Scent - Geocaching in Bedford

I haven't been caching in quite some time but just took a stroll in Bedford Park to find a cache. It was such a great cache I had to make a quick post about it. It's just off the edge of the park, backing onto the tennis courts. You're nice and concealed so you can search without anyone watching! Finding the cache took us about 10 minutes, rummaging around in the undergrowth. 

Lewis found the cache and opened up the box, inside is a puzzle. A scent based puzzle! You're presented with 10 scents 0-9 and you have to find the correct smells to correspond with their number. 

We figured out the combination and managed to retrieve the Geocoin, Best of British inside! It's traveled around the world at least once so hopefully we can move it on when we go to Somerset in a couple of weeks!

If you're ever around Bedford this cache is definitely worth checking out, although you'll need a good sense of smell. Not worth attempting if you have a blocked nose!

London and FarmtagZ 2015 Trackable UPDATE - Geocache

Wobbly Bridge

With some time to spare and trackable to move on, we located a cache we hadn't yet done in London that was big enough. It lays right outside the Tate Modern by the side of the Millennium bridge; on a Saturday it was extremely busy. Upon approaching the cache there was a street performer playing a saw like a violin. It was impressive but I was more concerned he was sitting about 5 meters in front of the cache.. At the same time he was drawing attention he was always creating a crowd that could easily look behind and see me reaching into a hedge!

I used much ninja stealth and hopefully no one really noticed, I retrieved the cache and placed the trackable inside! We have now completed one of the trackables missions in reaching London! Little fact that the cache doesn't tell you about, the bridge is in Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows. At the other end of the bridge is the City of London School which is actually the school Daniel Radcliffe attended. So it's basically a Harry Potter Easter egg!

Squeezed in at the Tate

 Now this cache requires far more stealth, the coordinates are pretty spot on. The cache itself is open access from all angles, you only get coverage from the bin itself. Otherwise anyone walking from either side can see what you're doing. Lewis stood one side while I quickly leaned over to retrieved the cache!

We are slowly adding more London caches to our collection as we travel up there for day travels. Hopefully we'll be able to add a few more soon, we've been unsuccessful with quite a few caches in London previously but luckily we finally got our Italian trackable moved on!

Kingley Vale and Lizzard TB UPDATE

We went for an evening walk with Kashpop in Kingley Vale. The walk itself is quite large and the caches are spaced out very far and wide.

There is quite a large hill you can climb (at your own risk) it was pretty hard work as it goes steep. Luckily someone's made foot holes as you get higher and it makes climbing to the top easier. If you can get to the top the view is pretty amazing. Probably even better at night! (Sorry for poor quality photo, taken on my phone.)

SDGT Kingley Vale

By time we found the cache it was late and dark, especially inside the woods. We only managed to get one cache but it was fortunately big enough for the trackable, Lizzard, we wanted to move on from Bournemouth. We helped it move 47.28 miles. Probably our quickest move on a trackable! The site were the cache is located has some local history too so it's a great cache visit if you want to learn something about the local area.

It was a medium sized container great for swaps and easily could fit a few more trackables. It seems to be visited requently so hopefully the trackable gets moved on soon!

FarmtagZ 2015 Trackable UPDATE

So having hoarded this trackable for such a long time, me and Lewis finally were able to move it on. I really didn't want to move it somewhere close by so we took with with us on our trip to Bournemouth. We had visited the cache before so no new cache. It's the only local cache big enough for trackables. I wrote a blog post previously about the Beauty in Decay cache. 

There were 2 trackables inside the cache so I dropped ours off and took another, hopefully won't take as long this time! Lewis told me to only take one though... as much as I wanted both! We still have a trackable from Italy to drop off in England so the plan is to hopefully take them both up to London in a couple of weeks! Now we have Lizzard in our possession. 

I have been working pretty much full time and on weekends so my days off haven't been matching up to Lewis', therefore we haven't been able to go Geocaching.. hopefully we can start to find some time to go soon!

Lucca and Toscana, Italy - Geocache

Me and Lewis went on another holiday to Italy with his parents in Tuscany. We were in a villa that was practically in the middle of nowhere so our hopes for local caching was ruined! We ended up having a day trip to Lucca with intentions to drop off the latest trackable we had. All of the caches were just a bit too small to fit the trackable inside so sadly that has come back home with us. 

Lucca is known for its Renaissance walls which still stand in great condition as well as it's historic city center. It has history dating back from the Roman age as well as Medieval and Renaissance architecture. 

Il Labirinto

The first cache we found was located near St Martin's Cathedral, it was founded in the 6th century and build up over the years with the final renovations happening in the 14th and 15th centuries. After seeing some impressive Renaissance architecture in Florence I was surprised at how this building had small tier pillars with such fine details and not noting seeing anything like that before in Florence. The outside was very beautiful and decorated in the usual Renaissance marble. 

