Seeing double and the Downham Market dilemma

The past few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster, so it’s taken me a while to get around to updating the blog about our recent Geocaching exploits.  

We start by taking a trip back in time to the historic palindrome day 22.2.22, which will forever be known as ‘Deuce’s Wild’ Day in the Geocaching world. A souvenir was up for grabs and although I was working all day, until almost sundown, I managed to make the most of the last dimly lit hour of the day and grab two Geocaches to get the souvenir. 

As usual, I’d saved a couple of local caches, for just this type of occasion, where some quick Geocache grabs were required in order to get a HQ Souvenir.  

The first was literally a 5 minute drive up the road to Cavenham to collect the solved mystery cache Country Road Ramble. Part of the series by the same name, it didn’t require too much straining of the little grey cells, in order to obtain the co-ordinates and the final was located just outside the village and parking was easy. The great custom cache blended well into its surroundings, but didn’t fool us.     

 

Next, was a quick 15 minute dash across country – and some tiny roads – to Fordham, where the EcoPuffins had recently placed a new Church Micro Cache.  

Again, parking was straightforward at the church, and a short walk up a very quiet path and the cache was quickly in hand. There was actually still about 20 minutes of daylight left, but I decided to call it a night there, rather than risk getting stuck in the middle of nowhere hunting for caches in the dark. 

When I got home and logged both caches, it was great to see the colourful Deuces Wild souvenir pop up on my profile  

 

A few days later I was out hitting the trails again, this time around Downham Market. I’d visited the town a few times in the past to do some of the great series that had been set, along the river channels and around nearby Denver, but to-date I’d not ventured into the town much. It was nice to finally see a bit more of the town centre and its surrounding residential areas.   

 

It was a pretty chilly day, but the sun was out and it was lovely and dry – ideal for a long walk. My main aim was Poshrule’s brilliant ‘Denver Downham Dilemma’ series.  

 

Although I’d been to Downham Market a number of times collecting caches on some great series, I hadn’t actually ventured into the actual town much before, so it was nice to finally do so collecting caches in this series.  

 

As suggested by the CO, I parked at the recreation ground car park, which was pretty quiet, despite it being a lovely sunny day, and set off for the first cache. 

The first part of the walk was lovely, along a quite lane, and I met a lovely old man with his black Labrador dog, who looked just like my dad’s dog Bobby.  We had a nice chat about dogs, and how much Labradors eat, before parting ways.  

 

It was interesting to see the recent storm damage at the next GZ, but luckily the cache was safe and sound.  

 

As I headed into the town I passed by the location of the Ginger Bread Town Adventue Lab Bonus cache, which I’d solved on a previous visit but had ran out of time to collect. A little divert of my route, and the nice cache was finally in hand.  

 

I also passed by the Church Micro at the huge church on Lynn Road so popped to grab that too. It was a very nicely made custom - a bison attached to a little log in a tree – and blended in well to its surroundings. 

  

The rest of the walk took me through lots of interesting residential areas, new and old, and I found lots of nice caches, from the tiny to the slightly larger, all nicely hidden, but fairly quick to spot, thanks to the great coordinates and helpful hints. I even managed to collect a few Pokemon along the way, as there were loads of Poke Stops on route.  

 

As I neared the end of the series, I diverted again to the nature reserve at the Southern end of the town, to pick up the nice ‘Willows Nature Reserve cache’. It was all quiet at the reserve, just a few ducks waddling about, and a very pretty little place. I would never of known it was here without this cache. At GZ, I found the lovely custom made bird box, and the cache inside.  

 

A couple of caches along, I found another nice custom cache ‘Collingwood Rd’ – a small section of post, that slid open to reveal the log container. It had been placed next to a much bigger post and really did blend in well.  

 

It wasn’t long before I was back at the car having clocked up a very reasonable 6.7 miles. 

As there was still some daylight left, I spent the last hour grabbing a few others by car, that hadn’t been on my walking route. They included an ‘Off your Trolley’ cache and another nicely hidden Church Micro.  

 

That’s it for this time. We’ll be back soon with more of our Caching Tales.