The Tale of the Easter bunny and the First to Finds

I always love an Easter bank holiday. The two extra days off work to get out and about caching are just brilliant.

As Good Friday arrived so did our elusive electrician! A DIY project to extend our house had gone on rather longer than expected (over three years!!) in part due to the fact our electrician has had more excuses for not turning up than a desert has sand! But today he did arrive and finally we might actually have all our new sockets and lights working.

Deciding I wasn’t too keen on hanging around the house with no electric all day - literally no chance of watching a Carry On film, or supping a hot drink - I left the other half to supervise the final works and headed off for Steve4789’s event in Coton.

However, due to getting up a bit late and then getting blocked in the driveway by the sparky, I was running rather late. By the time I arrived in the South Cambs village, the event was all but over. 

Deciding not to arrive an embarrassing 10 minutes before the end, I spotted a new trail ‘Coton Trapise’ had been published around the village, clearly to coincide with the CO’s event. 

It was perhaps a little cheeky to set out on Steve4789’s new series, especially as many cachers were probably still at his event, instead of out finding his new caches, but I couldn’t resist trying to grab a few first to finds - having only found one or two in the past year.

Seeing a group of cachers had already got the first three on the trail, I decided to tackle it in reverse order thinking I’d probably bump into them half way round.

Arriving at number 22, I made a lovely quick find and to my absolute delight the log sheet was blank! Yay a FTF, very happy. At the next cache, another yay moment as another blank log revealed itself. 

As I headed to number 20 I bumped into a group of four people coming the other way and suspected they might be cachers, hence decided my run of FTFs was definitely over. Yet, upon unrolling the log at the next cache, I found to my utter surprise it was also blank! Unbelievable, three FTFs in a row. Suddenly I started to wonder, ‘could I beat my best day ever of six FTFs’?

Picking up the pace - heading downhill helped - I was soon at number 19 and again another blank log sheet. Thrilled and determined to grab a few more, I wasn’t stopping for anything.

The FTF at 18 was also bagged and next up was a new ‘Little Bridges’ multi cache. Now I’m not usually one to stop and do a multi, but as FTF didn’t appear to have gone I decided to have a go. I soon spotted the board with the necessary information but made a complete hash of calculating the numbers. The first set put it in a field a good mile away, the second set in another impossible place, the third up a track not far away. Whilst I wasn’t sure it was quite right, it looked possible, so I set off on the diversion. 

However, as I made my way along, I started to think something really wasn’t right so stopped once more to re-calculate and spotted a glaring error. Once corrected a much more sensible GZ materialised so I hurried back to grab the cache. To my huge relief it was another blank log sheet. 

As I worked my way along the lovely field side footpaths I did a quick check of the online logs for some of the caches further ahead and noticed a FTF had gone half way round the trail. There was no time to waste, it seemed others were now out hunting and the race really was on to grab as many FTFs as I could. 

I managed to clock up a further nine FTFs including another in the Little Bridges series and number 12, which i didn’t actually find because it had already gone walkies, but the lovely CO allowed me to claim it.

Another nice memory of this part of the walk was seeing a very cute bunny rabbit hopping about near number 10. I’d been stumbling about in the brambles here and I think I disturbed him as he suddenly hopped past me at speed. Very nice to see a bunny at Easter.

As I headed down to number eight I spotted the familiar faces of the Eco Puffin Parents and said a very quick hello as they walked past. I knew my run of FTFs was finally over, but it was a great run and to be honest a slight relief that I could now slow the pace and take a break. Total FTFs - 15! Wow! 

Arriving in Madingley village I spotted a bench in the shade from the burning sun...it was an unusually hot day...so I sat down for some refreshments and solved two of the new Village Hall puzzles. This meant I could divert off the Coton series and grab the Madingley Village Hall cache, as well as another couple of caches on the way, before heading back onto the homeward straight.

More quick finds on the Coton series followed. I also made another little divert to grab Folk Fen’s brilliant ‘In the 100 wood’ cache. It was a fantastic homemade cache and after following the instructions I soon had the log book in hand. 

As I arrived back at the car, a bit hot and knackered, who should be sitting drinking a nice hot cup of tea in the vehicle next to me, none other than the Eco Puffin Parents! 

Well equipped for the trip, they were both sitting comfortably in their camper van, sipping tea, with their beautiful dog passed out on the floor - he certainly looked like he’d enjoyed his walk.

Always lovely to meet and chat with other friendly local cachers, and 45 minutes later, after a good catch up I bid farewell and headed for home to see what electrical horrors awaited me. Fortunately there were none...the sparky had finally come good and everything was up and running, much to my delight. Definitely a great finish to a very tiring, but very rewarding day. 

Saturday was pretty much a non caching day as we headed for the sunny shores, of Costa del Great Yarmouth for an overnight stay. 

After failing to find the ruddy ‘fruits de mer’ cache again!! and another cache on the sea front, I was more than a little despondent. 

However, I managed to persuade the other half to leave a bit earlier the following day and divert to Drymere woods near Swaffham. My target...one of Jane Chick’s recently published series’, the letterbox trail ‘Floral Dance’.

I’d solved all the caches some time ago without any problems and had been looking for an opportunity to visit the woods and pick them up. 

It was another warm day - always nice when we get some decent weather on a bank holiday. So we’d packed plenty of drinks and our sun hats for the walk. And it really was a great walk. 

The woods were pretty much deserted, we barely saw a soul all afternoon and the caches were all quickly found and well maintained. 

As we walked we spotted a variety of wildlife, including squirrels, a deer and a variety of birds. And we were incredibly grateful for the shade of the trees, as the sun beamed down on us. 

I enjoyed filling my letterbox book with a variety of A-Z stamps, and halfway round we stopped for a very enjoyable picnic. 

As we neared the end I remembered to grab the two additional puzzle caches on the trail, which had required a slightly different technique to solve them, but again hadn’t posed any problems.

By the time we finished, the slightly unfit other half was more than ready to head home. I had half hoped that we might have been able to grab some of the bird themed puzzle caches on Jane’s other nearby trail, but sadly it wasn’t to be, but I will return for those soon.

So that wraps up the bank holiday roll over. I’m off to test all the new sockets in my kitchen, but roll on next week when we’ll be taking a trip back time!