Furthest I have walked for ages.

Today I went to the River Hull near Tickton and walked firstly down the wrong side of the river for about half a mile before I realised the GPS was wrong.  So I turned round and crossed the bridge and off I went (again!).

I was on a bit of a mission because dark was drawing in and wanted to do both caches on the right side of the river.  Weather is still feeling like -50 C and snow covers the land.  GC1J8EQ The Mint with the Hole another cache by Busy Lissy Bunch.  I have found their caches great to do and a bit of a challenge.

 Mint with a Hole GZ was getting dark.

I set off further down the banks of the River Hull to GC1TMQF Rainbow Series: Blue Cache which I found easy but took me a minute or two to get out of the snug hole it was in.

My first of the Rainbow series.

The rainbow cache also brought me to take my first ever trackable!  A really cool heart shaped coin that originated from Germany and has travelled about 3500 miles.  So all I have to do is move it on.  Not sure where but I will do in the next few days.

Here is a picture of the cool trackable.

In total I have done about 4 miles today which is a lot longer than I have walked for ages!  Soon I will be up to marathon status!

GC1VAEP - Not Another Busy Bridge I also tried to get this cache again today with extra information from Busy Lissy Bunch.  But I fear its been muggled.  I have sent pictures to them to see if its true or to see if I am still off!

Good Old Memories

When I was younger I grew up in a town called Beverley in East Yorkshire.  Every Christmas I come back to stay with family and I thought it would be a great idea to get a few caches in.  So yesterday I was looking on the Geocaching website for the area and saw a few on Swinemoor which is old pasture land that I used to run on when warming up for my boxing session that I used to do in a nearby unit round by the river.  I also wanted to test out my new Welly Bobs that I got for Christmas.  I was accompanied by my Uncle who said he was interested in having a walk and seemed interested to do a little Geocaching.  So we aimed to do both on Swinemoor.  We parked up and went to the first one GC1VAEP - Not Another Busy Bridge but a few muggles walking their four legged friends pushed us on to go for the second one.  GC1K36M - Ancient Pastures - Swinemoor an easy find after we waited for more muggles to disappear.  The memories from this place flooding back.  We used to fish off the side of what I have always known as Bricky Bridge.  And used to come here and mess about all of the time.

A COLD view from Bricky Bridge

So logged the visit and then back to the first where a big fat DNF was in order.  With a difficulty rating of 4/5 the amount of logged DNF's is almost as much as finds.  We spent about 30 mins looking for this one and the clues didn't help us much as still no find.  I sent an email the Busy Lissy Bunch who are the owners of both caches.  Not so long later I had a reply!  With further clues I am hoping to return today.  Will keep you posted on this, want to get this as we are due a load more of the white stuff tonight.

A big thank you to the Busy Lissy Bunch who brought me back to a place with such good memories.

Snow Caching 2!

Two days in a row for me caching which is very rare, in fact I am not sure I have done it two days running.  You can see I have the bug!  Went to Towneley Park in Burnley today, the snow still on the ground but this time I had my big boots on instead of trainers which seemed very silly to be wearing yesterday.  We attempted two caches but only managed one of them as the snow was covering the other we think.  The second was in a tree so it was an easy find and for all weathers. This cache was located on the Towneley Sculpture Trial.  GC1P7FD - Towneley Sculpture Trail.  Although a lot of the sculptures are a few years old now and not looking in top condition there are still a few nice ones:

Crocodile carved into tree.

Its well worth a walk round there, only takes an hour to go down most of the paths and around all of the woodlands.

Here is another cool carving.

Over the festive period it looks like most of the country will be hit with snow so no doubt more Christmasy Pictures soon!

Snow Caching!

Jacaru recently posted a few pictures on his blog of the snowy weather (see his blog by clicking the link on the right).  We had quite a bit of snow during the night and we had already planned going out to find a few caches near Lorna's parents in Worsley.  So we thought that so many people have done a bit of snow caching why should it stop us?  We got the GPS fired up and camera and off we went.  A picture postcard as some might say, the snow still fresh and not yet turned to the dreaded ice, off down Worsley canal we went to pick up GC29ERE - This Daughter Likes To Live In The Fast Lane.  Its very clever how this cache came about as it is a daughter cache of GC15RYZ - The Mother Cache.  Basically if you find The Mother Cache you can then set up a Daughter cache.  This one we found today was the 61st Daughter.  Check out the Mother Cache as it has a full list of all new caches set up from it!  Here we are on our way down to the cache:

Beautiful walk today.

We then went on to do our second Earthcache which was close by.  Really nice place, again alone the canal.

That's frozen water would you believe?

GC1MVFW - The Canal Duke's Legacy was a nice interesting find.  Had to do a little research to find the answers but that's the fun of it!  I would never have known there was 4 types of coal if it wasn't for this.  A good days caching but I couldn't feel my toes by the end of the walk.  We did attempt another but the cold got the better of us and we gave in very easily.  Will return to that when the snow has cleared!

Earthcache Coins

As promised when my Earthcache coins arrive I will post a picture of them.  I posted before about the Official Earthcache Banner competition I entered and came 3rd.  Here are the magnificent trackable coins that I won.

Brilliant coins!

