A VERY BUSY MAY

Boscastle

A quick note about our blog:

I won't be updating this page regularly now as I've just started a new full-time job and this means I now have no time during the week for blog writing (but more money for caching trips ........ every cloud and all that ) so I'll now only be updating this page when I have the time.  I've really appreciated all the feedback and positive comments and I'm glad some of our trips have been inspiring to some of you.

So here's a summary of what we've been upto over the last couple of weeks:

Bedruthan Steps

Cornwall

We enjoyed a short break in Cornwall.  We haven't visited since 2009 so were really looking forward to our trip.  There have been a lot more caches published since our last trip too so we decided that on one of the days we would tackle as much of the Halo series as possible.  We decided to do the Southern loop and if there was time continue around the Northern loop.  As it happened the walk took us quite a bit longer than we'd first anticipated, mainly due to the fact that on the cache listing it says the complete walk is 21 miles when in reality just the southern loop we made to be 24 miles!  Also we were stopping frequently, thinking we had plenty of time, as there was so much to see en route.  The weather slowed us down too as it was mixed, hot sunshine one minute pouring down the next so waterproofs were going on and off and most of the terrain was quite hard going, a lot of road walking, bumpy bridleways and an awful lot of up-hills and down-hills.  At the end we were really glad to see the car as we were both very tired and our feet were very sore.  We completed the 24 miles in 13 hours.

But on the whole we had a fab time doing the walk, a real challenge but great fun.

Whilst doing the Halo series we walked through the little town of Fowey situated at the mouth of the River Fowey, a beautiful place with narrow streets, I spotted something in a shop window that I wanted to buy for Beth but it would've been impossible to carry it on our walk so we so we decided we'd return the following day to buy it and explore properly.  We got talking to the shop owner, they had come here from Northern Ireland in the early 90s, settled here and bought the shop and never looked back...... sounded idyllic and really got me thinking............

Mevagissey

For the rest of the time we concentrated on finding a few key caches on our to-do list - We found a few wherigos,  I'm not usually a big fan of them but since Mark's had his own Oregon I've started to enjoy them a little more - Out of all the ones we did this was our favourite White River Wherigo in fact out of all the ones we've ever done this is probably the best, it was really well thought out, a great story, humorous and a fantastic location for the walk. 

Pentewan Sands

Wirral

Our main reason for our trip to this area was to complete the Wirral Way caches.  A series of 80 caches plus extras along the Wirral Way, a walk which starts in West Kirby and follows the track bed of part of the former Birkenhead Railway route which closed in 1962, to Hooton.

We parked our car at Hooton Railway (80p for the day) then caught the train to West Kirby, changing at Hamilton Square.

Once at West Kirby you literally cross the road and start walking down the Wirral Way and back to the car.

We were so lucky with the weather, the sun shone all day and for once we didn't need to worry about carrying waterproofs.

Really enjoyed the walk, meeting lots of really friendly people along the way.  It's a really busy route so although all the caches were straightforward finds the tricky bit was waiting for gaps in the muggle traffic so that really slowed us down at times.

Great views to be had all along the route, then after 7 hours of walking we were back at Hooton and the car.  We made the route to be 14 miles altogether.

So for the rest of our stay in the area we did a couple of webcams, some Wherigos, a virtual and a trigpoint.

On our way home we stopped off at Tatton Park as there was a Wherigo we wanted to find in the grounds.  We had a great afternoon there, although we had to pay to park we were able to look around the gardens for free as we're National Trust members.

Then all too soon it was time to head back home after another fun-packed trip.

HUNGARY

Money!!!

Lake Tisza

Back in January, when we were booking our trips for the year, we were contemplating a return trip to Spain and Mark happened across a log by a previous cacher who mentioned Hungarian power-trails.  Intrigued by this comment, we had a look on the Geocaching map and spotted this one around Lake Tisza with 303+ caches.  We like to try and visit new countries whenever we can but had never really thought about visiting Hungary before but we though this would be a pretty good reason to go.  Within days we had flights, hotels and hire car all booked.