The cache hint was "You'll see a mouth" and along the floor was a small lion with an open mouth, although the cache was actually inside it was just slightly to the left in a gap on the wall. It was nice and small but the log was very full with old receipts and scraps of paper being used. 

 La vecchia Manifattura

This cache was hard to spot if you're not the size of a basketball player. I had to use my camera to take a picture on top of the pillar to see if anything was up there.

We found one trackable inside and have taken with us! The trackable is called FarmtagZ (wasn't named anything) and it's mission is to Pass by Washington DC, Hawaii, Paris and London by taking a photo at least every time. Easy for us to actually achieve on of these!  

 You have to try out this Gelato ice cream shop, Gelatarium. You build your own ice cream and pay by weight (kind of expensive..) there are several ice creams to choose from and lots of toppings! I went for chocolate and strawberry with milk and white chocolate sauce; topped with cookie pieces. Lewis went for strawberry, milk and melon. Mine came out at 4 euros and Lewis' at 3ish. It works out a lot but it's super fun and yummy!

Sotto l'antica porta della città

This cache was located near a water fountain and we only found the cache with the help of a spoiler picture. The cache container is actually really easy to spot so I'm not sure how it hasn't been spotted! Lewis filled up our bottle at the fountain too!

There were several other caches in Lucca we attempted but had no luck in finding. One particular cache seemed interested but we think we may have been sabotaged but someone claimed to have found it after us. If you're ever around Lucca try out Torre Guinigi and let me know if you find it! It is a premium cache.

Villa Conti

The last cache found was located is Toscany, it's hidden in a hole along a wall. You just have to stick your hand in and hope for the best! 

So we have a new trackable under our belt in which we need to move on towards London. As well as moving on the older trackable we still have. Lucca is definitely a place worth visiting and it's fun to find the caches along the way!

The Return, Chichester PART 2 - Geocache

Video of the cache.
Me and Lewis finally got around to finishing the last half of the series in Dell Quay-Chichester! The original plan was to eat lunch at the pub, Crown and Anchor, and then cache afterwards. How it actually turned out was we ate lunch outside and then literally as we started to walk the heavens opened and it chucked it down. So we did the caches to following day (without lunch). As far as the pub goes for food, it's great. It is a little costly compared to other pub lunches but you are paying for the location too. I had the fish and chips (costing £14) and the fish was cooked to perfection although I didn't enjoy the mushy peas mixed with mint. Lewis ordered a burger with cheese and bacon coming in at £12. The menu isn't massive (around 6 mains) but it's very nice to sit in the sun and enjoy a lunch. 

Our view eating lunch!

Back to geocaching! 

The Return 10

This cache took longer to find than it should have because the hint had some confusing extra info "Right hand side of path in 'V' of tree head height. ICT opposite "path" to defences edge ('X' marks the spot although not buried)." The cache was just simply in a tree but I still have no idea what the rest of the hint meant and we spent some time trying to figure out what ICT means in Caching slang..

The Return 11

Upon arriving at GZ we had a brief explore for this cache but were soon cut short after a couple came and literally sat about 30 meters away from the location. We didn't want to look too suspicious so carried on and found this one on the way back!

The Return 12

A simple find if you know what part of the edge to look over, I'd say it's relatively obvious from past people pushing back the plants! 

The Return 13

Lewis went down off of the path to find this one, although it's not as low down as you'd first assume. Sometimes I think we over complicate caches..

The Return 14

This cache is very well blended in, we spent a couple of minutes looking all around two posts. We assumed it would be at the base but the cache is actually hidden within ivy along the top!

Inside we found a trackable! FarmtagZ 2015 hasn't been traveling for very long but it started in Bretagne, France. It's only been in 4 caches and was exchanged at a meet and greet, quite a lucky trackable to get from France and England so quickly!

Number 15 in this series is a church mirco and after a previous attempt at a church micro between 11-12 we decided to just skip it out and come back another time to do both church mircos in one.

What Ammo Box

I found this cache without Lewis telling me when we were there, the entrance to the cache is obvious, too obvious that it makes me wonder how exploring kids and such haven't found this! It has a lot of swaps inside and now counts as our second ammo box! 

The Return 16

I'm not really sure why the series ran through the countryside and left the last one in a public place. It does return you back into Chichester but it's located at quite a high muggle area and if you're lurking around the tree you look awfully suspicious! The tree itself is right next to the Tesco Extra walkway so many people shopping walk past here. Luckily it was a Sunday and close to closing time so their weren't too many people passing by. We stopped for some refreshments to take on our journey back!

Big Green Ugly Thing

This last cache was so close by it wasn't worth leaving! It's found by the overpass to the train tracks and although I haven't got a picture of the big green ugly thing, it is in the video if you want to see it. This cache was a feely job rather than a seeing but it didn't take too long! Just have to be careful for muggles as they walk past to get over the tracks. 

