Mega Caching Day "Up North"

Having failed to bag a single cache on Saturday, and hence finishing my "cache a day" quest on 63 consecutive days, I was cheered up considerably by an excellent caching trip 90 miles north of Birmingham in the rolling hills of the Lancashire countryside, in the company of 8 other likeminded weirdos who like hunting for tupperware in bushes.

The team photo below, from left to right.................The Washers (Ron, Diane stayed in the car!), [Monki] (Ashley), Pete3 (Pete, obviously), Blue Nora (Nikki), Team Balders (Kev), yours truly, [MF]Taz (Lee), Graham1875 and AJIGeo (Alan).

Alan turned up with the height of fashion, a Tilly hat, so, not to be outdone, I got mine out of the boot of the cachemobile.

The day started at 5.15 am, when Nikki and Pete turned up at my house, and after a short diversion via Balders Manor, 4 of us were on the M6 headed for the rendevouz point at the reservoir.

Graham, as you can see from the photo, was sporting a fine pair of legs, despite there being a distinct chill in the air at 7.20am!

Our team were last to arrive (we stopped for a splash and dash at the services), and soon after we were on our way, heading in a vague southerly direction for our first cache of the day, then heading west on the Witton Weavers Way. We almost got ourselves lost on the first cache, but soon realised our error and we were soon bagging cache No.1 of the day.

After 11 hours we arrived back at the cars, after finding 1 Earthcache, 65 Letterboxes and 18 Traditional caches, a fine effort by all! We managed 3 DNF's in the day, 2 of which we think are still there....one we think has been muggled, but who knows...they're on the Watchlist for the time being to see if one cacher can succeed where 9 failed!

The terrain was tough in places, but worth it for the fine views along the Witton Weavers Way. Even Kev's one-liners didn't deter us from having a good time!

At one point (on a DNF) we were searching through the undergrowth when a couple came from nowhere, and Kev said "I knew we shouldn't have brought the damn lizard" and carried on searching. The couple moved on.....quickly.....

We even managed to see a couple of new born lambs....bless 'em!



After arriving back at the car, a very brief discussion was had about walking around the reservoir to bag another 15...... surprisingly no-one seemed that bothered, probably due to the fact that we had walked 23.1 miles thus far!

So, the 100 caches in a day eluded us all, and I'm not sure when the next opportunity will surface, not long I bet!

84 was a personal best for every one of us, so 9 people went on our way happy....but knackered.

After a good nights sleep, I decided to do a little light caching to stretch the muscles, especially as 8 new caches had been published within 2 miles of home while we were up north. I managed 4 finds and one DNF before the heavens opened and I headed for home.

I have the rest of the week off, so beating my record for caches in one month looks likely, and I might even break through the 2000 barrier before work beckons.

Caches found at time of posting.....1919.