Tisza Balneum Thermal Hotel

Jó estét

In March there was a lot of Facebook chatter about May 4th Flash Mobs and as we knew we'd be in Hungary we decided to hold our own.  It can be tricky trying to get light sabres though customs these days so we had to decide on a different theme.   There is a statue of a girl holding a pigeon in the middle of Tiszafüred that Mark had spotted on Google Earth ....... and an idea started forming. Hmm... a flash mob where attendees brought along their own Origami pigeons as these would be easy to transport and construct.  Once published we asked elisoft, a Coventry based Hungarian caching friend to translate the page for us.

Lake Tisza Power Trail

This power trail sounds great:  over 300 caches set on a flat, cycle-able path around Lake Tisza.  Just look at the map! Yeah it’s a long trail but there’s always the option of nipping back across the bridge after #212 if it gets too much.

Our Cachemobile for the week

We flew out to Budapest from Stansted and collected the hire car. A brand new VW Polo with only 17km on the clock.  The drive to Tiszafüred was easy enough although some of the motorway wasn’t shown on TomTom.  We also assumed we would find a supermarket en route to grab a bite to eat. We found plenty of supermarkets but they were all closed! This was a bit puzzling until it eventually dawned on us that May 1st was a Bank Holiday! The hotel staff confirmed this a little later.

The next morning we hired a pair of bikes from the hotel and set off with the intention of finding as many caches as we could in the one day.  The trail started off well and we were making good progress – a find every two minutes.  Before long though, the caches were placed among the trees set back from the cycle path.  So, cycle 523ft..... hop off bike ...... walk down embankment through long grass 150ft...... locate cache (a lot of which were very high up in the trees) scribble on log book.......... traipse back up back to the bikes...... check for ticks!..... and repeat. It wasn’t all like this, some of the caches were placed by marker posts on the track but the majority required this extra 300ft walk.

Oh yeah I was wearing knee length shorts so the first glimpse of a tick understandably put me off walking through the long grass!  As the day warmed up the mosquitoes became more and more of a nuisance as well.  We very quickly realised that we had no hope of completing this in one go so after about 20 miles we decided to call it a day.

We'd made up our minds we wanted to see a bit more of the area during our stay than just the power trail, also find a few other cache types and find time to relax, after all this is supposed to be a holiday right?

So as much fun as it was finding lots of caches around the lake it all got a bit repetitive and we decided to head back to the hotel arriving just in time for another delicious buffet meal which we'd earnt after cycling 40+ miles!

Ecocentre

There are only six Letterbox Hybrid caches in the whole of Hungary and one of them is within Lake Tisza Ecocentre on the West side of the lake, luckily it was already on our list of places to visit so we didn't mind having to pay to access this one.  A really interesting place to visit with lots to see but unfortunately there were no English or German translations so we had no idea what we were looking at, interesting all the same.

We are always keen to find as many different cache types per country so now it was time to find a Multi.  Apart from a couple of nearby Multis on islands (requiring a boat), the next closest  was a  two-stage multi  in a village called Tard about 17 miles away.  If this had been 17 miles on a motorway it would have been no problem at all. Instead it was along some of the worst roads we have ever seen. The potholes are horrendous. All the locals appear to be used to them and just happily whizz along swerving around them; can be quite disconcerting when oncoming traffic appears to be aiming straight at us for no apparent reason.

Letterbox final

Another ‘interesting’ thing was the route TomTom directed us.  It appeared to be through an old military base with derelict buildings and overgrown concrete tracks (yes, this surface WAS actually better than the proper roads!) .  After a mile or two we felt very uncomfortable as we got deeper and deeper into remote countryside and when we ended up on an old runway we decided to turn around and find an alternative route.  Further research after returning home revealed that it was a former Russian reserve airbase.

The Multi in Tard started at a pair of very old cottages way off the beaten track, I won't say tourist track as I don't think it exists in that area.  We were content to just to take a photo from the roadside but an old lady insisted on showing us around and explaining how old the houses were and what it was like living there in the olden days etc, etc... or at least we think that’s what she was saying because we couldn’t actually understand a word!  At one point she dressed Mark up in a traditional outfit and we were beginning to wonder how we could get away or how much it was all going to cost us, I bought a hand-crafted traditional cross stitch bookmark from her and she didn't seem to want any payment so after quite some time we had to make our excuses about having to be somewhere else and we made our getaway.

Final location was in a graveyard.  One thing that was noticeable was that some of the gravestones had birth and death year dates as is usual but they also had the birth year of the living spouse!  Made it seem like they were eager to be able to add the final date.

