It’s all about the weather: Hail & snow, the swamp & the great storm of 87!

Geocaching is one of those hobbies that does rely a bit on the weather. After all, in order to find a geocache 99.99 times out of a 100 you’ll be outdoors, with no shelter from the elements.

For me, a dry, slightly warmer day – but not too hot - is preferable if I’m to get the most enjoyment out of my caching trips. However, I probably am more fussy than many of my fellow avid cachers, who wouldn’t even let torrential rain, high winds or 4ft of snow stop them from grabbing a smiley!

 

However, that said I don’t always weather watch before going caching and have been caught out a few times after being lulled into a false sense of weather security! I see the sun shinning, head out on the spur of the moment ill equipped - no coat and just trainers on my feet - only to find 3 miles into the walk the heavens open, and I’m left soaked to the skin and squelching the 3 miles back to my car!

 

And that is pretty much what happened on my birthday this year! After being trapped at home for last year’s, due to the first lockdown, I was very keen to make the most of my one special day this year. 

I had been scanning the geocaching map and had spotted a nice sized forest walk just a few miles outside of Norwich at Hevingham.

 

Arriving at the little car park, it was quite chilly, so I wrapped myself up in a coat, hat, scarf and gloves. We quickly picked up our first traditional cache, grabbed the numbers for the multi and set off through the forest trails to collect the 25 caches in the Hevingham Woodland Wander series. 

 

The forest was very quiet, barely a soul about, and we made quick work of gathering the first few caches in the series, which were a mixture of more common tube and box containers as well as some lovely unique custom-made caches.

 

There was a lovely little bird cache in a tree, a stick with a log container inside and a very creatively made millipede made out of sticks. We were about a third of the way into our walk when we started to see a few snow flakes fluttering down. I quite like a little bit of snow and to get it on my birthday was a nice treat, it’s only happened about 4 times in my lifetime.

 

We continued to progress through the quiet woodland picking up a bit of tree in a stump with a cache inside, a cute owl, and a very clever micro hidden in a genuine piece of old tree fungus that had been cleverly hung to look like it was still part of the tree. 

 

Now a good half way round, the snow turned into something less picturesque…hail! Suddenly cold, sharp hailstones began pounding us. It was coming down so heavy we literally couldn’t see where we were going and had to take shelter under a large tree. After a few minutes it started to ease, but as we were to discover, there was still plenty more to come.

 

Every few minutes it got heavier again, so we would stop to shelter. We found we were taking shelter for longer periods of time than we were actually walking, so in the end decided we would just have to brave it out and keep going. 

 

I was just about keeping warm, until the other half commented that I had a pile of hailstones in my hood, and did I want him to remove them? I foolishly said yes and he began violently shaking my hood, throwing half of its contents down my back!  Now wet and cold, I had more than a few words to say to him!  

 

Despite this sudden turn of events, we continued to find some great caches, including a cache on a long upright stick, a hippo, a pinecone, a pear, and a cute dinosaur head. The beads in the tube, which when pulled out had the cache on the end, was also very cleverly made. As was a puppy on a spring, which sprung out at us when we opened the container.

 

One of my favourites though was the multi cache, which we had picked up the co-ordinates for right at the start of the walk, but ended up finding last. It didn’t take us long to spot it, as it was a huge ammo can – I always enjoy finding one of those - and there was a travel bug inside so we took that to move on.

With just the last stretch of the walk back to the car to go, what could go wrong? Losing the path, and ending up in what I can only describe as a swamp? Yes! That’s exactly what happened. 

Somehow, we didn’t quite get ourselves out of the bushes and back onto the correct path after collecting the multi. It looked right to start with and seemed to be heading in the right direction, but just 80 metres from the car the soil started to become rather wet and boggy.

With every step my trainers were getting wetter and wetter and we were soon jumping across mini streams running in every direction. 

Finally, we were within 30 metres from the car and in a desperate bid not to have to turn around and go back the way we had come, we zig zagged our way across the wettest bit, using some of the old fallen branches as stepping-stones. I was rather relieved to finally see the car, and grateful that I had got a dry pair of shoes in the boot, to change into.

 

Around my birthday I took a couple of extra days off work which meant I could get some extra geocaching adventures in. They also coincided with the start of ‘The Science of Discovery’ souvenir challenge - perfect timing!

 

My first day out was to Thaxted and Saffron Walden. I needed to clock up a few more virtuals in the East Anglia area for a challenge cache I’ve been trying to complete, and there were two in this part of the world.  

