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3rd May 2009 South Wales Event, Talybont

Our annual excursion was a bit of a busman's holiday this year. Although it's in a place we go all the time it is one of our favourite places in the world, so it was great. Pielips was organizing the event this year and he was able to use his position in the Army to provide a great event tent and some fab freebies. After pitching up at Talybont Farm campsite and catching up with everyone we headed off to do a walk round Langorse Lake for a series of Write and Mane caches. After a very pleasant walk we headed to Brecon to pick up some provisions and attend a Flash Mob Event. The gist of the very silly idea is that people meet at the same time on the same day in various locations around the world. You blend into the site until the start time when a whistle is blown. Everyone then reveals their pirates outfits (in this case) and totally freaks out any non-Geocacher. After 15 minutes a whistle is blown and everyone disperses immediately. Weird hey!

Saturday night was the traditional barbie and beers (or wine in most cases). We sat out until late wearing shorts. It was freezing, but the tanked up barbies kept us warm. The next day Will and I did a lovely walk up to Waun Rydd from the campsite. Another 15 miles for one cache, but we did get to do some maintenance on our BBC3 cache. We even met another cacher at the site. The cairn up here is a sight to behold. We finished our walk along the disused railway and then on to the very busy pubs right next to the camp site. Not surprisingly there were loads of cachers there so we killed an hour or so catching up with some new and some old friends. This is what camping events are all about. The wind was very strong up on the hill and be looked quite sun burnt. As the weather was deteriorating we decided to pack up and have the Bank Holiday back at home.

Thanks again to pielips for organizing the South Wales Event this year. It was our 1,100th cache.

19th April 2009 Brimpsfield nr. Gloucester

We did a very pleasant 7 mile walk around a series of 7 caches. We really dislike the current fad for 20 caches in a 4 mile walk. Who said Geocaching was a good walk spoilt? Once we'd finished the walk we went to find a few puzzle caches that I had solved the night before. We ended up revisiting Leckhampton Hill and Birdlip Hill for the nth time whilst Geocaching. It was a lovely day and these popular locations were very busy indeed.

A few days before we took a trip to revisit The Cat's Back (our 100th find so long ago) and Hoarwithy, a place I've always had a soft spot for, mainly due to it's Italianate church, which could be used for filming a budget version of The Godfather.

10th April 2009 Forest of Dean / Severn Estuary

A single new cache about 10 miles from home. A rare treat. I decided to walk from door to cache. There's some beautiful walking to be had round here. The final stretch near the river Severn at Alvington was not so good. I had to divert twice to avoid over curious cows. I always try to take a circular route, so on the way back I ran into a few problems where paths that should exist just weren't there. My route at the deer park near Lydney wasn't great either. On the plus side I saw dozens of lovely fawns. I found a wonerful wood near Bream with more Lime Kilns and other points of interest including a very impressive engraved stone in a field that I need to investigate further. The cache is just a good target for the days activites. It gives me a goal. The 20+ miles were the fun bit.

5th April 2009 Stanton, Cotswolds

We parked in the pretty village of Stanton, which we saw on TV the very next day. It's a very impressive Cotswold village with plenty of on-street parking. We spent the day doing a clockwise loop up to Laverton and Snowshill. As much as we like multi-caches they can be awkward to work into a day like this. We started three, but not knowing where they will take you we ended up leaving two of them. Thinking about it now one was because we couldn't find a couple of the clues required. We had a few muggle problems too, with a couple barbecuing at one cache site and walkers stopping for lunch at another cache site. We always enjoy the Cotswolds walks on a nice sunny day, and there was nothing different today.

3rd April 2009 The Black Mountains

We were up here on 28/2/2009 when I said I'd like to incorporate the next ridge along on my walk soon. That very evening morgs4mountains emailed me saying that he was placing caches there the next day. It's just the incentive to make sure I did it soon. I had a day off work, so Bob and I parked in Llanbedr making the biggest climb of the day up to Crug Mawr in thick fog. As we approached the summit the sky cleared almost as if someone had flicked a switch, leaving dense cloud in the valleys below. The peaks rising out of the cotton wool was a really impressive sight. Despite being a lovely day a slight haze remained, but you could still see for quite a few miles. SWMCC 11 - 14 were the caches today.

After climbing from the beautiful Grwyne Fechan river past lovely bridges and wild daffodils the ridge top walk is wonderful.

