Friday 28 January 2011

1500!

Today, we reached the 1500 cache milestone. It was also our 150th day of continuous caching. I picked an old historic cache for this milestone. Little QC, myself and Grandpa Q enjoyed a very cold, but interesting morning at Stonehenge. It was bitterly cold, but was still had a good trip. I opted for the Virtual Cache, this just involved a quick photo at a set of specific stones. Little QC was none to pleased with the weather so refused to look at the camera.
I then took Grandpa Q to Salisbury where I picked up a few other caches including a virtual cache at the cathedral.

Monday 24 January 2011

3 days, 73 caches, 19 miles!

In the past 3 days, Little QC and I have walked 19 miles and found 73 caches! Big QC joined us for 3 of those miles and 6 of the caches.
Tomorrow, I will be doing one drive by cache, I fear my legs will be very very tired!

Today, my caching friends, collectively known as the CCC (Cache and Cake Club) completed a series called CHOO- Chuffing and Huffing Out of Ogbourne. The series was 8 miles and contained 22 caches. We had intended to only do the first half of the series, then come back and finish it off another week. We had the option of finishing at cache #10 or #15. However, at #10, we decided to carry on. At #15 we were all enjoying the series so much that we felt we should finish it off! This was one of the best series we've done in a while. 22 well place, well thought out large caches, the route was well marked and easy to follow, the scenery was great and the hills were...um... For me, there wasn't a single stile or gate to lift the buggy over!

Sunday 23 January 2011

The Surrey Icon Challenge

Back in September, Little QC and I set ourselves the challenge of seeing how many cache types we could find in one day- read here.
Unbeknown to me, there are a few caches that you can only complete if you have found a required number of cache types in 24hours. One of which is the Surrey Icon Challenge Cache.
As we were already in the area, we drove up to collect this cache.
The prize was a well stocked ammo can on a byway, a short walk from a parking spot.
I am so pleased to have got this cache. Unfortunately, Little QC was asleep in his car seat so was unable to collect his prize too.

Our best day...so far!

With Big QC off at a sleepover with Granny, we decided to head down into Surrey and take in a series. Big QC is only 5 years old so struggles with anything over about 5 miles. We took the opportunity to walk an 8 mile loop- The Betchworth Brockham Loop.
This was a series of 35 caches with an extra 5 caches close by. We set off after a large cooked breakfast and wandered round. The series was mainly flat which made life with the buggy much easier. It was however, very muddy. We had a few stiles to contend with but overall, it was a very buggy friendly route. We really enjoyed this series plus the extra caches on it.

One cache we found was called 'Veteran Cache', it involved a short climb of a tree...

I sent Daddy QC up for this one. A few caches later there was another tree to climb. We couldn't get the buggy close enough so I went ahead and grabbed it.
 
We ended our day with 45 finds. We had plenty of time left for some nice pudding and coffee at the restaurant near our hotel before we headed off to pick up Big QC.

Monday 17 January 2011

Caching in Belgium

We spent a great weekend in Belgium staying with some very good friends of ours. In our three days there, we found 5 caches.

Our first two caches were located very close to each other in La Foret de Soignes. The first cache was an easy find as there was a lovely hint describing the tree. This was a quick find. We then headed to another cache. Here, I failed in the translation (it was in Flemish) and completely missed the massive hint in the cache description. With thick tree cover this was a very hard to find cache. I went back for just 'one last look' and discovered a sand coloured bag wedged into the roots of a fallen tree. This was then covered with several logs.
The next day we headed out and found a micro cache located on a roundabout. It was now dark so we drove to see Napoleon's Butte du Lion. This is a large man-made hill constructed on the battlefield of the Battle of Waterloo. It was nicely lit up and something worth seeing. There was a cache located within 100 meters of car park, so we headed there with a wind up torch and the 'torch' of the iphone! We found a travel bug that had come from Finland; this was quite funny seeing as our friends are Finnish. A few visitors before us had also been Finnish, though they'd not placed the TB!