Hotel Fuzfa

On Saturday, we hired some bikes from a hotel on the other side of the lake to do some more of the Lake Tisza Power Trail. This side was better than Thursday’s but as fate would have it 2000 other people thought it would be a nice day to cycle down that way as well.

Jó estét

Group Photo

We listed our flashmob event in March and had no ‘Will Attends’ until 30th April, we weren't really expecting many attendees due to the remote location but in the end there was one German, two English (us) and 15 Czechs . The event went far better than we could ever have hoped.  Most of the attendees had their Origami pigeons and we all posed next to the Girl with Pigeon statue for a group photo.  This is one of the best things about Geocaching, you can go somewhere 1,000 miles away from home and make friends with strangers instantly even when you can barely speak a common language.  A truly memorable event.

Here's a short, heavily edited video from the event...

In this part of Hungary hardly anyone can speak any English as German is their second language. We had done a bit of preparation by learning a few key Hungarian words and phrases but more often than not we had to speak German to be understood.

We checked out of our hotel Sunday morning straight after breakfast and headed to Budapest where we did a couple of Wherigos, a puzzle and two Virtual caches before heading to McDonalds and the Airport for our flight at 21:30 CET.  
 

Storks nesting on top of electricity poles

That was our 8 icons completed and a new country too.  We didn't spend too long in Budapest as it was very stressful driving in the city as it was so busy with tourists but it was nice to see the sights.

Another very intensive, character building, caching trip.

Back to Belgium

Back to Belgium ( by Mark)

We were keen to do the Brugge Mega event as soon as we saw it published last year but as it got closer, due to other commitments, we realised it was going to have to be a flying visit and probably just me on my own.  I was also really keen to increase the number of cache types in France as we’d only found four different types.

There is only one Letterbox Hybrid within fairly easy reach of Calais and even that one is a 40 mile drive. OK, so I decided to do it. Now to identify an easy Multi and a Puzzle. No problem with a puzzle because there are quite a few Challenge caches in the area for which we already qualified. Next  a  Multi. A lot of Multis in the area have a lot of stages but I managed to identify two which were very short. One of them was in Calais and it was possible to solve it beforehand. I emailed the owner who very kindly confirmed that I had the correct final co-ordinates but unfortunately  it would not be accessible at half past one in the morning. Half past one?  Oh, didn’t I mention that?  I was planning to catch the Eurotunnel at 23:30 arriving in Calais at 01:15. Plan B for the Multi was La plaine au bois, a straightforward 'read a plaque and go to the final location'.  It was possible at 2am albeit a little creepy!

After finding the Multi I headed towards the start point for the Letterbox but this was to be a 3.5km walk so I decided to park in the middle of the little town of Herzeele and get some sleep for  a couple of hours and arrived at the start point at 06:00.  The instructions are in Dutch and French and although I put them through Google Translate, they still didn’t make much sense so I had contacted the cache owner explaining that my Dutch & French wasn’t very good so could they send me the final co-ordinates.  They sent me an English version of the text instead!  Oh well, it was worth a try.  Even this version didn’t seem to make much sense so I was a little apprehensive especially as the cache hadn’t been found for ten months.  In the end it was all very straight forward and had no problems at all.

The Puzzle I’d selected was no problem at all. I then realised that the route to Brugge took me within a few miles of Tyne Cot.  This is a virtual cache at the First World War cemetery which our daughter Pegz had actually done a few years ago while on a school trip.  She was not best pleased when I texted to tell her where I was as never misses an opportunity to tell us that she had found a cache that we hadn't.  Oh well she'll just have to go and find another then!

Now to head to Brugge and the Mega.

I’d made a list of caches I wanted to do in Brugge.  Mainly 7 Icons Challenge cache which you needed to find caches of seven different cache types and the cache itself all in one day.  I thought this was a really clever way of side-stepping the usual ‘previous finds must be allowed’ rule!

The list of caches consisted of the Multi, a Letterbox and Puzzle listed above plus I had  a ‘spare’ French Multi and Puzzle lined up just in case.  I’d decided on an EarthCache and Wherigo in the middle of Brugge so I decided to take my trusty mountain bike with me.  