We passed about six or eight people all day long on our 18 mile walk. Once we'd reached Waun Fach (the highest point in the Black Mountains at 2661') our route took us across Pen Allt-Mawr, Pen Cerrig Calch and Table Mountain again. The only difference is that this time we visited some extremities of the mountain that we had not been to before. It's great to stand on a mountain top looking along the horizon as far as the eye can see and to think that you've just walked that route.

All the caches were easy to find due to the precision recording of their coordinates by the setter. Two were in rock fields, but still were found immediately. A cache doesn't always have to be at a point of interest. As in this case some of the best caches just give you an excuse to walk a stunning route. IMHO the Black Mountains are probably the most unspoiled area for walking in England and Wales. If you did this walk in Lakeland on a day like this you certainly wouldn't have the solitude you have here... and that's what I really love about it.

29th March 2009 Pen y Fan, Brecon Beacons

I couldn't get out until late morning, so I had a quick jaunt round a very familiar walk for me (see 12/12/2008). We tried to find the cache that was too dangerous to go for on that day, but failed. It was strange as morgs4mountains caches are usually spot on, but this definately wasn't. Who cares though when the location is this good. It is really enforcing my view that the Geocaching is not what's important. I'd far rather DNF one great cache than find 20 boring ones. We did find one Earthcache, which was also on Cribyn, but far more importantly we had a fantastic walk on a beautiful day. I left my camera in the car, so I had to take the photo on my PDA/phone. It's a shame as on such a clear day I could have got some great photos.

Last week I'd been walking a great route on St. Briavels and Hewelsfield Common. I had planned two Wherigos and even wrote the first one before losing interest. No one would do them anyway.

21st March 2009 Bryn Arw, Brecon Beacons

We had planned a route incorporating Round the Table and a couple of the recent Crickhowell caches, but as we failed to find the 2nd of several micros we had to abort the trip. The hint in the first micro, rather than helping, threw us completely off the scent and as it was so sunny there was an endless trail of walking groups wandering up to Table Mountain along the pretty stream making searching quite frustrating. Rather than mess up the route for another day we opted on going to get SWMCC 2, which I had been too tired to get only two weeks ago. We had a great day just lazing around on the hill in the sun for a change. We'll soon be back to the more arduous walks I'm sure.

Bob blasted off down the side of the hill with his hunting yelp/bark. He always does that when he's found something to chase like a squirrel or a rabbit. We were surprised to see that this time it was a large fox that had presumably been basking in the dead bracken on such a warm day.

14th March 2009 Piercefield Park

After a DNF (did not find) log on our The Giant's Cave cache it was evident that we needed to check the site out. There had been some subsidence from above the cave and the cache was covered under a good foot of rubble. We moved the cache only to be informed by Monmouthshire council a couple of days later that work was about to commence to sort this area properly. This would take 3 - 6 months, so we went back again one evening to retrieve the cache. Our Saturday was spent just exploring corners of this fabulous park that we hadn't been to before. Some of the scrambles down to the river were hard going, but great fun.

We had intended to do a couple of The Blorenges caches also, but the park ended up taking up most of the day so they'll have to wait for another day.

7th March 2009 Bal Mawr/Hatterrall Hill, Brecon Beacons

A disastrous start to the day. As I was on the A40 I realised I'd left my boots by the back door waiting to be put in the car boot. The "A" road forced me to drive almost to the start of the walk before being able to turn around and go home to get them. I'm glad I did though, as the start was very wet. The walk out from alongside Sugar Loaf to Bal-Mawr was fine, with some lovely views and three caches in the SWMCC series, but the rest was much harder. The drop to Llanthony Priory is a knee jarring descent and the climb up to Offa's Dyke Path past the forth cache in the series today is hard by anyone's standards. All the caches were placed well and with excellent coordinates. There was very little of the route that I hadn't done before, but I did especially enjoy the cairn on Garn-Wen. After an exhausting climb the clouds turned black and I thought I may get very wet, but it didn't really happen. I met a couple on the ridge who looked very out of their comfort zone.

They lived in Longtown at the bottom of the hill and decided it was time to come up for the first time. They seemed despondent when I told them the next path down was about a mile away, so they turned round and went back the way they had come.

