Brummie Meet 7

Brummie Meet 7

Donna:
Attended our 7th Brummie meet this evening, an enjoyable evening talking to cachers old and new. During the evening a large group of us went out to to do Mumbo Jumbo's Box to Box.. multi. I wasn't really dressed for night caching and was completely frozen through by the time we got to the final but it was brilliant fun in a group, walking and talking and making new geo-friends along the way. The highlight was the look on the face of the Ticket Clerk as about 20 cachers all descended on Snow Hill Station.

Weston Under Wetherley

We popped out to Weston Under Wetherley today, a village just outside Leamington Spa. Parked up opposite the church and headed off to Giants Grave #1

A circular walk of just under 5 miles (including a couple of there and back detours) with 13 caches. An enjoyable walk in the autumn sunshine, only 1 stile which was dog proof but luckily we found an alternative route through a gate.

Three of the fields had cows and calves in and one of the fields had horses in in but they weren't any trouble at all, they must be used to walkers and dogs.

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!

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