June: One Hundred and Eighty...& we’re not talking darts

With 180 finds this month it has proved to be our best month of the year so far! And that was in spite of the searing high 20s temperatures and a little game with a ball that the whole world seems to be going crazy over! 

We’ve visited around 30 different places this month in pursuit of caches, grabbing 13 village signs and 10 church micros along the way. From Great Buckingham in Norfolk, to Saxon Street in Suffolk, Needingworth in Cambs, to Saffron Walden in Essex, and Sandon in Herts. Plus we’ve bagged another 3 Sidetracked caches - Brandon,  Newport and Shelford, as well as three more Fine Pairs and three Little Bridges.

We’ve been freaked out by black panther like beasts in Brandon, and jumped at two toads that have taken up residence in caches at Sandon and Kirtling. We were followed by a strange suited and booted man also in Kirtling and got completely lost trying to find a cache in Saffron Walden Town Hall that wasn’t actually there!  

We’ve battled with field puzzles including the brilliant Big Bad Wolf Fairytale Fiasco that had me thinking I needed a special tool. All seemed lost until I began turning the little bolt realising that was the only way to release the key and unlock the cleverly crafted box. 

We’ve had fun running around doing more Wherigos - completing an excellent one in Saffron Walden,  half starting another in Needingworth and making a complete mess of Newport’s Postman’s Nightmare. It really did turn into a nightmare as I and my 70 year old slightly clueless mother ended up searching some poor unsuspecting Newport resident’s garden fence - the wrong one entirely! 

  

I found my social butterfly side too, but mainly in a bid to miss the tension and noise of two England World Cup games. I attended the brilliant A Not Quite Midsummer Night’s Reality at a now very familiar pub in Burwell and the Mardle #44 Summer Picnic in the lovely forest at Santon Downham. 

  

We’ve grabbed and discovered a fair number of TBs this month too and completed our first War Memorial earthcache at Wicken, which had me in stitches as DannyJGB pulled various amusing faces as I tried to snap us at GZ. We even found a cache at 11pm - our latest and darkest find to-date - as we left A-Ha’s brilliant gig at Cambridge Abbey Road Stadium and picked up the Museum of Technology cache on our way home.

We got caught up in some of the local town’s and village’s regular, annual and unusual events. These included Saffron Walden’s rather tempting International Food Festival, the rock and roll of NFest - - Needingworth’s music festival -and two wheeled Tuesday at Old Buckenham, which seemed to involve lots of leatherclad motorcyclists showing off their roaring engines and noisy exhausts!  

There was even the close call at The Old Ferry Boat Inn, in Holywell, where a thirst quenching drink stop wasn’t to be due to ‘a major police incident’ earlier that morning, so the sign on the door said. I dread to think what went on there, but was rather relieved we weren’t there at the time. And not forgetting an even closer call at Santon Downham, where the forest was ablaze and firefighters got their hoses out, not far from the Mardle picnic. 

We’ve seen some beautiful landscapes and historic structures. From the awe inspiring Bridge End Gardens and the fun filled maze at Saffron Walden, to the majestic beauty of Lavenham Church and it’s amazing tower, and the gruesome, if slightly amusing, Needingworth lock up.

But the icing on the cake had to be the publication of our new Wind In The Willows trail. From the Lark riverbank to Mildenhall’s wild wood and Icklingham’s open road, finally all 37 caches went live.

The cachers logs so far have given us quite a giggle too. From the short wearing, nettle whacking first to finders, to ripped trousers in inconvenient places, to wildlife encounters with adders, deer and angry biting spiders. 

Most seem to have made it through the many nettles and wildlife encounters unscathed. And despite Ratty’s rodent run-in, a kitty going missing from cache no.10 (and found a week or two later) and the squiffy co-ordinates at no.26, most visitors seem to have enjoyed themselves and that, is what it’s all about. 

Total Finds: 180 

8 Multis

3 Mystery’s 

2 Events

1 Wherigo 

1 Letterbox

1 Earthcache 

Total Hides: 37