The route back was very hilly and I was finding it hard to complete the walk. I later realised that my asthma was bad and my blood was not oxygenating which just drained me of energy. Despite being parked up next to SWMCC 2 I decided to leave it for another day. The last hour was done in the dark and despite having my head torch with me I chose to walk by the light of the moon, which was surprisingly bright despite the thick cloud that hung around for much of the day.

I've just check my records and although 17 miles is nothing unusual, the 5,000' ascent helps explain why I was so drained. That's almost a mile of up.

28th February 2009 Table Mountain, Brecon Beacons

Today was the first day of the two week long Crickhowell Walking Festival. The associated new Geocaches were a bit disappointing, but we'd decided to do a maintenance trip on our High Tea cache anyway. It's a superb mountain romp at just over 13 miles. The hills were much, much busier than usual today due to the festival, but we had a fantastic day and Will did a great job of such a challenging walk for a 10 year old. There's about a 2,000' climb, but it's a pretty gradual ascent on the whole. The views were good for the time of year and we enjoyed showing off our knowledge to a friendly group of Welsh walkers who were struggling to work out which mountains were surrounding us. We tried to find other cachers afterwards in the Britannia Inn in Crickhowell, but there was no one about. The sign in the pub window read "Welcome Geo Searchers...", which made us laugh.

After we had been pointed in the direction of a good chippy we headed off to Dursley to finish The Wandering Poet's Puzzle in the dark. The log must be written in bad rhyme, which was a laugh.

In a Dark, Dark Wood was our raison d'être today. This time we had packed the good head torches. At 8pm we arrived at a lay by alongside the woods at Elcombe. We barely squeezed in with 2 other cars there. No one but a night cacher would be parked here at this time. We did see the cachers, but the walk is tiered and they were finishing up on a path well below us. Night caches are great fun and we really enjoyed the hour and a half following the reflection of Fire Tacks caught in out beam. Finding a couple of micros and a well hidden final cache added up to a great cache. We got home just before 11pm, but we both had a really enjoyable, if long day out

17th February 2009 Painscastle near Hay on Wye

Not much caching recently due to the heaviest snow fall in 18 years, but we had great fun walking locally and on the Skirrid. This was a busy caching week as I took a day off midweek and as Will was on half-term we took a day out to Painscastle, near Hay-on-Wye. The 55 mile drive through minor roads was rewarded by a great 13 mile circular walk past 4 caches. Although we saw plenty of ponies on the hills, we only saw one other person. The Last Welsh Trigpoint Commemorative Cache was set up by The Cache Hoppers after they left out event last August to meet up with a Trigger to complete his last of 1,500 odd Welsh trigpoints. We passed our car at one point, so stopped for hotdogs (Will's second favourite food) from a food flask. It was great to see the views to the Black Mountains from a completely different perspective, especially with trails of snow down the mountain streams. One multicache here has had 3 visits in it's 9 month life. Those number hunters don't know what they are missing.

Will enjoyed roly-polying down the hills, which shows how dry it was. The last cache of the day was Llanbedr Fell. The cache was in a hollow with a foot of snow on the sheltered side. It made for a great snowball fight and probably the last for some time, though we'll be in the Black Mountains very soon, so maybe not. The whole trip was great fun. We always seem to have more fun on these sort of trips.

On the way home we followed TomTom and ended up in Talgarth. The sat nav wanted us to follow the A479, but it was closed with a locked gate across the road. Alternative routes are scarce when you're in the mountains and roadworks had another route closed. After switching off both sat navs we brought up our OS maps and found a single track road that guided us between several of our own mountain caches. It strange in the dark where you can just make out the silhouettes on the mountains high above you on both sides.

24th January 2009 Dursley

Two caches brought us to Dursley. One was a night cache that we ended up not doing and the other was a puzzle called The Wandering Poet's Puzzle. Like many puzzles this one deserved more attention, especially as it was quite original. Three locations need to be worked out and visited and although two of them were incredibly unremarkable it was still fun. We just have to pick up the final cache next time we're passing. Out morning was strange with spread out caches. Westonbirt Arboretum was the best. It's an old cache, but with little else near it we've never managed to get round to it. We made a three mile walk to it, which also avoided paying for car parking. After another pigpen cipher cache in another disappointing location we parked at Owlpen for our main walk. This took us over Wey Bury then down and back up again to Cam Long Down, then down to a bridle path more like a stream, back up to Downham Hill, down yet again and up for the last time to Wey Bury again.

