Shiny shoes, pink Cadillac’s and more Fairytales!

Caching and blogging has rather gone out the window lately as winter bugs, DIY and turning the house into Santa’s grotto has taken over our lives.

Yes, whilst I battled flu, closely followed by a rather bad head cold, that left me rasping and squeaking instead of speaking for three days, the other half decided to destroy the kitchen and light up every part of the house and garden with Xmas lights! 

But, in between the chaos and carnage we have managed to grab a few caches including the brilliant new FF puzzle. 

Yes FolkFen have been out and hidden another mystery cache, along with another cryptic cache page, this time near Fordham in Cambridgeshire.

However, this was possibly my fastest solve ever of an FF puzzle. After scanning the page with its beautiful sketch, I soon spotted clue no.1 and after inputting that and something else into google I soon found what was needed. The hint helped secure the last bit and I quickly had some promising looking co-ordinates. 

I decided not to try the checker and potentially alert any other solvers, in the vague hope of getting a FTF, but it wasn’t to be sadly....I was completely scuppered by some much early risers! 

A couple of days later, with a space on the calendar grid to fill, I headed out along the pretty country track to pick up the cache. It was a nice walk and a swift find was made of the well camouflage cache. Loved the log book container too, very apt.

It was a good week or so before I got out caching again. This time I headed North, well into Norfolk, to complete the great new circular series ‘Shouldham Shoe Shine’ set by veteran cacher Poshrule. 

In the past I’ve enjoyed his epic Cambs CacheAthon series, so I knew I was in for a good afternoon. The trail started on the edge of Shouldham and headed off along pretty trails into the Forestry Commission opened woodland nearby.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable walk, with caches nicely hidden, but on the whole quick to find. And there was so much wildlife - plenty of squirrels still about and even a deer. 

A couple of hides took me slightly longer than others, but that was mainly due to the new navigation tool on the geocaching app, that I’m struggling to get used to and doesn’t seem to be as accurate on my phone as the old one was. 

It was at the second of these slightly tricker spots that I bumped into some muggles, who turned out to be cachers! As I was going from tree to tree, head down, desperately trying to find the cache, I suddenly heard a voice say, “do you want a hint?”. I looked up to see a lady smiling, holding the cache! Phew! I may have still been there if it wasn’t for their kind help.

Whilst collecting the 26 Shouldham Shoe Shine caches, I also picked up the ‘Warren’ cache. Although the co-ordinates seemed to be a bit off, the large tub was soon spotted and inside was an interesting old mobile phone TB. Picking it up to move it on, I decided to take the opportunity to finally drop of my Geocaching HQ promotion Treasure  X TB Loot Loot Pharaoh. It’s been in the bottom of my bag for months...oops! Safe travels!

Next up, on the way to do a bit of Christmas shopping at a huge garden centre near Huntingdon, we finally had the chance to pick up ‘Fairytale fiasco - Jack and the giant’. It was the last one in this brilliant series that we needed to find in order to get the final number for ‘Gingerbread House’, the final cache in the series, and it did not disappoint. 

Once again, we were greeted by a cleverly crafted container and inside...another great field puzzle. 

At first I started turning things without thinking it all through, but then suddenly it dawned on me and quite a few turns later the bison tube cache was in hand. Loved it, so clever. The other half has taken notes...I’ve tasked him with making a couple of girls puzzles for our next new series! 

Whilst we where in the area we also grabbed another cache in the Pedal Power series. Still quite a few more to get, so we’re looking forward to returning for the others soon.

Our last bit of caching news was the exciting announcement by Geocaching HQ that they have launched 5 new country souvenirs. Amongst them was the USA souvenir. I have to say I’d always thought it was slightly strange that there’s all the state souvenirs, but no actual country souvenir. 

Anyway, I was delighted to see within hours of the announcement that the pink Cadillac was adorning my virtual souvenir wall, in recognition of our first caching visit to the USA back in 2016. 

Hopefully our next Caching Tales post will be a little sooner than this one, until then, happy caching.