Caching Tales

This week it was all about mystery geocaches caches and boy did we bump up our mystery cache finds.     We started with the huge geo-art series in South Cambridgeshire called ‘Doh’! Set by infamous South Cambridgeshire cacher RYO62, it revolved around the theme of the US hit TV show, The Simpsons…’Doh’ being his very famous catchphrase!    Altogether, there were 92 caches in the series, which make up an image of Homer’s face on the geocaching map. I’d spent a few weeks solving all the puzzles with a lot of help from Google and members of team DannyJGB, who once again kindly did all the jigsaw puzzles for me. All were great fun and I learnt a lot of new things about The Simpsons!     I decided to tackle the smaller loop first around Great Eversden and then made a return visit to grab the bigger loop of caches around Orwell.  Once again it was a fantastic walk, along nice scenic and mostly dry country paths, many of which I’d walked at least one before w...

With many of the pandemic lockdown restrictions lifted in the UK in recent weeks, it has meant we can finally get out and find caches much further afield. Not only did a return to more normal life lift our spirits, at the end of March, but being able to travel to find caches in places we hadn’t been able to see for over 6 months, was an even bigger boost. And we have certainly made the most of it. This week also saw more opportunities to grab some new HQ souvenirs. The first was quite literally out of this world, the Mars Perseverance Rover souvenir.  The probe launched by NASA was actually trackable and once it had landed on the red planet its WATSON camera captured a picture of the tracking code on the probe, and sent it back to earth. It is the first ever interplanetary trackable and once logged as discovered, you are awarded the brilliant, interplanetary souvenir on your profile. It was great to earn this very special souvenir. The second souvenir challenge was part two of ...

Much of the world is still in the firm grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, over a year on from those first cases in China. As different waves hit different countries, each is going in and out of lockdown stopping many of our usual hobbies and pursuits. However, it doesn’t have to stop you enjoying some of the great aspects of geocaching and with some careful planning you can still get out geocaching.   The first thing to do is to get organised! By accepting another lockdown might be around the corner, you can plan for it.  Here in the UK, we have been very lucky that we have still been allowed to exercise outdoors during all of the national and regional lockdowns imposed upon us. The only tiny hitch is we have all had to ‘stay local’. Those two tiny words can make finding geocaches a challenge, especially if you have been doing it for several years and have no doubt turned all the ‘local’ ones into smilies!   But with so many geocachers stuck at home, many have used their time...