 

Starting in Thaxted, I picked up the lovely virtual at the windmill. It has been beautifully restored and was really nice to see. 

One of the tasks to claim the virtual cache was to count the diagonal struts supporting the wooden platform around the windmill. It ended up proving trickier to do than I thought, as due to Covid restrictions you can’t actually get into the picnic area immediately around the windmill. Instead, I had to try and count them by walking around a rather high hedge, which is particularly hard to see over when you’re just 5ft. 

I ended up being a couple of numbers out, but the CO was lovely and completely understood my predicament!

I also collected the really nice set of adventure labs whilst walking around the village. They took me to some interesting historical places and there was a bonus cache too, which is always nice to have. 

 

Moving onto Saffron Walden, my main target was another Virtual cache, Saffron Walden Turf Maze. I had never noticed this historical maze before, although I have seen a much smaller turf maze, in a little village called Hilton, where I went to brownies as a child. 

This one was huge and looked great fun - a few children were having a whale of a time running around it as I noted down the information I needed for the cache.

 

I also managed to pick up the Castle View cache and rectify a DNF on the Off Your Trolley cache at the supermarket.

 

My next trip out was to grab more caches in the mammoth EHB series set by Munsterrr. I decided to walk another loop of it around Arkesden and then collect a few on one of the linear stretches, by car afterwards.

 

It was a nice walk along very quiet country roads, in a part of the world I hadn’t walked before. 

Most caches were nice quick easy finds, thanks to the very good co-ordinates and helpful hints. There was just the odd one missing, and where I was certain they had gone, I dropped off a replacement to save the CO a little bit of maintenance on such a huge series.

 

On the way back to the car I picked up the Arkesden Village Hall mystery cache, which was a nice simple solve during lockdown. Altogether, we found over 40 caches, and completed the HQ souvenir challenge as well.

 

My next caching trip was a little nearer to home. On a sunny evening after work, I headed to Burrough Green just outside of Newmarket. I wanted to pick up a few caches and dashes and I had spotted a couple on a nice country lane leading down to the Stour River. 

I had picked up the first one in this series a couple of years ago, but since then two more had been published. The first, called Mini Me (Stroll to the Stour #2), was a nice straightforward hide under some logs, and was a cute miniature ammo can. The next was a brilliant custom-made wooden box, hidden in a giant hollow in an old tree.

 

I also picked up the nice Weston Colville Church Micro multi, which involved getting some numbers from the churchyard and a short walk to pick up the cache, which hadn’t been found for some time.

 

Next up was one of my puzzle nemesis caches “John Kettley is a weatherman…”! Originally set by the truly evil geocache puzzle setter Despair Trap, and adopted a little while ago by Team Tong, this one had taken me many years to solve!

 

Based on the Great Storm of October 1987…the only day in 5 years when my bus didn’t turn up for school, it was a heck of a puzzle. 

There was lots of info on the cache page, but was any of it relevant? Songs about weathermen, an image of Michael Fish making his great storm blunder, and some intriguing hints - one an anagram, the other a reference to a well known nursery rhyme about a Robin.

I think I’d starred at this puzzle for more hours than any other, and had been desperate to solve it almost as long as I have been geocaching. So after having solved ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy…’ another Despair Trap / Team Tong puzzle a year or more ago, I had a good idea what the anagram was – it was very similar – so I set to work trying to solve the puzzle once again, during the last lockdown.

 

I had tried almost everything, so in the end asked the CO if I was on the right track. He confirmed I had the anagram pretty much right and steered me towards something…which I had already done…but I had used the wrong thing! 

Out came google again, and minutes later the first thing I tried solved it! I have never been so happy to see a checker go green in my life!

 

I was finally in the right place to collect it. I parked up in a convenient parking spot opposite, admired the very appropriate view, and finally put my hand on the cache! I was over the moon to sign the log and get a resus…as it had been more than 18 months since it was last solved and found by CaptSlogg.

 

I finished the evening by revisiting the red phone box in Burrough Green, in a bid to finally pick-up the Village Sign cache. It had eluded me on two previous attempts, but today it was back in place and it was a lovely quick find using my grabber tool, which can reach a little higher than me.

 

Next week we are getting sociable again. Whilst Geocaching events still aren’t possible, walking with others is. Hence, we finally ditch the video calls and get out caching with family and friends.