A-Z of 2022 Caching Tales

With the dawn of a new year, it’s time to take a quick look back at 2022.

It was another year of high and lows but many of the highs involved our favourite hobby of Geocaching. Once again we went on countless Geocaching adventures, creating lots of fun memories and experiencing the very best of the great outdoors, here in the UK and overseas.

Here’s our A-Z of some of the best bits of our 2022 Caching Tales! 

A is for Abbey Gardens the location of a brilliant new virtual at the old abbey ruins in Bury st Edmunds. Set by CrazyTomUK it is one of the series of new virtuals awarded by Geocaching HQ in 2022 and is well worth a visit. It’s also nice and straightforward to complete.

B is for Beach litter pick, a CITO we took part in at Clacton-on-sea. We had a great time wandering along the sandy beach picking up old kids spades, bottle tops and even flip flops! And the ‘after CITO drinks’ party at the nearby hotel, was great fun too. 

C is for Crimplesham Cadence, another great series of 34 caches plus some extras, set in Norfolk by Poshrule. It was all along quiet roads and tracks and mostly quick finds thanks to the great coordinates and hints. 

D is for Droskyn Point Caves 2. A few years ago I braved the Cornish cliff edges near Perranporth to try and grab this one, but sadly it had gone missing. Seeing it had been revived during my holiday, I braved the goat path descent again, and finally found the great sized cache! It was also great to see the amazing blow hole nearby again too. 

E is for events! And this year, after 2 years of Pandemic restrictions, Geocaching events were back on the agenda! I got myself back out socialising with other geocachers at events in Sutton, Brandon, Eriswell, Clacton & Burwell to name a few! As a result I finally, finally, qualified for the EPPs Social Butterfly challenge cache near Fordham!

F is for Free Freddy! A brilliant mystery cache at Ely. The cache page links to a live webcam of Freddy being held captive against his will! You have to find the secret code to free him before the bomb goes off, and Freddy is blown to bits. It was one of the best and most unique geocaches we’ve done this year and rightfully earned its place in our top 3 geocaches of 2022! 

G is for Geo-art, and whilst I’ve done a few this year, one of the best was the Heal the World series, between Haverhill and Cambridge. I walked miles on a very hot day, but it was great fun, and with well over 70 finds, it was one of my biggest caching days of 2022.

H is for Highwayman! Yes in 2022 I finally got around to writing a new adventure lab series, this time based on the legend of the Barrow Highwayman! Like our Mildenhall lab cache, there’s a mystery to solve, and those who do, can grab the bonus box too! 

I is for IDL a series full of custom made caches near Sudbury. It turned out to be a little harder to do than I thought, mostly due to the fact the combine harvesters were out in force and seemed to be following me throughout the day. I did get a little dusty every so often as they passed me, throwing up a cloud of dry wheat and soil as they went, but it made it a very memorable caching day!

J is once again for jigsaws and the brilliant Norfolk geo-art series ‘Bouncing Butterflies’ set by Disa Urq. I enjoyed doing the puzzles all featuring beautiful butterflies, and found so many unique and brilliantly made custom caches along the woodland route, including a pixie door, frog, parrot and bear. I absolutely loved it. 

K is for Knetishall Heath Stroll, a new series for 2022, set by Weston Wanderer in the forest and heath of the popular nature reserve. It was full of inventive custom caches, including a hedgehog, fungi, and an acorn, that brought lots of smiles to our faces. It was a great day out.

L is for locationless cache as I found my first one of this type this year. Geocaching HQ revived this almost extinct cache type to mark the 20th anniversary of Geocaching, by making their Signal the Frog mascot a locationless find! I had originally hoped to meet him at the 2020 Belgium Mega event, but the pandemic put paid to that. Luckily, I finally got to meet him at the UK mega in the West Midlands.

M is for MINEder…SallyMINEder to be exact! The maddest geocaching adventure we’ve had this year, and the best cache we found in 2022! Hidden in a tiny cave, completely off the beaten track in Cornwall, we hiked, climbed and crawled our way too it, and loved every minute! 

