A thousand mystery’s, the golden fox and the playing card log

With the much colder weather arriving here in the UK, it’s been much harder to get myself out of the warm house and on the trails finding geocaches. But a few days off work recently spurred me on to make the most of them and boost my geocache numbers – and get me a little closer to the big 10,000 finds milestone.   

We begin with a fairly short walk in Suffolk to grab the final caches in the brilliant ‘Brockley and Back’ series. I’d started it quite some time ago and had completed the biggest chunk of the route, but I ended up cutting off a corner in a bid to get back to my car before it got dark.  

 

The series, set by creative Suffolk cachers Campan51 had yielded some great finds – so many fun creative caches – and this last stretch proved to be just as fun. 

I managed to park at the top of a muddy lane and picked up the trail at number 24. It was a clever hide, in the post of the metal railings of a bridge. As I took the cap off and began to pull, out popped a bright blue rubbery caterpillar. Well I think it was a caterpillar…but it could just as well of been some other long creature. 

 

There were also some clever hides in stones, sticks and larger bits of branch. And I was very chuffed with myself when I managed to rectify a previous did not find at number 32. It was another clever custom, that had been so well placed. I now know why I didn’t spot it the first time!  

 

As I was making my way back to pick up the final cache, I suddenly spotted something leaping into the long grass in the field just ahead. I thought it was a golden brown dog, with a big bushy tail, but then it stopped, turned, and looked at me, and ran back towards the wood. It wasn’t a dog at all, but a stunning, large fox! It really was beautiful and so rare to see in daylight. I was slightly gutted I didn’t have my camera to hand quickly enough.  

 

A day or so later I needed to go to Brandon to pick up a couple of things from the cheap superstore, so I decided to park up in the town centre first and try my hand at the recently published ‘Hidden gems of Brandon’ lab caches, which had been created by The Jones Squad.  

 

I decided to grab the first three on foot and then pick up the last two by car. The walk took me to the interesting Brandon Heritage centre and the very quiet community Orchard, where the necessary info was gathered. I then walked back to the town square to locate the Millennium Handprints.  

 

After a bit of back and forth, mainly because I stupidly didn’t look down…admiring the walls of the old school instead, I finally spotted them…on the ground! Such a clever idea to mark the turn of the century and it was really nice to see the handprints – big and small - all pressed into the concrete along the pavement.  

 

I also picked up the traditional cache ‘Market as found’, on a bench nearby, and then trotted off down the high street to grab my shopping and the ‘Of your Trolley – Pole position’ cache in the supermarket’s car park. 

 

I finished with a few caches and dashes, to pick up the ‘Back Tracking No.5’ ‘Bryn’s Walk #3’, ‘A woodland Walk’ and the recently solved mystery cache ‘A fruity minor maths mystery’.  

 

The final two labs were also lovely quick finds and took me to two very hidden Brandon gems. I would not have seen either without this series – the tiny nature reserve ‘Brandon Artemisia’ nestled in amongst some large industrial buildings, and the pretty ‘Seymour’s Garden’ nestled in amongst a housing estate.   

  

My next geocaching jaunt was a brief one, to grab the final three caches in the ‘Fifty Foragers’ series near West Row in Suffolk and to pick up another recently solved mystery cache, ‘Where’s Incy?’.   

 

The first two caches were nice quick cache and dash finds, but no. 3 was a tough one! I’d parked down the lane and walked up to it and as I approached I could see the interesting World War II bunker. However, it was completely covered by wild shrubbery, and most of it was barely visible.   

 

I began to circle around the building looking for the narrow windows. I found a couple fairly quickly, but there was no sign of the cache. I also found the doorway, but it was also very overgrown, and it looked pretty dark inside, so I didn’t fancy venturing in. 

 

Reading some past logs it sounded like the cache would be accessible from outside, so I battled some undergrowth and uncovered some more windows, but still I came up empty handed.  

 

Eventually, I did the thing I should have done at the start and read the cache page. There was a helpful line about the cache being accessible from the track so I returned to the spot that was nearest the track and prodded at the shrubbery. Suddenly a window I hadn’t spotted before, revealed itself and nestled on the ledge was the cache! What a clever little hide and I was so pleased to have found it.    

 

‘Incy’ was fortunately a much quicker find, up the road in Hollywell Row. The spider custom cache was perfectly suited to the theme ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ and blended in well with his surroundings.  

 

A day or two later it was time to tackle another of Campan51’s series’, this time the much larger ‘Five Villages’. Set along the very narrow and quiet country roads around Hawstead Green, Lawshall and Hoggard’s Green, I decided to do it as caches and dashes, as I don’t current have a bike, and it would have been rather a long walk.   

 

Fortunately, at most of the GZ’s there was a little place to pull in and where there wasn’t I parked a little up the road and walked back. There were so many great hides and caches on this trail it’s not possible to mention them all.  

 

My favourites included the giant bug, the rotting bit of bark with the micro inside, the remote control, and the baby pink unicorn. 

 

There was also Campan51’s signature cache – an old petrol cap, cleverly customised to include the log container.   

 

The deck of cards was also a really clever idea for an innovative geocache logbook. Whilst it took a few minutes to find the container, locating the logbook inside was much quicker. Although, that said, a few other cachers didn’t manage too…there were a few autographs on the Ace card, instead of the log! 

 

The series also gave me a few fun adventures, including climbing down into the ‘Culvert’ at number 23, and searching for the small tube there. Not only did I learn what a Culvert is, but I was overjoyed to finally find the cache, which had slipped from the stoney wall, into the muddy bottom of the Culvert. It was nice to rescue it and return it to where it should be. 

 

I also had a bit of an adventure at number 41, when I slipped over twice getting into and out of the ditch as I battled the undergrowth. But it was worth it when I found the lovely big cache container there.  

All in all it was a great series, that I highly recommend to others who like more creative caches. 

 

My recent caching exploits meant I was finally able to log the ‘Lynford 1000 unknown caches challenge’. I realised I had finally found over a thousand mystery caches and could log the challenge cache as found. It was a great milestone to hit…although it’s taken me a while.  

 

Sadly, I still haven’t quite reached my other big milestone of 10,000 finds, but every little cache helps…so I’ll keep clocking them up over the next few weeks and hopefully get there soon.  

 

On that note, I’m off to plan my next geocaching adventure. Happy caching!