Christmas Caching

Seeing as we still aiming for '365 days of caching', we had to find a cache on Christmas Day. All 4 of us took a walk along the Kennet and Avon canal. The canal itself was frozen over and the ground was snow covered. Big QC skipped along, Little QC slept and we walked off our Christmas lunch. We found one cache and then decided that since there was another cache within half a mile, we'd get that too. We had a great walk.

Bizarre objects

Little QC and I took a walk round Inkpen recently. We found this in a back garden/field...yes, a giant 10 ft tall Timberland boot!

Les Vaches, Les Caches, part deux!

Argh, the cows!

Here are 9 of the 25 bullocks that I had to walk through! Je n'aime pas les vaches!

It might have been slightly better had they not insisted on walking towards me looking evil with their beady black eye patches! In the end, I backtracked to the edge of the field, dropped down out of sight and ran! Needless to say, cow pats, buggy wheels and my clothes do not mix well!

I found a fab old (2003) cache today. I sat and read through the log book and realised that 'old' logs used to be paragraphs long; nowadays a quick 'TFTC' is normally left.

100 days of caching!

Today I hit the 100th day of continuous caching!

I started on the 1st September and since then, have found at least one cache per day. In the last 100 days I have clocked up 692 caches!!! I'm rather surprised at that number!
Also, in that time frame, I hit 7 different caches in one day, found my record of 40 caches in 12 hours, finally got over 50% of my D/T chart filled, found my record of 72 caches in a week and walked miles! Little QC has been with me for all but 3 of those days.

It has been fun! So now what? Do I continue or do I stop? I have my eye on a cache called 'The 365 days of caching'. This requires you to have cached on every single day of the year (over several years)...maybe, just maybe!

Little QC finds his first cache

Today, Little QC found his first cache! Ok, it was completely by accident, but he found it!
We parked up, left the buggy in the car and headed into the woods. A short walk of 200ft took us 20 minutes. Little QC had leaves to kick, leaves to roll in, sticks to pick up, sticks to eat...

Eventually we reached GZ, this had lots of low branches to duck under which made it hard work for the 14 month old. I started a search of the area when I heard a splat; he'd tripped and fallen over a log. I moved the log and there, inside was the cache container!

Today, it was mostly.....

Cold, icy and foggy!

Snow

This week, it snowed! Not much snow, but it snowed.

How does one find caches hidden in the bases of trees when everything is covered in snow? I had a high number of DNFs this week because of the snow.

I did a nice series with my caching friends, A and M. We signed the cache logs as The Cold HAMs! We thought it was funny!

Today, I left the kids at home with Daddy and went and did a 5 mile loop in Netheravon. It was a great walk and I found all 21 caches on the route. I also managed a bit of data: it took me 1h24mins of walking, with 22 mins of stopping time! I must have walked quite quickly!

Eeek, eek, eek!

My worst fear - mice and rats.

I've read logs where other cachers have discovered a rat looking at them or stuck their hand in a hole and been bitten by something. Bah, I thought, it wont happen to me.

I took Little QC up onto the Ridgeway this week. We did a few caches, but the going was tough; snow and ice don't make it easy to push the buggy. We came across one cache, it had a nice hidey hole in the top of a fence post. I removed the cache and "eeeeeeek" lots of little mice looked up at me. I dropped the cache in surprise, swore a bit, quickly replaced the cache and ran away! I had to go back as I hadn't signed the log. I wasn't touching the cache again so took a photo of the hide, I used the zoom so I didn't have to get too close to the mice!