Finding my head for heights and the great safe heist

This week it was time to get active and hopefully shed a few pounds as we set off for Center Parcs with team DannyJGB.  

Their original trip to the forest, holiday village last summer had ended in disaster when my sister came flying off her bike, banged her head and was blue lighted to hospital. As 3ft and 4ft didn’t get to do all the things that they had hoped to, they decided to plan another visit and this time they invited their favourite auntie and uncle along to join them. 

 

It was a brilliant weekend. With so many activities on offer we just had a try a few including some we had never tried before. The first being the aerial adventure! 

 

Now, anyone reading my geocaching logs will probably know I’m not much of a tree climber. I have no head for heights and at just 5ft tall I struggle to pull myself up from branch to branch. So, you may ask why on earth did I sign up for the aerial adventure? I have no idea.   

 

As I stood getting kitted out in helmet and harness, with two rather excited nieces beside me, I could see the first few sets of obstacles and ropes. Looking at them they didn’t seem particularly high or challenging. I was momentarily relieved.  

 

However, it was short lived! As I started to make my way across the first obstacle, balancing on a wire and clinging desperately to each vertical rope, I suddenly realised how tough it was! Just a few feet from the ground, felt like 30ft and I really couldn’t look down. I thought about giving up there and then…there was no way I was going to be able to do it.  

 

Somehow, perhaps due to the constant verbal encouragement of my nieces – 3ft and 4ft - I made it across the first one and stood on a tiny platform clinging desperately to the tree. 

Spurred on by the fact 3ft was already halfway across the obstacle behind me I decided to keep going and going and somehow made it all the way round the course to the zip wire tower. Believe me there were some frightening moments along the way, and many times I would happily have given up, but I’m glad I didn’t.  

 

The zip wire was brilliant…the adrenaline rush of flying across the huge lake at 30mph was the best bit. I highly recommend it. And the sense of achievement after landing, knowing I had completed the course, was just fantastic.  

 

So will I be tackling any Geocache tree climbs in the future?…possibly!  

During the rest of our stay, I did some less dangerous activities including Center Parcs’ version of Geocaching. It’s certainly not as popular as real life Geocaching…only myself and the other half turned up to do it, and by default won…but it was nice to do some caching during our trip. 

 

On our return home I was desperate to find some real geocaches, so headed back into the forest to have a go at Crazytom2001uk’s ‘Random Route’ series. 

 

Set in a fairly cache baron part of Thetford Forest, just up the road from Brandon, the series consisted of 10 caches, and most were customs. 

As my dad’s dog Bobby enjoys a forest walk, I took him with me, and whilst he bounded up and down the lovely wide tracks, I began homing in on each cache. 

 

There were some great hides and clever customs, including a stick and a frog.  And a first for me…a stunning large seashell, with a log container cleverly inserted.  

 

However, my favourite was number ten, a large box, which once opened revealed a safe inside. Luckily, I’d picked up all but one of the required numbers, so after a little bit of trial and error I finally had the right combination and cracked the safe open to reveal the logbook inside. 

I’d not seen one like this before. It really added to the fun and was a great cache to end the series on. 

 

Our next Geocaching adventure was to Attleborough in Norfolk.  Some time ago Happygirlie had published a linear trail along the quiet Leys Lane. Today - with the other half in tow - was the day to go and find them.  

 

We decided to park on the nearby industrial estate and pick up a couple of caches on route to the start of the series.  

 

First, we picked up the clever ‘Attleborough Side Tracked’ cache, which was a washer and screw on a lamppost which looked like it was meant to be there. 

Next was one from the tricky trail series. After a bit of a search through the leaf litter we spotted the custom iguana cache container – very cute!    

 

Soon we were picking up our first ‘Leys Lane Limpalong’ cache – number 14 as we were working in reverse order. It was quick to spot, with the absence of leaves on the tree at this time of year. 

More tubes and pot containers followed and then some great customs that blended in really well.  

 

The first was a bit of old brick that had a tiny nano in it. Another was a big piece of stick propped up against a tree, with a nano inserted into the end.  

 

The next was incredibly clever and well worthy of its difficulty 4 rating. It was somewhere on a huge, old oak tree. Round and round we went and after almost 20 minutes we still hadn’t spotted it. 

Eventually, I went back to something I’d spotted earlier, pulled a little harder and the cache was revealed. The top of the nano had been cleverly disguised to look like a nobbly bit of the bark, it was almost impossible to see it as anything other than part of the tree. So clever! 

 

More great caches came thick and fast including a fake rock and a Tupperware box, where we picked up a travel bug. Soon we were turning the corner down a slightly muddier track to pick up the five additional caches, so that we could head back to the town along the drier main road.  

 

After squelching our way through an almighty muddy mess near the farm track, we picked up the last CL cache and then discovered the brilliant standalone cache ‘TAS Valley Way Walk’. It was a clever custom made from an old trainer, with the cache cemented into the top of it. Now you don’t see that every day! 

 

As we wandered back along Hargham Road we grabbed our final cache of the day – ‘Side Tracked Flowers Lane’. The cache hadn’t been found for quite some time, and we weren’t too hopeful of finding it after seeing the chain of dnfs. However, after a few minutes of poking about in the ivy-covered tree we discovered the brilliant nano, with fake ivy attached.  

 

It blended into its surroundings perfectly…in fact so perfectly it had clearly fooled many other recent geocachers. A happy dance followed – it’s always nice to find the tricky ones, especially where others have failed ;-)  

    

That’s it for this week. Next week we’re learning all about the new Snag a Tag game, braving the wet weather to pick up more great caches around Downham Market and going on a less than quiet country road ramble with 3ft and 4ft. Until then, keep warm, keep well.