Going back to Sunday school

Sticking to our resolution of attending more events this year, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for any new ones published. 

Spotting a great little meet up in Ely recently I decided to plan a day out in the area that would enable me to pop along. However, the planning required a lot more effort than I’d realised. 

I’d set my heart on doing a recently published series of biblically themed mystery caches, by the infamous Jane Chick. There were 26 in all, but each needed a number of questions answering in order to obtain the co-ordinates, all on a biblical theme. 

Now I have to confess I’m not a particularly religious person and remember very little from my two years at Sunday school as a child. Several years at College and University learning about the fascinating science of evolution pretty much put paid to any slight beliefs I may have had hence this series was going to be a challenge! 

For a whole week I was on and off google, inputting snippets of information to try and glean which character in the bible the cache page referred to. Then scanning their respective Wikipedia pages for the necessary info. Finally by the Friday night I had the final co-ordinates for all but one of the caches, but I was fairly confident I would be able to find that too thanks to knowing the rough location.

The drive out to Hilgay was a fairly quiet one and I was soon parking up a short distance from the trail head and making my way to the first GZ. 

It was a lovely walk along pretty country lanes, on an unusually warm February day. I rapidly collected one cache after another, relieved each time that they were quick finds. 

The only one to cause a few problems was ‘V’. I spent about 15 minutes going back and forth hunting for the Ivy before realising it had clearly been removed. A fingertip search of several bushes finally revealed the cache. 

‘Y’ the only one I hadn’t actually managed to solve, proved to be a very quick find, thanks to the hint. 

After finding ‘Z’ I headed back into the village and grabbed the sneakily hidden All Saints church micro and a much easier hide at the  Methodist Church.

Finally, I headed off to find the Village Sign - a mystery cache that I’d got going on fairly quickly and even found the hints to solve the cryptic wording, but struggled for a long time to find a good tool to decrypt it. Thankfully the cache was a very quick find.

After finishing in Hilgay I still had a good couple of hours before the event, so decided to try and beat my record of the ‘number of different cache types I could find in a single day’. 

First up was the Earthcache ‘Shrinking Fens’. The aqueduct was an interesting place that I knew nothing about, but I enjoyed wandering around collecting the info needed. It was quite a sight to see one river flowing above another. 

Next up I headed to Outwell to pick up the brilliant virtual ‘Really Tram sidetracked’. It was based at the terminus of the former Outwell to Wisbech tram.

The tramway apparently inspired the writer of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories, who lived in a nearby village. Sadly today, all that remains of this historical transport link is a small monument beside the river, but a pretty spot nonetheless. I soon found the numbers upon it to claim the virtual cache and snapped a nice photo of GZ.

A few more caches were collected at the nearby churches before I finished by collecting a letterbox cache. The instructions to find it were rather fun, and after a walk around in a big loop, the cache was soon in hand.

By this point I was out of time and had to get back to Ely swiftly for the event, so cut across the Fens using the Welney road. Fortunately, it wasn’t flooded, as it sometimes can be at this time of the year, and I made it to the Cathedral green with a few minutes to spare. 

I was by no means first to arrive though, quite a throng of cachers had already gathered at the canon for the ‘Hello February’ event (it was actually being held in March, just in case you think I'm weeks behind with my blogging!)

Wrapped in coats and woolly hats, as the temperature had dropped somewhat, I was soon greeted by event COs Steve and his merry tribe from Cambridge. After chatting to them and some other familiar faces including Ryo62 and the Whelan Boys it was time to depart. 

The daylight was fading fast but keen to get one more cache type, I went on a rather speedy walk around the town doing the multi ‘Ely Tour’. It took in all of the town’s famous landmarks, including the war memorial and Oliver Cromwell’s house and was great fun. By the time I reached the final GZ it was rather dark, but fortunately it was an easy find by torchlight.

The day had been very successful, boosting our cache count by 37, and I found 7 different types of cache in all. 

Next week we are planning to add a new cache type icon to our profile...but which one?