17th January 2009 Newent

It's been months since I've had a long hard day walking on my own though Will's been doing 10+ miles every weekend with me. I love walking with him, but occasionally I like to go on my own. I planned a route from May Hill to Newent to Gorsley and back. I parked the car quite high up May Hill at sunrise. A car was already in the roadside parking area. It looked like some youths had been sleeping in it, which makes you a bit wary of leaving your car all day. I'd picked this walk today as I knew the views wouldn't be great and May Hill is the only real peak on the walk. After completing May Hill Earthcache it was great to walk down through the trees to the north having not been that way before. I wore a pair of Goretex gaiters for the first time and what a perfect day for them it was. There was mud everywhere.
We attempted two caches in Newent. A successful nano and a failure at the lake which was next to a fisherman, though on return it became evident that the coordinates were very inaccurate.

Most of the walking was enjoyable if unremarkable. My least favourite stretch was passing near and under the M50 to get to Cache Queen. I found another three near Gorsley and then failed again at Cut Throat Lane. I at least had the excuse that it was getting near sunset and I still had a couple of miles to go. As we reached the foot of May Hill the footpath signs disappeared. I check we were OK on the GPS OS map. We were spot on. The map showed the path passing through Blakemoor Farm. Suddenly a torrent a nastiness like you couldn't imagine broke the air from the farm yard. A totally hysterical and foul mouthed urchin was yelling uncontrollably at us. It became evident he didn't like us being there one little bit despite us being completely within our rights. I asked him if we were on a public footpath or not and he ignored the question by shouting another dozen obscenities, so I asked again. He knew we were so he started insisting that we waited until he finished milking and then scrubbed my boots. Needless to say we told him were to go and found another route.
I was really tired climbing the hill to the car as the mud had made the 18.5 miles seem like much more.

3rd January 2008 Partrishow

I'd planned to take Will round Table Mountain today, but a cache came up nearby, so we linked Ascend Charlie with St. Issui for a great mornings walk. Yet another FTF. Again we postponed for 3 days due to weather and a late night for Will on New Year's Eve. What a cracker we picked though. Both caches were excellent, but we particularly likes Ascend Charlie as it's high in the Brecon Beacons at another WWII crash site, this time of a Flying Fortress. It's really touching to stand where 10 such young men all died. We tried to find the actual crash site, but found no evidence, though we both enjoyed messing about in the heather on such a fine day, especially after the climb through Forest Du. Some of the views were superb and we met a lovely lady at the old church who had taken her elderly mother for a picnic. She told me how she'd spent the holidays walking to old churches in the Hay on Wye area. I filed away a couple of places I may visit one day.

28th December 2008 Pen y Fan Pond

Steve4pont, Sandy4pont and Basieboy had organised an event at the other Pen y Fan (there are dozens of them in Wales) near Blackwood. As the idea was to meet for Sunday lunch we decided to get there early and take in a walk down the Sirhowey Valley. There were two caches which we hadn't done yet. We were lucky that the new caches were published the night before, but we decided to only bag two of them, despite walking past a third, as some people set a lot of store by getting FTFs. We bumped into the Brat Pack at one cache. It was a beautiful day with a very cold start, so I had a chance to try out my new hat, gloves, scarf and Oakley sunglasses. The walk back to the pub was all uphill and I didn't notice how much warmer it had got, so ended up being rather overheated as I had so many layers on. We finished our walk at midday and enjoyed a chat with others over lunch and then headed back for an early finish. We only did three caches as we ended up on the wrong side of the fence for one multi, but it will keep and we will be back. After all, it's not a race.

21st December 2008 Pen-y-Fan

Will and I decided a trip up Pen-y-Fan was long overdue. We put off a trip yesterday and three caches appeared along our route in the meantime. Not bad when you consider there have been no new caches here (apart from ours) since we started caching nearly 3 years ago. We had planned to do a maintenance trip and place a new cache on Cribyn, but as one of the new ones was there we didn't. Amazingly another one appeared there days later. The weather was harsh. -9° on the way there and very windy. Visibility was almost nil. I decided not to go for the cache on Cribyn as the cliff drop and the gale winds was too risky with a child in tow. Will enjoyed his day and two FTF's, but I had to promise that I wouldn't take him up again until there were some clear views.

