Last chance saloon for a dozen Poshrule series’

I kicked off the new caching year by continuing my personal challenge of trying to complete some of Poshrule’s soon to be archived caches. Over 300 of them!

A couple of months before Christmas I’d found out at a local event that Poshrule was planning a great new series out Peterborough way. However, in order to make room for it, 12 of his existing series’ were set to be archived at the end of January 2020.

Now, I have to put my hands up, despite the fact I now often travel up to an hour to go on some decent caching walks - as I’ve found so many closer to home - I’ve been rather lax in heading towards Huntingdon & Peterborough. 

The key reason has been the dreaded A14 upgrade and the years  of road works. Not fancying spending half my weekend crawling through miles of traffic cones, I’ve avoided heading west. 

As a result, I really have missed out on finding the hundreds of caches set out that way - by Poshrule and Marcus Maximus - and the great countryside walks.

And in the case of the doomed dozen, I hadn’t found a single cache on any of the 12 trails.

Hearing some were to be archived, I quickly got myself back on Facebook, after a four year hiatus, and joined some local caching groups. Eventually I found the list of trails up for the chop and set off on my first trip west during a day off from work.

First up was the Glatton Geocache series, a circular walk of 31 caches east of Peterborough. Parking up not far from the village sign, I soon had my first cache in hand and had picked up the necessary numbers for the VS multi.

I decided to walk anti clockwise and the first stretch of the walk was up quite a big hill. I quickly started to wonder if I’d made a grave error going anti-clockwise, but moments after leaving the tarmac road I was heading back down on a very, very muddy track!

I just about managed to keep myself up right, and was quite relieved I wasn’t trying to go up this stretch of the walk.

Caches were found thick and fast and aside from one dnf in some slightly prickly undergrowth, I made it back onto the quiet country roads. 

Much of the remainder of the walk, was fortunately along tarmac roads, and only required a bit of bobbing in and out of hedgerows. There was barely a soul in site until the last long stretch back into the village, where I spied a chap walking his dogs ahead of me. 

He was going the same direction, and must have noticed me behind him...well there one minute and disappearing into the hedgerow the next! 

A bit worried that he might be wondering what the heck I was doing behind him, I quickened my pace, so I could at least catch up and explain. 

Fortunately, he was a friendly chap and knew all about geocaching and that there were lots of caches locally. After a little chat and showing him my next find...which he was interested to see...we parted ways. 

Back in the village, somewhat muddier, I picked up the church micro and village hall caches to add to the day’s final count of 34 

smileys :-)

Jumping back in my car I headed for home, but made a quick diversion into Cambridge. Rather amusingly I needed to pop into my office to grab my laptop for a work from home day, the following day. 

I’m not quite sure what they all thought of my new bedraggled, muddy look! Not a state they usually see me in...but I did at least change my shoes before walking across the pristine, light grey, office carpet!

The weekend arrived and more Poshrule caches were on the cards. This time I headed for his Preambulate 2 series near Warmington. 

There were 28 caches up for grabs on the series and I managed to bag a few extras along the way. The walk was soggy in places, and I was relieved to get on the country road stretches at times. 

Some of the extras included the great sized Captain Mannering cache, which required only a short divert from the trail. Plus, ‘Behind the Post’ a brilliant little wooden custom cache, which proved to be my last find of the day. 

Next week, I continue my search for the doomed dozen around Clopton.