They are trackable coins but I won't be releasing these into the wild!  I do plan on getting the display case as well to put them in but that will probably be in the new year.

My First Earthcache!

Last night I went to my works Christmas do and got a little drunk.  I woke up today with a major headache.  After a few paracetamol's and back to bed for a few hours I was faced with a big decision.  Either I could go do the weekly food shop with my girlfriend or I could go out and do a little Geocaching.  As you can imagine I choose to find a cache!  Its been over a month since I found my last as we have had something on most weekends, also the snow has stopped us and work during the daytime.  So I had planned to get my first Earthcache as I recently came third for designing the official Earthcache banner.

So not too far away from home I drove to the spot, parked up and off I went.  This is the first time I got to use the new GPS as well.  I have to admit the car park was 5 minutes walk to the cache, nothing too strenuous with the hang over I have today.  GC1JN6E - Boulder Dash a great place for a cache in the grounds of Towneley Hall.  I plan to return to get the other few in the grounds.  It was getting a little dark for me to be going into the woods.  Love the added challenge to not only find the cache but to answer the questions as well.

Here is the cache with GPS as was instructed!

Glad I got this one done today as another type of cache to add to the list.  I was made up when the GPS said "Well done your first find!" and then it said "Well done your first Earthcache!".  Although the first isn't true it is the first find with the GPS.

UK Caching Mileage 2011

Jacaru on the GAGB forums came up with a brilliant idea to log all of our miles in 2011 and have a little fun competition between us.  The idea is to register a coin on January 1st 2011 and then log the coin as visited to each cache you find.

I said I would like to graph each week for a running total of each persons miles.  The graph is still a work in progress but I would like to include the total miles, weekly miles (to see who got the most in that week), monthly miles (again to see who did best for the month).  The rules on this are still been confirmed but if you fancy joining in click HERE to view the thread on GAGB forums.

Here is what the weekly graph could look like:

GAGB Coin

I got my new coin the other day and its a very nice coin indeed!  My first trackable, but this isn't going to be let loose in the wild, I will be using this for the fun UK Mileage Competition.  More about that later.  Here is the coin.

 GAGB Coin

To order a coin for yourself click HERE to go to the GAGB coin page.

Earthcache Banner Competition

Some of you may have seen the Earthcache Banner Competition on Groundspeak over the last few weeks.  A good few entries where submitted.  I tried my hand at this and created a design:

Well the results where published yesterday and I came a very respectable 3rd place.  I won a set of Earthcache coins which are on the way as we speak (more of them when they arrive!).  Geoaware from the Earthcache team said over 600 people voted in total.  A very BIG well done to Jokergil and MJSDB who came first and second respectively.  For more details check out the thread on Groundspeak by HERE or check out the official Earthcache site HERE.

New GPS

Okay so I have got a new GPS!  Finally.  Not managed to use it yet but will be sure to give you all a review when I have had a chance to get out in the field.  Not looking likely this side of Christmas I will admit due to a hectic Christmas schedule.  Anyway here is a little picture of the Megellan eXplorist GC which is a GPS dedicated to Geocaching.

On first glance it seems really good.  I hope this helps me to find many caches over the coming years!

A few of our first finds.

Okay so I know I am doing catch up on my new Blog as I have been Caching for a few months now.  To be honest with this bitterly cold weather not much Geocaching is been done anyway!  With a total of 11 finds, I am not winning anything in terms of numbers.  I have to add this is with no GPS though.  All 11 are traditional caches  (even though 1 is showing as multi it was a stand alone cache.)


One of our first caches was GC1A6X3 Towpath Trek - Hapton  a really nice walk down the canal that runs at the back of where we live.

 

Here we are near Ground Zero.

My favourite find to date is a cache located in North Cave in East Yorkshire GC2CMFA -Underneath the Arches - North Cave  # 1.  I grew up in a town called Beverley not far away from here and my grandfather lived in North Cave before he passed away.  His house where my Auntie, Uncle and three younger cousins now live is near by this cache.  North Cave where I visit often  has a little walk that we take the dogs down, down the side of North Cave Beck.  I have walked past this cache no less than a hundred times before discovering Geocaching.  An easy find but a nice one that reminds me of my Grandfather every time I think about it.  Max loved this one too!

Team Claret Tigers

Myself and girlfriend Lorna decided it would be fun to create a team name.  After many different suggestions, some a bit daft,  some a bit boring, some probably not going to be appreciated by a cache owner when reading their logs, we came up with Team Claret Tigers.  So why this name?  Basically Lorna is a season ticket holder for Burnley FC and they have the nickname The Clarets, on the other hand I am a fan of Hull City (close to where I am originally from) and their nickname is The Tigers, so it seemed fitting to mix the two and come up with Team Claret Tigers.  After the name was agreed I set out to create a logo for our newly formed team.  Any log we sign will either be signed Team Claret Tigers or Fermentum if I am on my own.  I always try and mention it on the log on the website so that it doesn't cause confusion!

Welcome to my new blog!

Hello all,

I found out about Geocaching not so long ago and decided that I would love to tell everyone about my experiences.  In this Blog I hope to share my finds, stories, hints and tips that I pick up along my journeys.

Please feel free to become a follower of my Blog

Hope you enjoy reading!