Barking mad! Gromit and the giant geo-hound

This week we almost go barking mad! Well, there were certainly a lot of dogs featuring in our weekend geocaching adventures.  

 

First up, another great trip out to pick up caches on RYO62’s brilliant geo-art series ‘No Cheese Gromit’. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing this walk over several different days. Altogether, I bagged about 60 geocaches on this leg of the walk and met a couple of very chatty people along the way.  

 

One lady actually cycled passed me and then turned around, came back and stopped alongside me. She had clearly not seen many people recently with all the lockdowns as she just didn’t stop talking!

 

She started by asking a few questions like have you lost something? What is geocaching etc etc. 10 questions turned to 50 and before I knew it, she was virtually telling me her entire life story! 

In the end I had to politely encourage her to move on, otherwise I’d never have finished the walk before dusk. 

 

As always, the finds in the series were nice and straight forward and came thick and fast, thanks to the great hints and geocacher trails. 

I discovered some very nice custom caches along the way including logs, sticks, rocks, bricks, a brilliant 3D printed tortoise, and a very bright green iguana.    

 

Despite having had a long geocaching walk the previous day, I set out the following day on one of the biggest walks I’ve done this year. 

Some time ago I’d spotted the brilliant geo-art ‘Geo Hound’ series on the map at Grafham Water and was keen to go and do it. 

With a bit of help from my friends DannyJGB – who did all the jigsaws for me – I soon had all 71 hound themed caches in the series solved.  

 

Not wanting DannyJGB to miss out on the fun of the 12-and-a-half-mile walk, I invited them all to join me, and for good measure I even persuaded the other half to come along too. 

I hasten to add, that whilst my sister and I walked the 12 miles or so, the others had the good sense to bring their bikes! 

 

We were really lucky with the weather, it was a beautiful sunny day, and after parking up in the car park nearest the village of Graham, the blokes, 3ft and 4ft set off on their bikes. 

My sister and I set off anti-clockwise on foot, as we thought it would be easier to grab the caches than hopping on and off bikes all day.  

 

It was a brilliant walk, and we found all but two of the caches we hunted for. Most were lovely quick finds and all were in good order.  

 

A quarter of the way round, we met up with the others again, they had made it almost around the entire reservoir in less than an hour, even within little legs peddling furiously to keep up with the bigger riders. Although, that said, 3ft did look shattered and wasn’t keen on doing much more cycling. 

 

After some much needed refreshments, we parted company again, but we all agreed to meet up at the pub in the village of Perry, which was about two thirds of the way round. 

The next part of the walk seemed a lot hillier than the first part, but it was a lot more scenic, well away from villages and roads.  We found lots more caches too.  

 

The majority in the series are small pots, bison’s or tubes, but there is also the odd slightly different type of cache. 

About a third of the way round, the trail diverted away from the water and took us through a small wood. It was here that we made our biggest find of the day, a great sized ammo can. 

 

We also ran into two geocachers at various points along the middle section of the trail. I’d not met either before, so it was really nice to introduce ourselves and get some tips on a slightly trickier hide further up the trail. 

 

A good four hours into our walk, and we were finally entering the village of Perry. It was at this point that my sister’s phone started to buzz. It was 3ft letting us know they were at the pub and asking what we wanted to drink.  Apparently, the drinks were on her! Bless her. 

 

We quickly found the next four caches and arrived at the pub to see 3ft had already got us our drinks. They were very gratefully received, as we were both out of water and in dire need of an ice cold drink.  

 

After a nice sit down and a couple more J2Os, we set off on the last leg, this time accompanied by 3ft and 4ft. Both were a little saddle sore and declared they would not be riding their bikes for one more second. 

The blokes, on the other hand, were eager to do another circuit of the reservoir and set off at great speed.  

 

The last section of the walk was lovely. It took us through grassy parkland and alongside the huge manmade bank that was built to keep the water within the reservoir and a solar farm.  

 

We discovered more Tupperware boxes, some small magnetic nanos on information signs and even a clever little custom slug attached to a metal post. 

 

We finished the walk seven hours after we started, but we did stop for a couple of decent refreshment breaks on the way round. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole series and really appreciate all the hard work CO Thallams put into creating, setting and maintaining it. 

We found over 70 caches, and will pop back soon for the four we didn’t get. 

 

That’s it for another week, but next time we’ll be reporting on our geocaching adventures in Somerset…yes we’re off on holiday again…my bags are already packed!