‘We’re singing for England, ENGLAND’ but caching always comes before football!

This week we’ve seen England get off to a great start in the World Cup and the longest day of the year finally arrived.

Midsummer is always a time for merriment in our caching calendar as it means we’ve got more daylight hours to grab caches after work and we certainly did just that this week. 

As England kicked their first ball into Tunisia’s net, I was making my way to the Five Bells in Burwell to attend another great Flamingos and GCZ team event. 

Unusually for me I arrived early at ‘A not so quite Midsummer reality’ and began chatting to some familiar faces as well as a few new ones - although not entirely new as I’ve visited many of their great caches. As the evening progressed more and more cachers poured in, and it was great to chat about caches and series’ they’d recently completed and hints on how to solve some unfound local mystery caches. 

As always we got onto the topic of Despair Trap’s evil mysteries, and whilst sharing hints on a couple I’d solved, the new CO arrived and gave us a vague hint on one I hadn’t solved...I’ll be looking at that again soon. 

Talking of mystery caches, I finally ticked another long solved cache of my list this week Plasadda’s ‘Eat Now’ near Cambridge. Whilst doing some drive-bys after work around Shelford, Sawston and Whittlesford I remembered to pop to where I thought GZ was and was delighted that my puzzle solving skills hadn’t failed me, when I found the cache nicely tucked away. 

Whilst in the area I also grabbed a couple of village sign multis at Pampisford and Little Shelford, a Sidetracked cache at Great Shelford plus some innovative caches and hides around Sawston, including one just on the perimeter of the police station! I was half expecting a copper to come out and arrest me for acting suspiciously, but I’m guess they were all to busy eating their tea to bother with some strange woman on her hands and knees fumbling around the base of a pole! 

During the trip I also managed to grab the long overdue Cambridge Explorer 209 Challenge cache. We rarely look at Challenge caches, as we always think the requirements will be way to tough for us and we won’t qualify. However upon running the checker on project-GC.com a few weeks ago, we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had far exceeded the necessary finds in 105 grid areas. In fact we had collected caches in 199 - almost the full 209! Brilliant! 

After mistakenly missing the underpass under the pretty little railway bridge I back tracked and was finally at GZ. Clambering over the undergrowth...yes over... a quick search of the ivy covered tree revealed the decent sized cache and the log was soon signed.

With the longer light evenings we decided to head up into Norfolk and complete the Warren Walk series near Old Buckenham. It featured some very creative caches and hides, which we really enjoyed finding. From sticks and rocks to a striped pole with a tiny wee cache drilled into it, each find was exciting.

Our favourite was the final one. An idea we’d seen done before, but still very clever and easy to mistake as part of the fence. Bet it never gets muggled! We also picked up another church micro and a village sign before heading home for a very late tea. 

My other evening out this week was a solo one to Kirtling and Cowlinge, where some new green and orange dots had recently appeared on the map. Two more village signs were soon ticked off, along with two church micros...both of which brought the unexpected! 

At Kirtling I had the fright of my life when a frog leapt out at me as I lifted the brick to grab the cache. And at Cowlinge I was met by the beautiful sight of the unusual church tower, that looked like it belonged somewhere else. Just fantastic! 

Sadly I didn’t manage to grab the new War Memorial cache at Kirtling as a suited and booted chap was walking up the lane as I approached GZ. I carried on walking and hoped to grab it on my way back, but again as I neared GZ I suddenly realised he was behind me! Very odd...but maybe he thought that about me to! Might leave the return visit a little while.

Roll on next week and the start of Geocaching HQs souvenir challenge Hidden Creatures...how difficult have they made it? Will we get all 10 souvenirs? I can’t wait to find out!