Coming face to face with the harsh reality of fly tippers...thank goodness for CITOs!

This year I took part in my first ever CITO event and it was a very rewarding experience. Knowing I was doing some good to clean up the environment, albeit a very small part of the British countryside, was very satisfying. 

Sadly, in a day and age where everything is disposable and we have a throw away culture, there is more rubbish littering our beautiful world than even a million CITO events could possibly clean up. 

And this week I came face to face with the harsh reality of how some people think it’s fine to just throw anything and everything, wherever they like. 

I’d set out on RYO62s two series around Guilden Morden - the Gallop and the Giddy Up. The first stretch of the walk was up a tree lined country track, heading out of the village, but within minutes of starting the walk I began to see a trail of discarded sewing equipment. 

As I followed the trail of buttons, bundles of elastic and clothing fasteners I soon found the broken sewing box.

Thinking that was it, I tutted to myself at the disgrace of it, and then continued along the track picking up caches as I went. However, I soon realised the sewing box was just the tip of the iceberg.

A few feet further on and I began to see bits of old board games, DVDs and DIY equipment littering the grassy track. It was quite unbelievable. 

As I rounded a slight bend, there was a large pile of unwanted household items, including an old DVD player and what looked like school work. 

Further up more large piles of unwanted crap followed, from brand new kitchen cupboard door handles to half built models and even cuddly toys...I could have been on an episode of the generation game!

After passing a final humongous pile of unwanted household items, the track was clear and I was able to grab a number of creative caches without the need to step over piles of rubbish.

The caches included a tiny cache attached to a piece of bark, nanos in rocks and a micro in a log. 

The return walk along a field side path was enjoyable and more caches were quickly found, including a little cache in an electrical wire protector, which slid down to reveal the log book holder. 

As I approached the village I picked up two magnetic caches on gate posts and a nice sized little bridges cache. 

Back in the village I soon had the numbers for three multis - the War Memorial, Village Sign and Village Hall caches - and set off to pick those up and collect more caches on the Gallop series.

This series also had some brilliant custom caches, including a Peter Rabbit cache, more rocks, colourful bisons and caches on sticks!

There were a couple of field crossings, but fortunately the ground was bone dry and most of the crops already harvested so both were easy going. 

On the way to number 22 the walk crossed a farm and I was greeted by numerous friendly animals including goats, sheep, pigs and even squirrels. 

The final loop took me almost to Steeple Morden, before turning back along a big wide grassy track and up a road into Guilden Morden. 

Along the way I grabbed the old pump cache, which was a magnetic cleverly hidden under the metal water shoot. It was great to see an old village pump so well preserved. 

I also diverted a few times to grab more caches in the brilliant ‘Congratulations’ Mystery series.

Altogether I picked up 52 smilies including 10 mystery caches and three multis. 

The other outing of the week was a couple of hours collecting some of the new hides around Cherry Hinton  in Cambridge.

First stop was the beautiful park at Cherry Hinton Hall to collect ‘4 corners’ - a very nice hand carved log with the log book container inside a little door. 

I also picked up ‘Green giant’ which  contained a TB that wasn’t logged as being in the cache and seems to have been missing almost 9 years! It was quite a surprise...and no doubt even more surprising for the owner who had marked it missing 8 years ago. 

I finished my walk around Cherry Hinton by picking up caches at the recreation ground and on a white utility box, before heading off in my car to get a cache near Fulbourn Hospital. 

The very last stop of the night was near Cambridge airfield, to pick up

‘I always wondered what was under there’. It was a nice short walk to GZ - a little footbridge - and after quite a bit of bending and nettle trampling I eventually spotted the sneakily hidden magnetic screw under the bridge.

Next week we’ll be heading up North to achieve a couple of caching firsts - well for us anyway!