Sociable Geocaching: pounding the wood & fen land trails with friends

It’s always nice to have some company on one of our geocaching walks. Over the past year that hasn’t always been possible, and as a result we have all learnt to appreciate our time socialising with friends and family much more. 

This week, keen to make the most of being allowed to spend time with more friends & family members, we had not one, but two opportunities to get sociable again. 

On our first walk in the Norfolk woods, we were joined by young ‘on and off’ geocaching nieces 3ft & 4ft, and my sister of team DannyJGB. 

And for our second walk in the Cambridgeshire fens, I was joined by a muggle work friend, who had yet to experience the joys of geocaching. 

Just a few weeks ago Norfolk cachers Lord and Lady set a brand new series of 26 traditional caches in Thetford Forest, near Santon Downham, called Gate Lodge Loop. 

Knowing how creative this duo are I was very keen to go and find them. DannyJGB were at a loose end so we agreed to meet up at a nice spacious parking spot near number 10. 

Before I had barely even got out of my car and got my coat on, 3ft & 4ft had found the first sneaky hide. A clever little screw hidden in the post of the nearby gate. We were soon to find out it was one of many clever customs hidden along the trail. 

The next at number 11 was even more amazing and the first of its type that I have ever seen. Where do these clever COs find these things? It was a fairly heavy duty metal tube with a big handle on one end and whilst 4ft held it, 3ft began cranking away. Moments later out popped the log container! Now that was clever! Definitely worthy of a favourite point! 

Next up was a cute dinosaur followed by another inventive cache, which had the biggest log I’ve ever seen! The COs had placed an old roller blind within a giant tube and as we unrolled it we could see more than 30 names already written upon its white side. Again another FP was given. 

And the clever caches & hides just kept coming! There were screw tops with fake fern leaves on them; a tin with wobbly eyes; a giant stick which when lowered down had the cache inserted into the top; plus pine cones, fake grass and logs! 

Other favourites included the bird box which required a UV light to get the code to unlock it. Unfortunately, I’d come out Ill equipped and didn’t have my special UV light on me, so we will return for it another day. 

I loved the spider in the box, which popped up as you pulled out the draw. And the ammo can with the huge bunch of keys - one of which was the right one needed to unlock it - it was great fun. 

However, I did slightly spoil 3ft & 4fts quest to find the right key. After 10 minutes of trial error, it was time to speed things up, so I suggested they look at the names on the keys and find one that matched the lock. Moments later the lock clanked open and the log book was in hand. 

Number 4 was particularly cunning and whilst my sister was helping 4ft after a nasty incident with a bramble, 3ft & I began to hunt for it. 

I could see there had been an awful lot of DNFs but decided we weren’t going to be one of them. After quite a bit of searching high and low we finally spotted the twig with cache attached tied to one of the trees branches right at my eye level! Super sneaky! 

It was really nice to finish on number nine, which was a sizeable box and had some nice swaps for the youngsters to do some trades with.

It was a fantastic series, that I’m sure many geocachers have enjoyed as much as us.

The walk through the woods was lovely, the inventiveness of the caches just brilliant and the entertainment of my two young nieces dancing on a log during lunch was just hilarious. I think they were high on orange juice! 

I highly recommend the series to cachers, young and old. The paths were good underfoot, there were no cattle or styles, and each find really was a delight! 

This week we also headed a bit further afield to St Ives in Cambridgeshire. A work friend who I’d not seen face to face for over a year, had been keen to experience geocaching. We decided to meet up on Saturday morning to do a small series near her home called Wander to Woodhurst.

It was a warm day, and really nice to be out in a different part of the region. The walk was lovely along field side paths, that were dry. However, it was exceptionally busy! Every few metres we seemed to cross paths with more walkers and their dogs, probably because of its close proximity to St Ives and a very large number of houses. 

The constant stream of muggles made it tricky to search for some of the caches. In addition, possibly due to it being such a popular muggle walk, we found quite a few of the caches were missing. 

We replaced one or two, where we could see they weren’t there, but there were a couple of others that I didn’t have suitable replacements for in my bag. 

We also found a couple of the hides rather tough. So had to concede defeat at one and notch up another DNF. At the other I finally found it, but it was rather close to a new birds nest, so we moved it a few inches so that hopefully others wouldn’t disturb them. 

All in all it was a nice walk, but sadly I don’t think I converted my friend to the hobby. I think it was probably too much stop start for her, being a regular runner and gym goer. 

I finished the week with an evening trip to West Row to pick up a few caches that have been published there over the past year. There were two short series called ‘Fifty Foragers’ and ‘Out and About in the Country’.

The forager series was a slight reprisal of a series published between West Row and Worlington some years ago. In fact, I think some of those were my very first geocaching finds. 

The new series was slightly further to the West of the village and had some nice hides including one on a bridge and a sneaky stick cache. I also met the COs without even knowing it, as they were out on a bike ride and passed me at one point. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get to finish it, but will return for the rest soon.

The second series was a nice linear walk set along a wide grassy path, also on the edge of the village. The finds were all straightforward and the ‘Lockdown’ cache was just great…a pretty bird box that could be opened with a key that was inside the bird entry hole. 

Next time we’re donning our hiking boots and waterproof macs and hitting the wet & windy Fell trails of the Lake District, as well as exploring some of its picturesque towns and lake side walks.