Our last day saw us find a great ammo can in the Folon woods. We let our Finnish friends navigate to the cache and find it...much to Big QCs disgust. Our friends now have their own Geocaching account!

We have now cached in France, Netherlands, Belgium and Wales. Next stop...Scotland!

Tuesday 11 January 2011

Caching in Devon

Over New Year we visited friends in Devon. Naturally we had to take in a few caches!
We found some excellent caches on SheepsTor on Dartmoor; 2 of which involved small caves. All caches are rated by their difficulty and the terrain difficulty. Anything over a 3 for us means the buggy will struggle, so we switch to the packpack sling. These cave caches were rated as 2 for terrain. We had to scramble over rocks to get to the caves; no mean feat with a 25lb baby on your back, so I felt the terrain ratings should have been harder, there was just no way we'd have got the buggy within about 200 meters of these caches.

Anyhow, we had an excellent time.




Monday 10 January 2011

Fab ABS!

We realised we hadn't been out for a good proper walk as a family for a few weeks, so this weekend, we found a circuit that looked kid friendly. We headed over to Wokingham for a wander round the ABS series.
The series had 11 caches set on it, with a further 2 set by other cachers. The highlight of the walk for Big QC was finding a well stocked ammo can in a spooky 'dinosaur' forest. We really enjoyed walking through the most enormous fruit farm ever, we guessed this was where local supermarkets got their berry stock from. It was an amazing site; it had never really occurred to us how fruit on this scale is grown.

By the time we returned to the car, we'd covered 4 miles in about 2.5hours. We'd also spotted a cache called 'The World's Biggest Strawberry' situated near the entrance to the above mentioned fruit farm. I retrieved the cache whilst Daddy QC took the kids up to see the huge strawberry. Big QC doesn't like strawberries, but she was quite impressed with this one!

Saturday 8 January 2011

Electric Fences

Today, Little QC and I took a walk round the BlackMill Series near Calne. This was a 4 mile walk, though we walked nearly an extra mile, with 14 caches placed around the circuit.
I had Little QC in the sling as I knew, from reading the logs, that the series was very muddy and contained a lot of stiles. What I hadn't bargained for were the electric fences.
We found caches 1-3 easily and then set off across a field. Electric fence #1 blocked our way. We detoured round the field and bypassed that fence, only to be greeted with a succession of electrical cabling. It was like a scene from the Krypton Factor with fences criss crossing each other.
There was no possible way I could leap the fences with Little QC on my back, so we back tracked...hence adding an extra mile to the road and walked round to cache #4.
This was a great series that I really enjoyed walking round.
According to the GPS, we walked 4.7miles in 1 hours 30 mins, with an extra 30 mins for stopping time and cache finding. This time also includes Little QC's walk between caches when he  needed to stretch his legs.

Monday 3 January 2011

2010 statistics

Back on the 21st March 2010, we found our first cache. We ended the year on 1320 finds.
Our best month was October with 240 finds. Over the last 10 months our caching rate has been 4.6 finds per day.
We've managed to fill in 43 of the 81 squares on our D/T (difficulty/terrain) grid. Each cache is rated for the hide difficulty and the terrain. Anything over a 3 for terrain is always quite tricky with Little QC's buggy.
Now that I am aiming for the '365 days of caching' cache, we've had to cache daily to fill in our 'finds by date' grid. We've covered 57% of the year so far.
We managed to cache in 17 different counties, including 5 in Wales, plus we've found caches in 2 other countries (Netherlands and France).
Our best caching day resulted in 40 finds, our best week yielded 72 finds. I found 7 different cache types in one day.
Our fasted 100 caches took 11 days, and our fastest 1000 caches took 162 days.
The average length of my logs are 31 words.

1-1-11 caching!

Our first cache of 2011 came as we headed down the M5 to see friends of ours. It was a quick Motorway Mayhem cache located at a service station. We droppped off 2 Travel Bugs at another cache in Devon.
During our few days in Devon we picked up another 6 caches but I'll write more when I sort out the photos.