Taking in the geocaching wonders of East Anglia

We might not be travelling much at the moment, but that didn’t stop me from marveling in the wonders of the ancient and modern world this week as I trekked along East Anglia’s highways and by-ways, thanks to Geocaching HQ’s latest souvenir challenge.  

I do enjoy a souvenir challenge, even if most aren’t really much of a challenge for me, or many others who Geocache regularly. But they do get me out of the odd lull in my enthusiasm for a long geocaching walk, and I tend to set myself the personal challenge of ‘how fast can I can complete them?’

 

The latest challenge ‘Wonders of the World’ was based on a similar idea to last year’s ‘Mystery at the Museum’ souvenir challenge, where gems and clues were hidden in different geocaches and only by finding the right caches, with the right tags, could you move onto the next stage. 

I actually really enjoyed that challenge, so I was looking forward to this new one. However, somehow I completely missed the start date, despite putting it in my phone calendar. Hence, it was actually several days before I opened up the app and got started.

 

The weekend was a bit wet, but as Saturday was also International Geocaching Day, I decided to brave the rain and do a quick cache and dash to grab a solved mystery cache, Kentford Village Sign. It was a great little hide in a spot I hadn’t visited before. 

 

The following day, armed with my raincoat, I headed to Hertfordshire to do RYO62s Barkway Bish Bash Bosh…what a great name for a series. 

The route through some pretty countryside was great, although a bit hillier than I expected, but I was soon picking up some quick finds and the modern wonders of the world. It was particularly nice to grab Chichen Itza, which is the only modern wonder that I have actually seen up close.

 

I was nearing the end of the walk, when I finally managed to grab the seventh modern wonder. This meant I was able to start collecting the ancient wonders including the Great Pyramid of Giza – the only ancient wonder I’ve seen and the only one remaining I believe. Although, I do have a great story about how I spent a day on Rhodes a few years back, trying to find the foot of the Colossus, only to find out at the end of the day that I was several hundred years too late! The other half still reminds me of that day quite frequently!

My delight at finding the virtual pyramid was short lived when the cloudy sky, which had been threatening rain for a while, suddenly let out a loud bang… “oh heck a thunder clap”! Moments later I was walking head long into a thunderstorm. Boy did I get soaked, despite being less than 10 minutes from the car, but that aside it was a great walk, with lots of interesting sights along the way.

I’ve noticed quite an explosion recently in new adventure labs popping up on the special app. More and more have been appearing locally, and all looked intriguing and fun to do. So much so, I even felt inspired to put my name down on the ‘register your interest’ form so that hopefully I could set one of my own soon.

 

One of the latest Adventure Labs to be published was in Soham. Set by the EPPs ‘A short walk around Soham’ takes you on a tour of old buildings that are no longer used for the purpose they were built for. 

As it was just up the road from where my nieces 3ft and 4ft live, of team DannyJGB, I invited them to join me. They were more than willing to help navigate us around the town and help find and input the correct answers at each location, in return for some sweets from the supermarket.

It was a lovely walk and we learnt a lot about the town’s more historic buildings as we went. We almost came a cropper at the Old Brewery, unable to spot what the question required, until eventually we retreated to the otherside of the road and standing a bit further back, we spotted it immediately…we would never have taken any notice of it, if it hadn’t been for this set of adventure labs.

 

The following weekend, with a renewed interest in geocaching DannyJGB decided to join me again for a nice walk around the West Cambridge Wander, a new series set by Munsterrr. 

It was a warm day, but it was only a short loop around the backs of the colleges, and took us just over an hour to complete…even with little legs taking part.

The caches were great fun, some nice customs and one or two slightly larger containers, which the youngsters love looking for swaps in. The hides were also nice, including a well placed tub under a little footbridge, which 3ft and 4ft scrambled down to grab. 

Afterwards we did a little detour to pick up another traditional cache nearby and a long solved mystery cache on a musical theme. By chance, it was a puzzle Dan, of DannyJGB, had solved for me, so it was nice to pick it up with some of his team there. Mind you, it took us a while to spot it with so much undergrowth around GZ, and when I eventually did, I had to cling to a nearby tree to make the grab. It was another nice sized box, but sadly no swaps this time.

 

A few nights later I decided to make the most of the light evenings and headed to Kenninghall in Norfolk to do the recently published Oliver’s way series. Again it was a lovely walk through countryside I hadn’t traversed before and every container was unique and interesting.

The CO had certainly put a lot of time and effort into setting and planning the caches. There were some brilliant hides and the caches included well placed bolts, screws, pebbles, spiders, fake ivy, plastic chewing gum, a snail, caterpillar and a pine cone. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it to others.

Can you spot this sneaky hide?

I finished my walk picking up the micro at Kenninghall church, which was a nicey hidden magnetic at the back of the churchyard.

 

Next week we'll be finding some adventure labs and innovative mystery caches in Ely and attempting to secure the final Wonders of the World souvenir. Until then, happy caching.