N is for Nightmare in Newport! In 2022 I finally re-visited the town to complete the great Wherigo there called, ‘Postman’s Nightmare’! Originally, I’d failed to find the final cache, but this time, after a nice stroll along the high street I re-did my calculations and finally found it! 

O is for On Guard - Borley Mill. The series created by LeBombardier takes geocachers to abandoned military structures. At this one I had to get inside an old pillbox, which required some bending and bobbing to get through the low doorway. Once inside I did a couple of laps around the dark structure, before I finally spotted the cleverly hidden cache with the aid of my phone torch. Really good fun.

P is for Puzzle…field puzzle! We’ve found some brilliant ones this year, but the best by far was The Rolph’s fabulous ‘Enigma Code’ in the Warrener woods near Mildenhall. Such good fun working out what to do. I highly recommend it.

Q is for Quiet Please, the name of the small book library in someone’s front garden in Royston. I was a little nervous leaving the pavement to take a look, but I’m so glad I did. In amongst all the real books was an imposter and inside it, the cleverly hidden cache. Just brilliant! 

R is for Royston Rumble and it’s CO RYO62 , who once again set hundreds of new caches in Cambs/Herts/Beds, keeping the game alive and kicking in this part of the world! I particularly enjoyed the rumble with its brilliant custom caches and good hides. 

S is for Snag-the-Tag, a side game to Geocaching, which is great for anyone who likes TBs & Geocoins. I’ve enjoyed taking part in the game for the first time this year, as a hider of tags and a finder. I particularly loved the UK based Witches & Wizards games! Both sets of the tags and coins are just stunning! 

T is for ‘Time & Tide waits for…earthcachers’! This brilliant earthcache at Wells-Next-To-Sea saw us walk nearly a mile out to sea…at low tide obviously…to take some measurements and readings in order to claim the smilie. I do love an earthcache, and this one was really interesting to complete.  

U is for Uttoxeter, the location of this year’s UK West Midlands Mega event. It was my first visit to a full sized UK Mega and I loved it. The lab caches were great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed finding all the inventive custom caches in the new Explorer series too. 

V is for Virtual cache! And whilst I’ve done a lot this year, some of the most memorable included the two at Disney’s Epcot theme park in Florida and the brilliant ‘1st British Circular Junction’ in Letchworth. 

W is for Webcam. There are now only 4 of this cache type left in the UK, but we managed to do 3 this year! One in Exmouth in Devon - ‘The Hotspot’ - and two whilst on holiday in Florida in the US - ‘Port Canaveral’ just up the road from Cocoa Beach and ‘Park Avenue We See You’ at Winter Park in Orlando. A big thank you to my sister for hopping online at all hours of the day and night to capture our webcam snaps! 

X is for ‘Xmas is coming!’ our brand new series of 29 caches in the forest just outside Mildenhall! It went live two days before the big day itself, and is packed full of Christmas themed customs…which should be interesting for anyone visiting in the height of summer! 

Y is for Yorkie Terrier. I couldn’t finish writing about this year without mentioning the day I was reunited with the cute Yorkie dog garden ornament that I rescued from some fly tipped rubbish near Guilden Morden! I’d left him sitting in the trees lining the lane, and actually never thought I’d see him again, but there he was guarding one of RYO62’s geocaches. So cute…even with a missing ear! 

Z is for Zhuzhing up Burwell! The second CITO I took part in, in 2022. I had a lovely time walking around the village picking up litter with GCZ Team and QuySuz and I also managed to pick up a few tips on how to solve a mystery cache and complete an earthcache.

That’s it for another year. A very big thank you, to all of the COs who created and set the many great caches and series’ that we found throughout 2022. We thoroughly enjoyed finding them all. Thank you. 

A very happy new year to you all! 

Let’s hope 2023 is even better than 2022 and brings many new and fun geocaching adventures for us all.