Pen Y Fan 3 Peaks!

Saturday seemed to be the only day of the short weekend that would provide some half decent weather, so we headed off for the Brecon Beacons for a bracing stroll up the hills.

The main target was Pen-Y-Fan, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons, and the highest point in southern England....and of course a few caches, including a nice Earthcache, which are sadly under-represented on my caching profile.



We parked up to the north, and started to make our way up Cefn Cwm Llwch, with the summit nowhere in sight. After half an hour of plodding ever upwards, the summit came into view.

After a good 90 minute slog up the slope, we arrived at our goal, and grabbed the first cache of the day, a virtual at the summit.



We then headed off to the nearby Corn Du, just a tad lower at 873m (13m lower than Pen-Y-Fan) and grabbed Tommy Jones, a sad cache commemorating a 5 year old boy who got lost on the hills and died in 1900.

We then made our way back up to Pen-Y-Fan, and down Craig Cwm Sere and up to Cribyn, after doing SWMCC 4 and bumping into some fellow geocachers (Capt Rico & Crew) on a trip up from Cornwall.



After doing the Earthcache at Cribyn, we enjoyed the views for a few minutes, then started to make our way back down to the car, and completed a 9 mile circular walk in just under 5 hours.

Great fun.

Caches found at time of posting......2408.

An Odd Statistic?

Like many geocachers, I use GSAK to manage my database of caches, and also use the excellent FindStatsGen macro to put all manner if useful (and indeed useless) statistics on my profile page at GC.com.

I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to things like this, and I find myself reviewing the stats almost every day, in fact, every time I find a cache, I update my stats page almost immediately!

Anyway, I was looking at it earlier today and spotted something a bit strange....but true.

It appears that I don't do much caching between 40 and 50 miles from home. Although I have found 445 caches in the 50-100 mile range, and 169 in the 30-40 mile range, I seem to have managed only 25 caches (1.04% of my total finds) between 40 and 50 miles from home.

It certainly not because of a lack of caches to find, there are hundreds of them!

Caches found at time of posting......2387.

Wet in Wales

Despite the appalling weather forecast, Julie and I jumped in the cachemobile early on Sunday morning and headed for Mid-Wales...Newtown to be precise.

At the last minute, Julie's son Jon, and his girlfriend, Anna, decided to tag along. Anna was quite excited about the prospect of find "treasure"; I told her not to get her hopes up!

After an uneventful one and a half hour car drive, we arrived in Newtown just about 10.00am, and it wasn't raining.

I had a string of 6 caches pretty much in a line heading north-east from Newtown along part of the the Severn Way (which, incidentally, does not appear to be on the Garmin Topo map of the UK....).

First up, Hendidley 2 (The "Organite" Cache), which is a fairly new cache, with a few recent finds. Four of us failed miserably, but there was a rope swing for us to play on!



We managed to find the rest of the caches without diffculty, and even managed to dodge the odd short shower.

Jon and Anna were surveying the route back to Newtown as it started to rain.



Near to the end, the heavens opened, and we were all soaked through by the time we got back to the car, so we abandoned the idea of grabbing the 3 caches near the town centre, and started to make our way home.

An enjoyable few hours nonetheless, with some good views along the way.



Caches found at time of posting......2387

Brummie Meet 4

I attended Brummie Meet 4 on Wednesday night, the fourth (obviously) meeting of like-minded lunatics we've held.



A top night was had by all, and I managed to behave myself at this one after the furore at the last one.....for those of you who don't know what happened....this is my log from Brummie Meet 3 on the 4th of March this year......

Well, what an evening that turned out to be. It started off with great beer, great chat and the usual great people.

At 10.20, there was only a few of us left, and I offered to get some drinks. The barmaid kindly informed me that due to an "IT" error (I suggested turning it off and turning it back on again), they couldn't serve beer, so I asked to see the manager. He came out (actually a scruffy chav walked out), and it was soon established that they could in fact serve beer, but he wasn't prepared to let me have any as the till wasn't working. He then went off into a rather long monologue about "my job's not worth it" (*which was of little interest, I just wanted a pint!). I offered to give him the correct money, or a bit more, to cover the cost of the drinks so that he could sort it out later. This didn't appear to acceptable to him, so I told him what I though of the service and made my way back to the safety of the allotted cachers area, only to turn around and find that the "manager" (I use the phrase loosely) had followed me and was obviously looking for an argument....so I obliged by giving him an argument!!!!

After a rather loud altercation in the middle of the pub, he asked me to leave, I didn't. After saying my goodbyes to the remaining cachers, Mark (the evenings non-cacher) and I decided to retire to a more customer-focussed establishment nearby. After calming down somewhat (another beer always helps!), the door swung open and in walk AJIGeo, The Strangler and Mumbo Jumbo!

More geochat for a while, then off home!

Aplogies to anyone who witnessed the "events", although I rather think you all found it somewhat entertaining!

Apologies also to Mark (who obviously won't be reading this) and to Harry the Furry Squid, for whom I was unable to buy a drink!

I also appear to have inherited the log book, and am now responsible for organising Brummie Meet 4. I fear we may have to look for yet another venue, as I may be barred from Bennetts! I've been to Bennetts many times over the years, and sadly it doesn't appear to be the place it used to be, which is rather sad as the beer was very good, and the company fantastic as usual.
Thanks to mj and The Strangler for organising it, a fun night in more ways than one!