Brugse Beer is in its third year and in this short space of time has grown to Mega status so has more in common with Piratmania back home than the other 'UK Mega Events' which were designed to be big from teh start.  Arrived at the Mega, and after chatting to some other cachers headed  into Brugge to do the cycle Wherigos and the EarthCache.  The Wherigos were hard work but made a very nice tour of the town. 

I then returned to the car, found the 7 icon Challenge cache and went to do a new Wherigo about 15 miles away.  This was a really pleasant walk in a lovely little village of Bekegem. Now back to a McDonalds for the short evening Event - that's definitely a first, never been to an event at a Maccys before. I  hadn’t planned to do any more caches but I spotted Het Gele Bussie  in the car park. This a moving cache in the shape of a VW campervan.

All too soon it was time to leave and head back to Calais.  I actually arrived at Calais just in time to catch the earlier crossing and was soon back in England arriving home at 00:30

Some numbers: 29 hours from home to home,  610 miles and 15 caches!

We have now found seven cache types in France and ten in Belgium!

A Bike Ride Around Redditch

Redditch Ring

His 'n' Hers

A circular route around Redditch in Worcestershire consisting of 39 caches.  The whole route is bike friendly as it follows bus routes and cycle paths. 


As soon as we saw this series published a couple of weeks ago we thought it would be perfect to do on our bikes, so we pencilled it onto the calendar for this weekend as it finally looked like Spring was going to arrive!

Bartleet Fountain

The series takes you through Redditch Town Centre and if you stop off to do the Church Micro at St Stephen's Church you will see The Bartleet fountain which is an interesting piece of history as it was presented to the town in 1883 by Mr Bartleet, a prominent figure in the local needle and fishing tackle industry, to commemorate the town's new fresh water supply.  It's made of cast iron by the Coalbrookdale company in Shropshire.  It was extensively restored in 2003 by a specialist company using historical records.  The team made  carvings and castings in order to reproduce damaged or missing components and to reinstate original details which had been lost through corrosion.

On the series you will pass some very decorative bus shelters and most of them are part of a Bus Art cache series.

Bus Art

We met the Hardy Clan on the way round and also spotted StormyStorm's cachemobile so think Butttercup and Stormy must've been out on the series somewhere.

Is that a cachemobile?

If you stick to the series it's 8.5 miles but we took in a few detours along the way for additional caches so we made it nearer to 12 miles.

Cenotaph

All the caches were fairly straightforward to find with good hints where necessary.

An enjoyable bike ride on a beautiful Spring day.

Redditch Ring

An Easter Break in West Sussex

Happy Easter

Back in January we were planning our time off work for the year and decided it was about time for another trip to West Sussex as it's been a couple of years since our last visit.  So we checked out the prices for Travelodge and decided to book a stay in Horsham for Easter from Weds-Sun.  We'd enjoyed our stay there before as the rooms are large and modern, the location is central to the places we want to visit and not as expensive as the coastal Travelodges.  Also there's free overnight parking only a short walk away (as long as you are out before 8am).

All the plans were in place and Easter was getting closer but then our daughter came down with shingles a few days before and our yellow lab Whisper got an eye ulcer and was having to have medication 3 times a day - so it started to not look very hopeful for our trip to go ahead and we decided maybe it was best to cancel.  After a few days our daughter was starting to feel much better and right up to Wednesday tea-time we were unsure whether to go ahead but our son was at home and he insisted we go promising to ring us straight away if we needed to come home and that he'd medicate Whisper and sister as required (hmm in a bit of a hurry to get rid of us, very suspicious!)  So after tea on Wednesday night we headed down to Horsham, arriving at our room around 11pm.

What are those strange yellow symbols for?

The forecast for Easter was for freezing cold temperatures but dry and some sunny spells.  Well it certainly was cold, up on the more exposed areas on the South Downs the wind was bitterly cold but the sun did put in an appearance a couple of times and we were treated to a couple of very nice sun rises and sunsets.

Sunset on Shoreham Beach

During our 4 day break we found many great caches and passed our 13,000th milestone!

13,000th Cache!

Here are the main series that we did:-

Wiston Wobble -

A series of 68 caches on approx 12 mile walk.  A really enjoyable walk, all caches were easy to find with good hints, the only downside of the series was a short section did involve walking along a very busy road but luckily this was only for part of the series and on the whole it was set on good paths and only quiet roads.

