Finding my first Snag the Tag, the fox, and mixing footie with Geocaching
Whilst I love Geocaching, I’m always looking for new ways to add to the excitement of my hobby. It was whilst reading a HQ blog that I discovered the side game of Snag the Tag and I was immediately hooked.
During the High and Low Snag the Tag game, which had tags featuring a magnetic Signal the Frog on a Mars rover and in a Submarine, I was a hider of both tags and it was great fun trying to think up a good location to hide each tag in keeping with the theme of each game.
When the next game launched soon afterwards called, ‘No More Secrets’, I decided to get involved again, but this time buying just one hider pack – the Silver Bullet - and hoped that I might be able to find the second, golden Honey Pot tag.
I hid my first Silver Bullet tag just around the corner from Bury St Edmunds police station, as it seemed a fitting location for the top secret tag. It was claimed the very next day, which was great to see.
Whilst thinking about where to hide the second one, I’d been keeping a very close eye on the No More Secrets map to look for new tags being published. I was keeping everything crossed that I might be able to get to a golden Honey Pot tag first, but so far only a handful had been published and they were all quite some distance from me.
Half an hour after getting up on Sunday morning, I checked the map and to my surprise, a Honey Pot tag had been published at Chicksands, near Sandy, in Bedfordshire. Knowing it was a bit of a trek - potentially an hour away by car - and that I potentially wouldn’t get there first, I spent about 30 minutes trying to decide whether to go for it or not. In the end, I decided I had to try, I had nothing to loose other than a bit of fuel, so I headed off down the A11 and A505.
Every minute of the journey was nerve racking. Thoughts like, ‘what if its been claimed before I get there?’ And ‘surely I won’t be first’ etc etc ran through my head. It was quite an adrenaline rush and made even worse by the fact I didn’t really know where I was going, so after coming off the A505, I had to keep stopping to check I was actually going the right way! During each stop I also quickly checked the Snag the Tag map again and again, to check if the tag had been claimed…it still hadn’t been, but I knew every second counted!
As I continued on, I became more and more suspicious of other cars on the road, ‘were they going the same way as me?’ ‘were they a fellow snag a tagger?’ ‘were they going to get there before me?’
Finally, after getting lost twice, I arrived at a small forest car park, leapt out of the car and began running towards GZ. Checking my phone as I ran, I could see it still hadn’t been claimed…but would I arrive to find people there?
As I turned the corner and headed along the final path, the coast seemed to be completely clear and after lifting a bit of stickoflage I found the great little white box and the tag inside! Oh the joy! I was over the moon. I’d done it! My first ever Snag the Tag find! I had got a Golden Honey Pot tag. It was like finding one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets. I immediately texted the other half to tell him how clever I was and then sat down to right my claimed log and thank the kind cacher who had placed it there. Thanks again Ed2Ed :-)
As I was halfway across the region in central Bedfordshire, where I hadn’t been caching for quite some time, I decided to make the most of my visit and find a few local Geocaches.
First, I set my sights on some of the hides in the forest itself. There were some nice hides in old tree trunks and old logs, and the forest reminded me a lot of some of those around Thetford.
Afterwards, I decided to start heading back towards home, and grab some caches on the outskirts of Letchworth and Baldock. There are so many great series in this part of the world, it was hard to pick just one, but I spotted an interesting circular walk called, ‘A Walk to the Pumping Station’ and decided to do that.
It had been set by Rolleron, who seems to be quite notorious in in this part of the world for setting caches, as the vast majority around Baldock and Letchworth seem to feature his name. It was a brilliant series with lots of great customs and I saw some beautiful wildlife along the way.
The walk took me uphill along really good paths either side of an oil seed rape field. It also featured many great custom caches all cleverly made by the CO. They included a bison in a log, a cache within an insect house, an ammo can and a cache hidden inside a bit of drain pipe m, which pulled out via a little pulley system.
As I’d finished one leg of the walk so quickly, I decided to walk on a little further to also grab some in a couple of other great series’ called ‘Jack o Legs’ and ‘Lannock Hill’.
Again, there were some clever customs and hides, including the brilliant number 5 Lannock Hill, which was a large box cleverly hidden in an old green telephone cabinet.
Other caches included fake grass, logs, the Russian doll like cache of number 18 Greenway South, and various Tupperware boxes.
Back on the ‘Walk to the Pumping Station’ series, I found more great caches including a fake rock, and had the delight of seeing a beautiful fox crossing the path just ahead of me.
The series passed through the very pretty village of Stow Bardolph, which gave me the opportunity to do the nice ‘Stow Bardolph Squiggle’ Adventure Labs there, set by Janechick. Each of the labs took me to an interesting location in the village including Church Farm Rare Breeds Centre, the pub and the beautiful Almshouses.
I also picked up the great Airfield 1 cache about halfway around the walk. It was a great homemade custom that looked like a block of wood attached to a tree, but the clever little mechanism soon revealed the cache, when it popped out the top. How do people come up with these great ideas? It earned a much deserved FP.
I also picked up a number of other caches including a Trigtastic cache, and some in the Church Micro and Village Sign series’. It was another great haul of caches - 47 found in total – and a great walk on a very nice sunny day.
My final spot of caching for the week was during a trip to Bottisham with my niece 3ft. She was due to take part in a footie match with her team, but couldn’t get there as her sister was playing in a match somewhere near Peterborough that my sister needed to drive her too. As I hadn’t seen her play before, I offered to take her.
It was great to see her play and she really does get stuck in defending the goal like a Rottweiler! Midway through the game, I quietly snuck off to grab a couple of caches in the village…it had to be done, as it was Blue Switch Day, and a souvenir was up for grabs.
I grabbed two caches in quick succession the Moat Micro Bottisham and the Village Sign cache, before quickly heading back to see my niece and her team win the game. Big congratulations to them all.
That’s full time for this week. I’m off to prepare for my next adventures. More on those next time.
Comments
Post a Comment