Stranger & stranger: An eclipse in Eltisley and not a wild animal in sight at Banham

The past couple of week’s have been busy with a variety of caching opportunities. We’ve been from Cambridgeshire to Norfolk completing a number of recently published series and attended a brilliant local event.

First up was a decent sized circular series by South Cambs prolific cache finder and setter RYO62 called ‘Eltisley Eclipse’. About 8 miles long, the walk took me from the village green in Eltisley onto the country lanes across to Caxton, down to Hardwicke, and almost to Great Gransden, before sweeping back up to Eltisley.

It pretty much followed part of the recently archived Cambs Cacheathon route, which I did a few years ago. 

Caches ranged from micros in custom sticks, bricks and logs to more traditional film pots, tubes and screw top containers. Some were cleverly disguised with fake ivy and fake grass, whilst others were wrapped in camouflage tape. 

There were a few that made me wince - spiders, snakes and bugs! But also micros and nanos custom built into some rather heavy bits of masonary from an old wall. I was momentarily concerned whether the CO actually had any walls left in his house, whilst also considering the huge amount of effort it must have taken to get these heavy caches out into the middle of nowhere! You can’t say RYO62 doesn’t go that extra mile to put a smile on his fellow cachers faces! 

RYO62 also set his 2,000th hide on the series, which turned out to be a field puzzle. Luckily it was one I’d come across before - the magic wooden box. After a bit of pressing in the right place the log was soon in hand. 

My favourite cache of the day was a penguin and her baby, which had been adapted to hold the cache, very sweet and nice to find.

I also found a few additional caches including two in the Moat series; milestone and trigtastic caches; multis Eltisley Village Hall and War Memorial, and mystery’s Team Taw and Congratulations Disa Urq, bringing my total find count for the day to 48. Not bad. 

The following day was Father’s Day & I planned to spend it with my dad, but as he was out when I arrived I decided to try my luck on the new short circular series at Banham. 

Parking up in the recommended spot, I attempted to find number one a few metres away. However a nearby electricity pylon played havoc with my GPS so after 10 minutes of back and forth I decided to move on. 

For the most part the rest of the caches were much easier to find and there were some great hides and cleverly placed custom caches.

The nano near the amusing ‘bull in field’ warning sign was tricky to spot and retrieve. A micro in a genuine old piece of fungi was very unusual and a small magnetic on an electricity pylon box took way longer to find than it should have. 

Along the route I also picked up the cache at Banham Chapel, a very quaint little building. Plus ‘Behind your ears’. 

It was a really nice walk through part of the world I’ve only visited in the past in order to see some wild zoo animals.

On my return to the car I did attempt to find number one again just as two other cachers arrived. 

We had a nice chat, but when they told me it was their third attempt at finding the elusive cache, I decided I would call it a day.

I finished with a few drive-bys including a cute snail in a cachers front garden, Banham church micro and Kenninghall Village Sign to name a few. 

Monday nights are not usually a caching night for me, I like to get home after work and just relax, but Burwell cachers the Flamingoes and GCZ Team were holding one of their three times a year events, so it would have been rude not to pop. 

Held at the Fox pub in Burwell there were lots of familiar faces and lots of chat about recent caches we’d found, were planning to set, as well as a big nudge on a problem puzzle cache that I’d been trying to solve for two years!! A very big thank you to that cacher. 

After a good hour or so I decided to bid farewell and grab a few caches on the way home. These included mystery cache ‘observe closer hedgehog’ which was quickly solved but only because I’d seen something similar used on a couple of other mystery caches. 

I also finally picked up EPPs challenge cache ‘Oh to be in Britain’. It had required a find in 20 English counties and I’d been stuck on 19 since it was first published. Recent trips to the south coast and Yorkshire has got me well over the line to 24 counties, so it was great to finally sign the log on this one. 

I finished the week with an after work caching trip around Whittlesford, Duxford and Hinxton. Picking up more caches in multiple series’ - church micros, village signs, village halls, Fine Pairs and War Memorials - as well as some individual caches like ‘75th Anniversary of D Day’. 

And after all that I still had enough energy left to get myself up to Newmarket’s July Race Course with the other half, for a cache free Friday evening with a lot of race horses and the Kaiser Chiefs. 

Next time we’ll be dawdling around Duxford and strolling along the Cambs and Suffolk border.