Sullington Heights -

A circular walk of just over 3 miles with 18 caches plus a bonus.  Quite a steep climb up to the top of Sullington Hill and then back down again.  Fab views to be had from the top, we can imagine they'd be even better on a clear day.

Findon Sheep Fair -

A 40 cache (plus a few others) circular walk of approx 10 miles which includes the Winsome Church Hill Series.  Another great walk on good paths, some road walking but all were quiet roads.  All caches were really straightforward with good hints.

Winsome Church Hill -

We did this one with the Findon Sheep Fair series so we did it as part of a 10 mile walk.

13 caches plus a couple of others.  On our way round the walk we met a man that was looking for his dog, he looked quite upset, we're not sure how long he'd been searching but he looked exhausted.  We kept our eye out on the rest of the walk for the brown spaniel but didn't see it.  A while later we'd repositioned the car a couple of miles away to do the series in Clapham Woods and when we returned to the car a woman called over to us asking if we'd lost our dog, she was holding a brown spaniel on a lead - she was waiting for someone to come and collect it as she'd found it!! We were so pleased to hear the dog had been found as it had been playing on my mind after we'd met the man - I know only too well that feeling when your dogs run off and you can't find it anywhere!  Not nice!  .... Anyway, we really enjoyed the walk, all on good paths with caches easy to find.

Clapham Woods -

18 caches plus a couple of others on a circular walk of approx. 3 miles. A pleasant walk, all caches were easy to find apart from #1 which seems to be missing and all paths were good and well marked.

Crazy Crossings around Crossbush -

We realised we'd found 84 caches today so another 16 would make a nice round 100 before tea.  Spotted this series of 16 and thought it looked ideal.  It was a bit further than we'd estimated by looking at memory map, we made it to be 4.3 miles but all caches were easy to find.  An enjoyable walk in the evening sunshine

This blue sky has not been photo-shopped!

D2D -

A series of 48 caches plus others on the way - set on a 10 mile circular walk.

The cache is there somewhere!

This one was probably our favourite of the trip, mainly for the views and places of interest along the way.  Although as we set off across the South Downs in the bleak cold wind we wondered if we'd made the right decision.  All the caches were easy to find and the paths were all good.

Henfield Hike -

A 16 caches series set on approx 4 miles.  An enjoyable walk in lovely countryside which involved walking through a deer park.  Unfortunately the series isn't very well maintained and we didn't realise until we'd set off that quite a few of the caches had had DNFs and nearly all the log books were in need of replacing as they were soaking wet.  A funny story......
When we got back to the car I took off my gaiters and walking boots and got into the car to change out of my muddy trousers before heading off to find somewhere to eat for tea. Guess what?  About two miles down the road I realised that I had left my boots, socks and gaiters in the car park! Luckily, they were still there when we got back Well... it's easily done: it must be; it's not the first time this has happened.... Unfortunately it's not the second time either.............

Walliswood Wander -


This was our last walk of our break and weather-wise was probably the best day.  Finally it felt like Spring.  A very pleasant walk through pretty woodland.  All caches were easy to find with good hints, apart from a couple of tricky ones along the way but that just helped keep things interesting.  Don't be put off by the cows they were safely behind a fence.  All the paths were good and well marked.

The area really is fabulous for caching.  All the walks we did were on good paths, none of them involved trudging through cowfields and any livestock we did come across was suitably fenced in.  A few of the paths we walked on were designated bridleways so were a little hard-going in places but nothing too serious, the scenery and views in the area are just stunning!  There are many Church Micro caches and we managed to find 12, lots of great old churches to visit in the area.

Buncton Chapel

Our favourite of the Church Micros we did was All Saints Church at Buncton.  A delightful little chapel that was accessed only by foot via a winding wooded path up a hill to a secluded building.

The only way you knew it was there was by the small sign on the roadside.

Shoreham beach at dusk

On the Thurs and Fri evenings, after tea, we went down to Shoreham and Lancing to do some of the excellent seafront caches along the promenade.  Really enjoyable walks along the promenade but at one point we realised we'd walked 2 miles in one direction so had a 2 mile walk back to the car!

My only complaint is that the time went too fast and before we knew it we were heading back home.......... hmm, hope everything is still in one piece.

STOP PRESS:  Daughter well on the mend now and Whisper has been back to the vets this morning and the vet is very pleased with her progress.... and house all in one piece!

Whisper on the mend