A group of walkers were taking a rest from the wind right next to the second cache, but there was no way we weren't going to get this one. We made our way back to the reservoir in time for lunch. A great walk and that climb really gets the heart pumping.

It's a good thought to know that no one in the southern UK is at a higher point than you right now too!

14th December 2008 Wye Valley

We spent a couple of weekends setting Bohemian Rhapsody at Rockfield Studios and Paper Trail. The first is a fantastic location in it's own right, but it is also on a hill above the famous Rockfield Studios, which are probably most famous due to Queen recording Bohemian Rhapsody there. I had originally planned this cache well over two years ago as a series called Rockin' the Sheep as I was heavily into (and still am) Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs album. However, I struggled with how I could make it work on the ground due mainly to a lack of a good, safe hiding place. It's probably all a waste of time as people seem more interested in doing a simple, dull cache than a cracking one that takes some effort. Our event caches get hit constantly, which is a real shame in my eyes as they are our weakest caches out there. I keep toying with the idea of archiving them.

I had a business trip to Bournemouth during the week, so I spent a freezing evening walking in the dark. After work I went back to my hotel, got changed into some suitable warm clothes and grabbed my head torch and headed for Meyrick Park. I loved climbing the short steep hill in the dark. I could hear voices below at a nearby sports club. I then proceeded to the Meyrick Medley series. This is a series of 6 caches (+ a bonus) which takes you round a park/golf course, but with it being dark I didn't realise it was a golf course. There was a full moon, so I switched off my head torch whenever possible. I remember thinking how very neat and short the grass was in the park, then I discovered I was on the green! The only strange incident was when I saw the reflection of two eyes. I shone my torch on them to discover a dog and a man just standing in the middle of the fairway. I just continued on my way with increased speed. I don't even want to imagine what they were up to. I spent ages trying to find the bonus cache, but eventually gave up. Everyone else seemed to find it OK. It must have been the dark.

We did ten physical caches during our stay, but to be honest the quality was pretty poor. My first venture consisted of three caches. A very short walk down a wood path, a box in on the edge of a small park with football pitch and a better effort by a small alligator infested lake. My photo has disappeared, but there was a heron standing in the lake next to a sign instructing not to feed the birds or alligators. I felt a bit nervous wandering off into the bushes I don't mind admitting. These caches were in Celebration, which is a community created by Disney in the 1990's at the cost of $2.5 billion over 4,900 acres. The community is picture book, typically with beautifully maintained wood clad houses, with picket fences and stars and stripes hanging outside. It's a posh housing estate with it's own shops in other words.

Another day I went out early to get some milk and did five caches along I-192. This strip is full of cheap eateries and tourist shops. At least I managed to find an LPC here at Attack of the 50' Woman! That's a Lamp Post Cache for those who don't know. The USA is famed for it's proliferation of these dull caches. Most lamp posts have a metal skirting at the base that can be lifted and a micro easily fits under here. It was fun to do one, but in some areas every other lamppost has a micro hidden under it. That sounds fun - not! The listing states how the traffic is terrible here, but in November it's just fine. When I swapped stories with a friend who'd been there he was telling me how he'd queued for 4 hrs or more for most coasters. 10 minutes was our longest wait. Most we just walked straight on to, so it gives you an idea of how quiet it was. I hate queuing.
The next four caches where much the same. Mainly magnetic micros/nanos by the roadside. Of course there was loads of parking available for the eateries. I did have to watch out for the Sheriff at one of them who was waiting to catch someone speeding. Maybe it was Boss Hogg.

Even though I had dispersed all the TBs we'd brought I still had our own new TB that I needed to release, so I went out on another breakfast run while the others where taking a dip in the pool. I did two and was so bored by the second one I decided that was it. Any cache by the side of a road with no redeeming features is enough to make me wonder what I'm doing. The last caching episode of the holiday was realising I hadn't got the clues for the Hollywood Studios virtual. When I went back to the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster I realised I needed to ride it one more time to find one of the answers. This coaster goes from 0 - 60 in 2.8 seconds, which is considerably faster than an F1 car.

I did manage to find one benchmark while I was there too, though it was much harder than I had imagined, mainly because most of them seem to be missing. Well, I may never get another chance.

Check out my holiday blog on www.peterdean.co.uk\Florida very soon.

Here's to the next 1,000.