Watch out Poirot & Miss Marple there’s a new detective in town!

This week I turned geocaching detective in a bid to crack the ‘Mystery at the Museum’ - the new geocaching HQ souvenir challenge. 

The day it launched I eagerly drove home from work to get changed; grab my magnifying glass; deer stalker hat and note book and headed out to start finding clues. 

First up I needed a detective cache and there was one I hadn’t found in Newmarket. It was a church micro and a quick find - a magnetic on a green BT street cabinet.

After getting all the details on the theft I now needed to start finding the clues, six caches in total - two footprints, two fingerprints and two shadows. 

Looking at the local map covered by a sea of yellow smilies I suddenly spotted some green unfound caches at Isleham - a new series ‘Priory Perambulation’ by FolkFen - and five contained the clues I needed. 

Parking up in a central spot I found the first cache at a bus stop, a sneaky hide in some Ivy. Next up was a tiny nano on a footpath sign and then an unusually large snail in a tree.

Soon I was off the dirt track and onto a slightly busier road where I found my next cache and clue, a brilliantly camouflaged tub covered in fake grass. Finally after a bit of a walk I uncovered a fake rock complete with fake moss, along a quiet footpath.

There were many more in the series to collect, but none had the final missing clue, a fingerprint. In order to get it I drove to neighbouring Chippenham to pick up the new Village Sign cache. After a bit of number crunching the final GZ and cache was found and the next part of the challenge unveiled.

Now I had to recover the stolen jewels, three each of the five different types - Amber, Diamond, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Topaz! Oh blimey! 

Running out of daylight and unfound caches locally, I quickly drove back to Isleham to pick up another great cache in the new series, this time a stick cache in a tree & bagged a Ruby at the same time. 

My next after work caching trip was yet another opportunity to recover more of the stolen jewels. This time I decided on a lovely countryside walk near the Wilbrahams, just outside Cambridge, where four caches contained more jewels. 

It was a really nice walk and included views of a pretty windmill and plenty of wildlife. After picking up the second cache, a pot in a tree, I saw a beautiful hare, plus lots of squirrels and butterflies. 

As I passed a picturesque lake I met an elderly gentleman on a ride on mower who was busy cutting the grassy footpath. Quite amusingly a black Labrador was bounding about behind him. 

As I approached though, the dog stopped right in front of me blocking the path and wouldn’t move. Not sure what to do I said ‘hello’ and tried to encourage him to follow his owner who was now quite a way down the path. But after several attempts to get him to go, he still wouldn’t. 

Suddenly I realised he wouldn’t go because his ball was at my feet! I quickly picked it up and threw it in the direction of the ride on mower and off he ran. Phew!

Soon I was at the final cache - puzzle bridge. It was a nice wooden footbridge and I quickly realised why it was called puzzle bridge. 

As I pulled out a giant box, inside was a wooden puzzle box. Now I’d solved these before but this one seemed to be different and just wouldn’t open. 

After 15 minutes of trying I finally decided to put out an SOS to Steve the CO, who turned out to be stuck at customs on the French border. 

He very quickly came back with a helpful nudge and moments later a draw opened. But it wasn’t the right one. A bit more fiddling and finally the right draw opened revealing the log book. Just brilliant! Never seen one like this before.

As Saturday arrived, I set my sights on a trip to Thetford. A lot of new caches had been published recently around the town so it was a great opportunity to pick some up along with more missing jewels. 

I’m not that keen on urban caching, but these were well placed along secluded footpaths so grabbing them was pretty easy. 

The best hide was a metal plate on a grey box, that genuinely looked like it was screwed to it. A magnetic on a grey Royal Mail box evaded me for a while, but I eventually spotted it one two football playing muggles had moved on.

The walk down by the river was lovely, especially when I came face to face with a little muntjac deer, who stood for some time in front of me, before running off back into the shrubbery.

I also picked up the new sidetracked cache along the old railway line and an off your trolley cache in Tesco car park, which thankfully was pretty quiet by the time I arrived at nearly 9pm. 

Altogether I bagged 12 caches and all but three of the missing jewels. 

Next week I’ll be donning my beige Columbo raincoat and green Vera style rain hat for a bit more sleuthing. And hopefully I’ll find the rest of the stolen loot!