Hunting for Homer Simpson & finding Game Birds in Norfolk

This week it was all about mystery geocaches caches and boy did we bump up our mystery cache finds.  

 

We started with the huge geo-art series in South Cambridgeshire called ‘Doh’! Set by infamous South Cambridgeshire cacher RYO62, it revolved around the theme of the US hit TV show, The Simpsons…’Doh’ being his very famous catchphrase! 

 

Altogether, there were 92 caches in the series, which make up an image of Homer’s face on the geocaching map. I’d spent a few weeks solving all the puzzles with a lot of help from Google and members of team DannyJGB, who once again kindly did all the jigsaw puzzles for me. All were great fun and I learnt a lot of new things about The Simpsons!  

 

I decided to tackle the smaller loop first around Great Eversden and then made a return visit to grab the bigger loop of caches around Orwell. 

Once again it was a fantastic walk, along nice scenic and mostly dry country paths, many of which I’d walked at least one before when completing some of RYO62s previous series’ in the area. As usual, the co-ordinates and hints were all great, and very helpful, so most caches were very quick finds.  

 

The majority were a mixture of bisons, small tubs and micro tubes, but there was also a good number of cleverly crafted custom caches, which put a smile on my face every time I discovered them.  

They included bits of breeze block and brick with micro log containers incorporated; a skeleton; tubes with fake leaves or bugs on; sticks and chunks of wood with caches all cleverly stuck inside.

There was also the occasional larger cache, like the lovely big cache that had been placed to Congratulate Geosprog on finding 1000 RYO62 hides.  

 

I also saw some interesting wildlife along the way, including rabbits, squirrels and a toad. Whilst diverting to grab the Harlton Church Micro cache I was able to say hello to the cute llamas in the nearby field. 

On the way back, I had a chance to see the ducklings at the village pond. One had lost its way and was running about in the road, whilst a group of 4-5 other ducklings were quacking from the edge of the pond trying to help their sibling find his or her way back. 

I stood back a while hoping the adventurous chick would get the right idea and head back to his family, but after watching him wander in and out of the road, hedge and ditch for quite some time, I decided to get on my way and hope for the best for him or her. 

 

It was great to pick up some other finds on my way round the two loops including a number of caches in the Congratulations, Village Signs, War Memorials, Little Bridges and Church Micro series’. Always nice to add to our numbers in those series’. Plus I got an unexpected first to find on the Congratulations DJ:CD cache, it’s been a while since I last got one of those.  

It was also nice to pick up the lab caches set around Orwell clinch pit. Great fun, especially when I had to ask two very nice ladies picnicking on the bench if they could move for a moment so I could get the info needed for one of them.

My next geocaching foray was to the woodlands around Drymere, just up the road from Swaffham. Another fantastic geoart series had been set in the area, this time by Janechick and it is one of my favourite geocaching series of all time.  

 

Around the time the 30 mystery caches - which make up the shape of a game bird on the geocaching map – were published, back in early 2018, I was still very much into my puzzle solving. 

It was with great anticipation that I opened the page of each newly published cache, to find a unique and interesting puzzle each time. Now, I just had to solve them!  

 

For about 3 weeks, I spent every evening, and every bus journey into work and back, with my head down looking at my phone, trying to spot the clues and the way into solving each puzzle. Some came very quickly, others I could see what I might need to do, but couldn’t quite get the numbers, and others left me with a very long blank stare! 

 

Every so often I let out an overjoyed yelp as the co-ordinates for another came tumbling out - although obviously not whilst on the bus! I even got a first through the checker for one, but I wasn’t going to go and find any until I’d solved them all.  

 

By the end of the three weeks, I had about half solved, mainly by myself, although my video producer at work did help a little with one.  Since then, I’d look at them on off, getting incredibly close to solving a few more, but it wasn’t until the post Xmas lockdown, when I picked up my sizeable pile of unsolved mystery caches that I took a proper look at them all again.  

 

Suddenly, moments of inspiration started to hit and the numbers began to flow out of each puzzle.  One by one, I began to get the green checker tick for each. 

Some used familiar tried and tested puzzle solving ciphers and techniques, like binary and the use of google to hunt out information on specialist websites, but even those were cleverly hidden in the unique presentation of the cache pages. I was often fooled into thinking it was some new technique I had yet to learn, only to discover I had solved something similar somewhere else before.  

 

Others used completely new things, like historical children’s games and video or image manipulation. Whilst, others were just extremely clever! 

I won’t give the solve away, but ‘I see birds nearby’ was just brilliant! How did she think of that! Other favourites included ‘Snow Blindness’, ‘Having a Grouse’, ‘Le Grande Mystery’, ‘Posting a Log’ and ‘Game Pie’.  

 

By the end of March, only two remained unsolved…the slightly tricky maths one ‘Maths Game’, which is not my forte at all, and those ruddy Ptarmigans, appropriately named ‘the revenge’. Hence, I decided on a day off from work, to head up to Norfolk with the other half to hunt down all the elusive game birds that we had solved. 

 

It was a beautiful day and a lovely walk through part of the forest I’d not visited before. So quiet too! We only saw one other walker all day, but plenty of wildlife including two muntjac deer, squirrels and many birds including the odd pheasant.  

 

We were soon picking up a range of caches, many of which were custom-made containers. The clay pie, which if memory serves me right was the log container for ‘Philosophical Pheasants’, was particularly impressive and my favourite log container of the day. Very appropriate! 

I also enjoyed many of the other caches including an egg, two pine cones, a basket with another egg in it, a trophy and even a rat! 

 

We sadly had one DNF early on. It was in a slightly swampy part of the forest and unfortunately, recent rain hadn’t helped. Despite searching a large number of potential spots for about 40 minutes, we just could not lay our hands on it, so we had to concede defeat. 

This slight delay and my rather slow walking pace meant we didn’t quite get round them all, but we returned a few days later to get the rest on the other side of the road. 

 

They were equally brilliant, all nicely placed and included other custom-made containers including a hanging bird and a pretty pink flamingo on a stick.  

 

We also picked up another brilliant cache on our return visit called ‘Trigtastic Shingham Heath’ It was a letterbox cache, but required a bit of puzzle solving in order to get the coordinates. It was just brilliant, again something I have never seen done before. I definitely learnt something new!  

 

The first bit I got quite quickly. I’d noticed the ‘odd thing’ which was clearly the hint, and was soon in the right place, but what to do next?! Somehow with a bit of trial and error, on a website I’d not used before, out came the co-ordinates after a few minutes. It was another one of those very self-satisfying moments, that makes you think, “I’m so clever!!”

 

In our next Caching Tales its birthday celebrations, and what better way to spend your birthday than being pelted by hail and snow in another Norfolk forest! Until then, take care & stay safe.