Two by two: Two souvenirs, two mysteries, two field puzzles and one happy dog

Having spent so much of December and January travelling out to Huntingdon and Peterborough to hunt for caches, I decided to spend a few weeks a bit closer to home. 

The wet winter weather had taken its toll on a lot of my own geocaches, and as the reports of wet logs and broken containers continued to come in, I realised it was time for a few CO visits.

First up were repairs to the wooded section of the Wind in the Willows trail and who better to accompany me than my dad’s dog Bobby.

He’d been couped up more than usual lately due to both my parents experiencing some health problems, hence he was incredibly excited when I arrived at the door armed with my geocaching bag, dog treats and his water bowl.

Parking up half way along the trail, we set off along the orange sandy track into the woods. There was no one about today, and Bobby seemed to be on his best behaviour as I stopped to check each cache. 

No problems with the first two, other than a bit of an earwig infestation. Badgers house was in need of a bit of love, but still in good working order, but sadly Toad had definitely gone for a walk about. 

Replacing caches and logs where needed, it was a lovely walk, and an ideal time of year to visit before the stingers and bracken start to pop up.

Two Geocaching HQ souvenirs were also up for grabs in February, so I began looking at the odd green and blue dot on the map near home to see if any of them might help me secure the souvenirs without having to travel too far. 

Up first was Palindrome Day on 0202020! Now that doesn’t happen very often so I cache just had to be found. 

I spotted a potential candidate, the mystery cache, ‘An L of a Long Time’, near Fordham, set by the EPPs. 

Knowing they had recently celebrated a very special milestone I knew what to do with the information on the cache page.  A few minutes of googling soon gave me the numbers for each item and  the cache co-ordinates. 

It was a nice short drive out and a lovely find at GZ - great to find a decent sized cache!

The trip also gave me the opportunity to do a bit more CO maintenance on some of my caches further afield. 

Most just needed new logs and so I did some caching and dashing at Chippenham and Newmarket War Memorials, Kennett Village Hall and number 19 on the ‘Not so fishy trail’.

A week or so later, as I approached the end of a long Monday in the office, I suddenly noticed the Va Va Voom geocaching event at Burwell, marked in my calendar that night.

I do enjoy the Burwell events by the Flamingos & GCZ Team as they always seem to attract a really friendly and chatty group of local cachers. Hence, I was excited that I hadn’t missed it - as I do so often with events! 

Once again it was at The Fox in Burwell and quite a crowd was starting to gather as I arrived. 

Whatsmore I got a free drink, due to some debacle over food, and happily sat sipping it over a two hour catch up with various local cachers, most of whom I’d met several times before. 

I even picked up some great tips on cheap travel to Europe from Jane Chick, so I will definitely be planning a few short breaks in the near future. 

My next outing was a brief one during my lunch hour. I’d noticed a second sidetracked cache had been published on the railway bridge in Cambridge so I decided to check it out.

It turned out to be a clever little cache, that looked like a piece of discarded bubble gum, and had been carefully placed to blend in with its surroundings. 

The following weekend I was feeling a bit lazy so I had a slow start to Saturday. Looking again at where I could go out locally, I spotted a few unfound caches in and around Soham. One was a new mystery cache in the previously found Star Wars series.

The cache page featured a cipher that I recognised and after pulling up a couple of my favourite cipher decoding websites I soon had what I needed. The beautiful drawings and cipher were decoded without any issues and when the checker went green, I was eager to get out and find the final cache.

First, I made a quick stop in Fordham to grab ‘Third time Lucky’. I think it was probably second time lucky for me, as I’d failed to find one of its two predecessors. 

Next I made a pit stop to grab ‘Orange Tree Monster’ - and what a unique find that turned out to be. Needless to say he got a favourite point. 

After grabbing a new sidetracked cache in Soham, which blended in particularly well to its surroundings, I made my way to find the SW8 Star Wars mystery cache. 

It was a lovely walk to the final and to my surprise it was a field puzzle. Fortunately, a familiar one. A bit of twisting and turning followed, and eventually I had my hands on the well earned log book and subsequent smiley. 

I finished the day by grabbing the first in the ‘Out of Place’ series, which was originally set by our dear departed caching friend Mark (Quacker666) and is today maintained by his wife and children. 

It was a very clever little hide, not the sort of place you’d expect to find a cache. I could see why recent cachers had overlooked it. 

I rounded of February by collecting another Souvenir, this time for Leap Day. I decided to rectify a DNF near Isleham, on FolkFen’s enjoyable Priory Perambulation series, in order to get the souvenir.

I’ve no idea how I missed the cache on my last visit, it was an incredibly quick find this time and another fun field puzzle. 

I recognised the device - as FF have a similar one at another of their caches - and set about decoding the clue. A bit of wheel turning later, and the log fell out much to my relief. Another FP awarded for its uniqueness and fun factor. 

I do enjoy finding something a bit different and there’s plenty of that in our next caching tales, as we head to the bright lights of a certain city in the Nevada desert!