The journey itself took us around 3.5 hours to walk there and back (forgot to reset GPS so just estimating) the total distance we walked (including off track of the series to get a church micro) was 3.84 miles - 6.1 km. We arrived about half 1 and got back home at half 5. It didn't seem like a long walk but it was quite warm! I guess we can't say we've finished this series as we have the church micro to do but for now we've done 99%! All the caches part of the series were small so easily fit trackables in and luckily enough for us we bagged another trackable!

Trackables UPDATE

A few trackables that we placed have since moved and I thought I'd do a quick blog to show the updated travels. 

Firstly you may remember the Croatia travel bug that was one of our first trackables, we dropped this off alongside the Travelling Troll which were then both picked up by the same people. The Bunculuka trackable has yet to be placed by the couple but they did place the Travelling Troll. 

Sadly and quite annoyingly they bought both trackables back to the UK, not only that but they bought it back to a series we literally just dropped the Ladybird trackable off into. So although we added on some miles and the owner can say it's been to Italy; their actions have probably stopped the trackables travelling to another country for some time as it's difficult to get trackables moving in the UK. 

Sorry for the slight rant but it was an accomplishment helping a trackable travel only to have it literally come all the way back again!

On the other hand the Ladybird (Tallinn GeoToken) we mostly recently dropped off in Bournemouth has traveled to Stretford near Manchester. It travelled 187.96 miles to one cache and was then picked up again and traveled another 25.76 miles to where it now resides in Yorkshire inside the cache Nutclough City Limits! 

The Glenturret 05 - besucht alle Deutschen Bundesländer trackable hasn't moved as far (can't say the exact miles as the owner kept writing every cache he visited before dropping it off making 2 pages full of miles) It's ended up in Ford so roughly traveled 15 miles. 

Geocoinfest 2015 has traveled to lots of different caches since dropping it off! It's been a busy trackable. It was taken from Sopley > London > South Wales > Sailsbury, this cache is a perfect example of what happens to caches in the UK, they bounce from one end to the other! 445.12 miles is the average distance it's traveled, for some reason the person who took it to South Wales didn't drop it off up there but instead bought it back down to Sailsbury which is a bit suspious but also a shame; would have made more sense to drop it off up there! I don't think I had started the blog when we collected this cache but it's still nice to give you an added extra!

Sorry some of these turned into a rant like state (I'm a passionate trackable collector!) Even Lewis got some angry texts from at my utter disappointment and frustration (Sorry Lew)! As of yet our own trackable hasn't been picked up but I shall update as soon as that happens! In the mean time we did do some other caches but they weren't really blog worthy as we did them in passing travels :)

Boxgrove and Our Trackable

I recently bought Lewis his own trackable, it's an imitation of Indian Jones on a silver coin featuring "Cacher Jones". The main quest of the coin is to travel to Rome as that is were we first went on holiday together. I also set a smaller quest for it to just travel to other archaeological sites around the world (mainly the UK). I set these adventures because as some people may know Lewis is an archaeologist and loves anything Roman and Iron Age related. I just got lucky with the coin being Cacher Jones as he was also Lewis' inspiration to become an archaeologist. Our idea for the trackable is to get people more involved with history and perhaps get people to take it to places in which they'd learn something new!

Anyway onto the cache Boxgrove Man!

While heading for the cache we saw this little sight of two mini lops outside in a cage and this border collie just staring at them, the dog didn't take its eyes off of them!

When approching the cache you have to walk through farmers crops but in the distance the start of a small woodland area, the clearing is slightly visable with people walking the grass down. 

Once you have had a fight with nature to get inside the woodland area you can discover the cache!

A large ammo box, which is our first ammo box, with lots of swaps inside and a nice big log! As usual there is some random rubbish in there that annoys me that people seem to think caches are a dumping ground for rubbish or things they couldn't be bothered to carry or dispose off! Nonetheless it has lots of geocachers cards inside!

Lewis chose this cache because of its location and historical meaning, it's a famous stone age human remains site dated at around 480,000 years old. You can read more about the site itself if you find the cache! We put in our trackable with fingers crossed that it makes a successful journey.

We explored around the area to try and find the actual site in which the remains were found. Currently it's a large quarry barricaded all the way around and there are actually signs saying "Keep Out"..but telling an archaeologist to keep out isn't really going to work and seeing as it was a bank holiday we knew we'd be alright!

Lew is gazing upon what he wished he'd discovered.. ;)

Heading back we saw that the little dog was still sitting with the rabbits watching over them! Bless!

So our trackable is off out in the world and hopefully leads a successful adventure, I will continue to write up where it goes and if it goes anywhere of historical interest. The cache itself is easy to find although prepare for nettles and stingers. It's a nice walk and can extend further onto another historical site "Devil's Ditch".