Geo-art, desert rats and the giant flint knapper

The growing popularity of geo-art trails has meant that more and more are popping up on the UK and global geocaching map. 

More often than not, these nice pictures on the map, are made up entirely of mystery caches, but sometimes letterbox caches are used instead. And of course, all require a bit of work to identify the true co-ordinates, before heading out to find them. 

 

Here in the East of England quite a few have been created in recent years including HeidiRose4789 and Hollyxxo15’s ‘Mickey Mystery Tour’ series – shape like Mickey’s head; RYO62’s ‘D’oh’ series - in the shape of Homer Simpson’s head; and ‘Poshrule’s Peleton’ series – a number of bikes scattered across the Cambridgeshire countryside. Plus DanSpurs14 and Palmer28’s ‘Yoda Lay Hee Hoo’ series - in the shape of Star Wars character, Yoda’s head; and Jane Chick’s brilliant ‘Game Bird’ series of clever bird themed mystery caches in Norfolk.    

 

Whilst I’ve collected quite a few of these already, and others are still sitting on either my ‘solved’ or ‘to be solved’ lists, it was nice to see another new one pop up on the map in April this year. 

Called ‘No cheese, Gromit!’ it is a huge series of 113 mystery caches all themed and based on the popular TV programme Wallace & Gromit. Set by prolific geocacher RYO62, the 113 caches make up a brilliant outline of Wallace’s head on the map, stretching from Reed to Barkway in Hertfordshire.   

 

With over 100 puzzles to solve, I enlisted the help of geocaching friends DannyJGB over the summer, as they thoroughly enjoy solving jigsaws, and then set about solving the others myself, with a lot of help from google and Wikipedia.  

 

Finally all of the 113 caches had their new co-ordinates plugged into my phone and I was ready to go out and find them. 

 

I started with a loop around Barway, which followed some familiar trails. It was a really enjoyable walk and it’s always nice to see how much effort Ross and his family go to with not only setting and maintaining so many caches, but also creating some interesting and fun custom containers.  

 

Today’s haul of 47 caches in the series, included tubes camouflaged with fake moss and grass, tiny nanos in breeze blocks, and sticks and bricks. 

There was a cute dinosaur, a snake and a few bugs! But my favourite was the penguin in the old stump, such a fun cache to find.  

 

My next outing was with half of team DannyJGB. My sister and one of my nieces – 3ft – were at a lose end and looking to get outside for a short walk.

We decided to head to Histon in Cambridgeshire, to finish off the great ‘Histon to Rampton and Back’ series. I’d completed the northern loop previously, but still had the southern loop to go.  

 

We were lucky with the weather, it was a beautiful day and the paths across the fields and grassland were all nice and dry. As with the previous loop, there were lots of interesting custom caches, much to 3ft’s delight as she dived into the hedgerows to grab most of them.   

 

Caches included a very life like snail, cleverly placed so it blended in really well. A small tuft of grass, which I’d overlooked on my previous visit, but spotted fairly quickly this time. And a brilliant bird box, which when you opened the lid, had a nice sized Tupperware box inside.  

 

The toughest find of the day was actually the one nearest the car, number one on the trail, but the one we did last. 

After 20 minutes of a lot of back and forth in the small copse of trees, we were about to give up when my sister spotted the camouflaged bison in a small tree/bush, which I thought I’d already checked a number of times. 

Phew! Really nice to have found them all and go home on a high after finding the last tricky cache.  

 

A few days later, the other half’s mum was back in East Anglia following her recent travels to the South of England. With her birthday fast approaching, we decided to pop up and see her in her motorhome on the Norfolk coast and take the opportunity to grab some geocaches further away from home.  

 

We were running slightly ahead of schedule, so as we neared Sunny Hunny – Hunstanton – we took a detour along some of the pretty country lanes and villages, to pick up some caches and dashes. 

We managed to pick up 6 caches on our way there including church micros at Tottenhill Sedgeford and Snettisham.  

 

We also had time to divert and grab the long solved mystery cache ‘Norfolk Haunts – Ringstead colours’ although I got myself in a bit of a pickle at GZ and some how completely overlooked the obvious host for the cache, so it took a few minutes to spot it.  

 

On the way home, full of barbecue burgers and sausages, we stopped off at Sandringham Sculpture Park to pick up a rather nice new Virtual cache. 