T4TE. Stokesy.

Nifty Little Web Page

Stumbled upon this page a few weeks ago, it's now my home page!

It basically gives you links to all the frequently used areas of the GC.com website, and allows you to search for caches, TB's and other players.

On the right hand side, you can add links to any website you like, almost like a "favourites list", so I've added in things like Wikipedia (perfect for the puzzle caches), an anagram solver, It's Not About the Numbers (for the UK map facility), plus a few other useful links.

Love it.

Not a Pain in The Butt!

I completed a nice cache today, Butt where's the cache? (Worcs), a puzzle cache with a D5/T1 rating, which was on my list as it filled another little hole in the D/T grid.



The puzzle itself is to find the instructions on the cache listing....they are there, honest!

Got myself to GZ, and then had to complete a bit of a multi-cache puzzle to get the final coords, and after a short and pleasant walk along the river, a nicely hidden cache awaited me.

One of the best multi/puzzle caches I've done for quite some time, and I've now got 65 of the 81 D/T boxes ticked.

Caches found at time of posting.....2365.

A Great Weekend's Caching!

We took advantage of the (occasionally) good weather again this weekend, and got out and about.

On Saturday, we went to Maidwell (which is right at the top of Northamptonshire) to do 2 series in a figure of 8 walk of about 8 miles. The series were A Scenic Trail, and a nameless series of caches nearby which was toy animals with a micro container wedged in them.

Due to a lack of forward planning on my part, we end ed up stumbling into the middle of the Scenic Trail Series, and suddenly realised that 6 of the first seven caches contained a number for calculating the whereabouts of the 8th cache.....oh dear....

A quick look at the map, and it seemed that we could find 4 of the numbers before getting to the area we thought the bonus cache would be, so off we went.

After getting 4 numbers, I had a stab at the other two (I actually got one correct!) but it didn't help find the cache, as the clue was "base of tree" and well, err, there were lots of trees.

So, we decided to continue on and find the rest of the caches, then come back for the Bonus cacge, which added another 2 miles to the walk, so at the end of the day, we covered 10 miles rather than the planned 8.

A good day out nevertheless!

We woke up on Sunday (Julie's birthday, so I took her caching as a treat, well, I thought it was a treat, she wasn't so sure).

At first we headed towards Ashby-de-la-Zouch to do one of 2 series of caches with no info on container, and no hint, so I'd mentally prepared myself for a frustrating day. However, as we neared Ashby, the weather turned and pouring rain came in and seemed to be set for a while, so we decided to about turn and drive 40 miles to Telford in Shropshire to do a new series (published last night) in Granville Country Park. A total of 19 new caches, and 4 older ones, gave us plenty to go at.....and all "regular" size boxes too...what a treat!!!!

We spent the 2nd half of the series in the company of Snerdbe (Des and Bren), and came away with 21 finds in all.

A truly excellent series of caches over some beautiful countryside, although the terrain ratings on some of the caches listings seemed a little on the low side!

We also bumped into The Washers near the end, as they were just starting at 5pm!

Caches found at time of posting....2333

A Review of Caching in June

Not as productive a month as April and May in terms of numbers, but not a bad month in many respects.

I’ve had a couple of enjoyable days up in the Peak District, including a few on Kinder Scout to add some ticks to the D/T grid, now I’ve got 63 combinations completed ot of 81.

I’ve also compiled a list of potential caches for the “unticked” combinations and will be making a special effort to get more done over the coming months.

Highlight of the month was a superbly organised event “Summer in Sambourne”, thanks to AJIGeo and The Webbies for organising it, and the superb weather.

I managed to bag 6 FTF’s on the day, along with a group of cachers….The Strangler, Delta68, Stevo185 to name but a few.

A FTF later in the month equalled my record of 7 FTF’s in a calendar month; I was hoping to beat it, but sadly it was not to be.

Plans are now well underway for September and my week away caching with the dog. I’ve booked the campsites. First stop is Graffham, which luckily (deliberately) is in the middle of a 15 mile circular route containing the 72 cache Sussex Amble series. Second stop is the Isle of White, where Graham1875 will be joining me to grab a few of the 107 caches on the island. Then finally it’s off the Cornwall for 3 days for some R&R caching before heading home to log all the finds!

During June, I’ve done a couple series of note:

Fairbrook Naze – brilliant series along the Kinder plateau
A Quarry Caper – 14 caches in the Peak District

Let’s hope the weather holds for July, as I’m planning a return to the Mega Series in Hampshire to get that finished!

I couldn't add any links into this post as the GC.com website appears to be down at the moment (lots of GAGB forum activity though, seems no-one has anything else to do!)

Caches found at time of posting….2292.

FTF!

Bagged myself an unexpected FTF last night.

Superted has been hiding one or two short multi's in Coventry's parks, and I was going that way anyway to finish off a couple, and during the afternoon a new one got published, so although it had been published for 4 hours, I thought I'd try my luck (4 hours around here normally gets at least a couple of finds!).

Nice park, and a nice hide despite it being a micro, although the park was populated with "youths" who were effing and blinding despite there being alot of small children around....

Anyway, found a blank log book, and went on to do 3 more multi's in the area for a nice walk with the geomutt.

Caches found at time of posting.....2292

Blogging from my iPhone

I've just set up my blog account so that I can blog just be sending an
email, how cool is that?

This means I can blog at will even when I don't have the PC or laptop
and a good Internet connection!