. This cache is insanely tough. We parked at the side of the road and followed a track about three quarters of a mile until heading straight up the hillside. The grass was very wet and it involved more or less crawling 0.6 of a mile up to GZ.
The cache is the original container and log book which makes it pretty special!

Ben More thataway!

 

View from GCF0

After arriving back at the caravan we decided that there was no point in staying there for the night so packed everything away and drove up to Fort William
This was a surreal journey; driving through The Highlands in the seemingly endless twilight and arriving at Glen Nevis at 23:30

Monday 2nd August: Got early, paid site fees and discussed the weather with the site staff. Although Ben Nevis was shrouded in cloud it looked like it was going to be a dry day.
The walk up Ben Nevis is a very long trudge of about five miles. Just as we reached the war memorial at the summit Steven recognised someone, it was delta123 from Holland whom we had met at the Mega in Perth!

Delta123 and Mr Delta68 on Ben Nevis

Pegz, Drempels and Mrs Delta68 at Ben Nevis summit

We now had all the information for the GC1T7V1 Three Peaks Challenge Bonus and we were very keen to find that one next. We found the cache easily enough but the container was very badly damaged so we bought a peach jar replacement from Morrisons and restocked it with a dry logbook and whatever we could salvage

Tuesday 3rd August: Seemed like a good nice idea to visit Inverness. Getting there took all day as we stopped to do caches by Loch Ness on the way. Once at Inverness, we realised that for the sake of another 20 mile drive we could colour in Aberdeenshire on the county map. We had no PQs for that area to had to rely on getting details with the iPhone and ended up doing Water of Life - Benromach - this being our new most Northerly cache ever. 95 miles from our caravan at Glen Nevis!!

Inverness

Wednesday 4th August: The plan: drive back down South and stop overnight in Cumbria.
Predictably, we decided to drive straight home! Yes, all 450 miles.
We did call in at Isn't That Nice! and a few other caches on the way though.

A great whistle-stop tour of Scotland and we would love to visit again sometime.

10 Years!

Mark:
About 30 seconds after reading about the unique icon that was on offer for special 1st of May events, we decided that we would hold one.

We initially planned to hold a pub event and arranged a venue but the following day decided to make it an open air affair in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I'd had an idea for a name for a Wherigo in Stratford for quite some time and decided to try and develop it in time for the event. Donna was less than impressed after a test run and advised on re-writing it. That done, it was tested and tweaked and then submitted for publication. We knew the final location was less than the mandatory minimum distance from one of our multis but we hoped it would be allowed as it is not possible to go in a straight line from one to the other. The reviewer rejected it so we appealed - after all, moving the final location would have meant yet more re-writing and testing. Luckily Miss Jenn approved it, Yay!

The 10 Years event itself was a great success!
The rain held off and an estimated 160 people attended including a trio from Slovenia who were in Stratford for the day, they'd bumped into Fun Loving Geocacher and he'd told them all about the event, how cool was that!

Nikiya and Nina and Beno from Slovenia

To encourage maximum 'mingling' we handed out bingo cards where the cachers had to track down other attendees who had accomplished one of the items mentioned.
Eg. Placed a cache in a foreign country, been caching for over five years, found a Locationless cache.

The questions carefully chosen with the names of those who had logged 'Will Attend' in mind so we knew all the squares would be able to be crossed off!
Three or four cachers had found a Locationless and one of them joked that he felt like a celebrity!

Group Photo

Our daughter Beth worked really hard making special geo-cakes and a special thanks to 104DaySummerVacation and Cakemaker for unexpectedly providing additional cakes - they were fabulous!

A truly enjoyable day that we’re sure we will remember for a long, long time