I’d never visited this part of the estate before, so it was very nice to see the beautiful sculpture park and it didn’t take long to grab the required selfie and info.  

 

The final one of the day was also a virtual, not far from Mundford – ‘War Memorial #7 – Desert Rats’. 

I had previously stopped off at the fantastic tank memorial between lockdowns last Christmas, but completely forgot to log it at that time and then managed to lose some of the information to answer one of the questions. 

Today, I decided to re-do all the answers, just to make sure I’d got them right, and snapped another selfie by the tank.  

 

It was a really nice virtual, which made me take notice of several things around the memorial itself, which in the past I had only admired from the car as I drove past. 

My next caching trip was also a fairy brief one – an after work wander around Brandon. 

Several new caches had been published in and around the town in recent months by local geocacher CrazyTom2001uk and as the nights hadn’t completely drawn in yet, I had about 2 hours to grab some caches before the sun went down. 

There was also a nice series of lab caches called ‘Rock’in around Brandon’ so as three were quite central I parked up in the Leisure Centre and set off on foot to grab them and ‘The Orchard’ traditional cache.  

 

It was nice to see the beautiful market square flower bed display, focused on the need to protect our pollinators like bees. 

The labs also took me to another interesting sight across the road, where a giant chainsaw carved sculpture of the Brandon Knapper sits. Carved from a giant log, he was created to commemorate the town’s flint knapping heritage and really is worth taking a look at.    

 

After my enjoyable stroll, I hopped back in the car to grab ‘Take a Seat’, ‘Off Yer Trolley’ at Tesco and ‘No Magic Here’. The later was a nod to the children’s classic TV programme The Magic Roundabout. And I soon had my hands on the nice custom cache ‘Brian the snail’, who was well hidden behind a stone sign.  

 

I ended the evening with a little walk along Gas House Drove to collect four in the ‘Back tracking’ series. It was a tiny quiet road that I’d not been along before, and there were some nice sized caches, and custom containers including a cache hidden under fake turf and another in part of a log.   

 

We finish this week’s blog with a trip to Woolverstone. Where in the heck is that you may ask? Well it’s on the banks of the River Orwell, just a stones throw from the Ipswich and the Suffolk coast. 

Team DannyJGB were holidaying in Felixstowe for the weekend so we decided to meet up and do JapVonKeiller&Poppy’s ‘Wolverstone to Chelmondiston’ series.  

 

We were really lucky with the weather, it was warm and sunny, and after parking up in a great parking spot near number 16, outside the church, we set off to find number one.   

 

The first part of the walk crossed the grounds of a private school, which had the feel of a huge country estate. It was all very quiet though, no teachers of students about, so we were able to grab the first few caches pretty quickly without being seen.  

Soon we were out on country tracks skirting the edges of fields and my sister, niece 4ft and us were taking it in turns to make each find.  

 

At number 5, 4ft accompanied by her uncle – my other half – got a little over zealous and wrongly climbed up the embankment to try and find the cache. As they ran about trying to find it, the other half tripped on a rabbit hole, and went flying, much to 4ft’s amusement. Meanwhile my sister declared she’d found it in the hedge back down on the lane. 

 

Soon fields turned to woodland and we were walking alongside the estuary. Lots more caches were quickly found, until we came a slight cropper at number 10. 

After a good 20 minute hunt, the other half finally declared he’d found it. Apparently somewhere most of us had all searched before doh! 

 

As tummy’s started to rumble a little, we stopped off for a waterside picnic, before moving on to grab 11 and 12. 

We then spotted a lovely pub on the banks of the Orwell, so we decided to take another refreshment break to grab a cold drink – I highly recommend a visit, the views across the river were lovely.  

 

Finally, we were on the last leg of the series. It was just a short walk back to the cars, through a pretty woodland, where we picked up caches 13-16 in the series. 

All were found pretty quickly, although we did find ourselves upsetting a few bees when we overshot the host for number 15 and came across their hives. Luckily, there were no stings today!

 

After all that exercise we finished the day with a little paddle in the sea at Felixstowe, and a well earned traditional seaside supper of fish and chips. 

 

That’s it for this week. Next time we’ll be marking International Geocaching Day, finding an eggcellent cache in Rushbrooke and exploring the forest at Weeting with geo-dog Bobby.