Once Upon a Time in a land not far away...

Once upon a time there were two cachers called Sparky_Tarpi, who went on a trip into the Fens to find hidden treasure!

Yes this week we headed back out into the Fens on a quest to find two more caches in the fantastic Fairytale Fiasco Series. 

We’d already found the ‘Big Bad Wolflets’ cache at Needingworth, and had taken a sneak peek at the final ‘Gingerbread House’ whilst at the Sutton event a couple of weeks ago. Keen to get the numbers to actually be able to open it, I headed to Ely before the rain hit on the bank holiday Sunday and began a nice walk to see Snow White. 

However, before getting there I came face to face with Boris mark two. What a scary looking chap he was! Clearly based more on the Frankenstein actor Boris rather than the cycling politician, although the mad hair could actually have been either! 

After doing a bit of cranking the cache and Boris were in hand. Great fun and a very well executed version of a hide I’ve seen in a few places. The mechanism worked really well and after signing the log, Boris was soon flying high again. 

Next stop Snow White. Upon arriving in the little wooded area, the cache was quickly spotted, and as anticipated it was a field puzzle. However, on first look it seemed a rather tricky one. I sat staring at the pretty jewels and decorations and that combination lock for a good five minutes, before - by complete accident - finding the way in. Clever! Had me completely fooled. I won’t say more but it is well worth a visit. 

Inside the occupants were safe and sound, although slightly depleted in number. Four cute gold dwarfs greeted me! And a lovely little log book to sign. Admin over, and all were returned safely to the box.

I carried on along the trail to pick up another in the Bishop’s Way series, which was also a clever, well camouflage cache that fitted very well in its hiding place. Log signed, cache returned, and it was off to pick up one final cache nearby - ‘On the way to Gramdma’s House’.

Fortunately no wolf in sight today, but I did pass a very interesting and well preserved WWII bunker. Maybe he was hiding in there! Upon arriving at GZ I could see quite a bit of rubbish...looks as though Red Riding Hood has been having a bit of a barbecue!   

Not keen to sift through too much of it, but with no sign of the cache in the nearby tree, I carefully pulled at a black plastic bag, and to my relief, found the huge cache inside. It really was big, one of my biggest finds in a while. Sadly not many swaps, but the two teddy bear heads inside made me laugh...I guess the Wolf had the rest of them for dinner rather than Red Riding Hood!

Next stop, and still no sign of the impending rain, was Witchford. A few new caches had sprung up since me last visit well over a year ago, including an ugly slug and a prettier snail. Moving on from the molluscs, I also managed to rectify a previous DNF on the nearby trail. This time the hide was very quickly spotted...I now wonder how on Earth I didn’t see it last time I was here! 

Next up was Aldreth and after being pretty much tailgated all the way into Haddenham by a rather aggressive van driver, it was a relief to loose him as I made my way out the other side of the village to the remote little hamlet. 

Parking up just a few metres away from the trailhead, I was soon at GZ for the next Fairytale Fiasco cache - ‘The Princess and the Pea’. Located in a small copse, the bright purple box was easily spotted hiding inside the trunk of a large tree. Such a pretty cache, and no field puzzle this time. Phew!

Once inside it was like a little girls treasure cave. Very pretty and as expected, after Snow White, there was a golden frog! Such a lovely cache, great for little ones.

A few days later, with a sunny afternoon to spare I headed out to Castle Camps (somewhere near Haverhill) to walk the recently completed Camps Circular. It was a fantastic walk along good farms tracks taking in the undulating countryside on the East Cambridgeshire border. 

But what made this series particularly memorable and enjoyable was the vast array of bespoke caches in a range of sizes. Along my three and a half hour walk I met all sorts of colourful characters from a law abiding Meerkat to a dinosaur and a pretty green butterfly. 

My particular favourites were a lazy gnome, which did make me chuckle; a cute hedgehog and a very realistic looking bird. All were found with relative ease, even the sneaky plastic ivy cache was soon spotted, despite having fallen from its correct location.   

I also met a couple of fellow cachers on route and found some time for a quick stop at the local boozer for a refreshing, cool orange juice. I was delighted to have finally ticked this great new series of my to do list and highly recommend it to others, looking for a fun few hours out in the Cambridgeshire countryside.

I finish this week’s blog with a quick mention of our imminent challenge. This week we had a message from well known Cambs cacher RYO62, letting us know that we are just 32 caches shy of hitting 1,000 of his finds. When we hit 1,000 he’ll set a congratulations cache for us. So exciting! And almost hard to believe that almost 1/5 of our finds to-date have been due to the mammoth efforts of RYO62 in setting so many caches. It really should be us congratulating him!

We’ll be making a big effort next week to try and notch up another 32 of his finds. That’s where this week’s story ends...

...and they all lived happily ever after. The End!