Quantity or quality? Getting the right caching mix

As Monday morning dawned I woke up relaxed and happy, not two emotions I usually feel on a Monday morning. This week was different because I had the week off work, and better still I hadn’t booked much in the diary as I wanted to spend most of it geocaching. 

So where to go today? I’d decided I wanted a fairly decent sized trail. I’d hit the long awaited 6,000 caches at the weekend and now wanted to get my numbers up a bit more. It was definitely a quantity over quality day!

Looking at the cache map, I could see an awful lot of smilies within 20 miles of my house, so I decided my best bet was a trip to South Cambs to undertake the fairly new RYO62 letterbox series Bunny Hop. 48 smilies were up for grabs along with 48 letterbox stamps for my book. 

Fortunately, I’d spent some time completing the various puzzles and jigsaws - of alot of rabbits - a few weeks earlier so with the co-ordinates plugged into my GPS I set off. 

Arriving in Bassingbourn at the start point, I was pleased to find the perfect parking spot and moments later had bagged my first cache.

The trail wound its way around the village before heading out towards the old Roman Road, which I had visited over a year ago to do the  now archived, Litlington Locomote and Ashwell Street series’.

It was a great walk with lots of wildlife spotted along the way. The uphill stretch mid way through was a little tiring, but being so dry under foot at this time of year, made it much easier than the last time I walked it. 

Altogether I grabbed 52 caches and picked up two TBs, which is always nice. 

The following day was all about quality. Starting a bit later, as I the sun was rather warm and I was a bit tired still from the long walk the day before, I decided to head to Redgrave and Lopham Fen in north Suffolk. 

We had originally started the lovely series there last winter, but not appreciating how wet a real fen can get, we had to cut our walk short due to inappropriate footwear for handling the vast swaths of water logged fen.

This time it was much drier and I had soon rectified two DNFs on the spider trail. These included the one on a gate, which had been surrounded by water last time and despite removing my shoes to try and paddle my way to the cache it had still resulted in a DNF. 

The trail was incredibly varied in terms of landscape and hides, which made it one of the most enjoyable walks so far this year. 

From the heart of the Fen I headed along the forest trails picking up a cute hedgehog cache, a bison cleverly hidden in a fungi growing on a tree, and a screw on a metal box...albeit a slightly odd thing to find in such a natural landscape. 

At the river I stood on the bridge looking down at what seemed to be a manmade otters house hoping to catch a glimpse, before searching high and low for a well hidden magnetic cache.

And as I wandered back through the meadows and fen I finished by picking up more great hides on gates, in trees and a clever custom made pine cone. 

On the way home a couple of church micros were also bagged and a cache called ‘Halloween Disembodied’! It sounded a bit grim, and the cache certainly lived up to its name...a gruesome severed hand! 

Wednesday was all about Mickey Mouse! Having had a fairly short  walk the day before, I decided to tackle the 11 and a half mile Mickey’s Mystery Tour series by HeidiRose4789 and Hollyxxo15. Today was definitely a quantity day.

It proved to be one of my best caching days this year with a haul of 56 caches, including all 50 mystery caches in the Mickey series, and some additional multis and mysteries. 

Many of the hides were nice easy finds, which is just what you need on a power-trail, but some were a little more sneaky - rocks, nooks of trees and magnetics including the very devious magnetic at number 5, which fooled me for quite some time. 

Towards the end, as the legs and feet began to ache for a much needed sit down, I nearly thought I was back at the car twice, but alas no, it just kept weaving away from Toft again and again. 

The most amusing moment of the day was as I headed for number 11 and two birds suddenly flew up from the undergrowth. They gave me such a fright that I jumped back, stumbled and landed on the ground on my bottom. 

The most scary...rush hour along one of the village roads. I’d never seen so many cars as I hopped on and off the grass verge every 20 seconds. 

And the most surprising...the American style sports day that seemed to be taking place at Comberton Village College. It was more like a disco with racing commentary than the school sports days I now dimly remember when I was young. 

Gosh, I sound so old...on that note I’m off to buy a zimmer frame to get me round the next cache trail!