Over the Rainbow

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Well I returned! Last visit I had one karabiner, one rope, no belay device, and an over-confident approach to Blake's Hitches...! THIS time I had a handful of slings, four biners, belay device, prusik loops, throwline, and throw bag. I was much happier with all this, although I'd suggest nylon rather than dyneema slings as they are more tolerant to sudden loads.

What a fantastic climb! I've been seeking out good tree caches in recent months, and this one is top of the bunch so far - and I've been up at fungimanforever's Arboreal Adventures in the midlands too. So far it's been mostly big conifers, which are great for height, but not so much for technical challenge. THIS one however has just that. You have to really plan the route and think hard throughout the exercise. No Just Climbing here!

Happily, the cache was just at the limit of my doubled rope so it was an easy rapelle and retrieve at the end. Climbing DOWN things is horrible!

Thanks for a tremendous cache and quite a challenging puzzle also. Thanks to rickardclan for the advice with THAT!



ARBOREAL ADVENTURE 9

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Excellent climb despite the rain and the tree-ooze! However... AUGH! I seem to have misplaced the whole-number minutes from the bonus northerlies...! I'm sure I scoured each pot and branch... FMF please take pity on a lonely wet climber...!

Right. Off to pick up some extras before sloping off.

Thanks for the cache!


ARBOREAL ADVENTURE BONUS

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Amazing. Just... Amazing. Thanks for the cache!

Right, erm, apart from yes, this is a tremendous climb and an even more tremendous descent if you rapelle it (oooooh, yes!) - the REAL news is that I completely missed one piece of the final coordinates, BUT failed miserably to figure out which of the four climbs contained the missing link. I was fairly certain it was AA7, so I scaled that again but, nope..... So figured (my memory being at least half decent) that it must have been the first I did - AA10. IT WAS! Once I had it however, I quickly realised that, well..... I'll leave that to you to figure out.....!

Thanks FMF for the call to confirm the coords for me, although by the time I got a signal back I was at GZ and clipped into my rig. (And shortly about to get myself hung up from shoddy knot-tying and having to naff about with my trousers to release myself.........!

Thanks for a great series and an amazing cache.


ATLANTIC VIEW 50: OVER THE EDGE

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Excellent, thanks! Chris Rickard(clan) prompted me with the puzzle, but I managed the descent and retrieval all by myself...! Boy was it windy. And slippery. Had a helmet in my bag for later and thought it prudent to shove it on.

Bag-disguise is shredded, but I have tied it on tightly and rolled it up. TNLN.

Thanks for the lovely location.


Westwardho's 'Walk The Plank'

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Well this will get a fave once I accrue another one...!

The puzzle had me stumped until the updated hint set me on the correct path. Then a careful Google Earthing set me up for a first attempt with visitor friends who were HORRIFIED at the idiotic location for the cache ... Sadly on that occasion it appeared that the cache was missing, though now having seen the dimensions of it, and unless CO has two of these containers (?!) perhaps I missed it and he was too polite to say, having made the journey to check it out......!

Well first trip meant I could do it without the important retrieval item. So on this the second trip I took a different piece of equipment with me but - AUGH! - the tide, despite being right out, was significantly higher than last time. So I had to make the crossing with the wrong bit of gear. As usual the return trip was several orders of magnitude more terrifying than the initial journey. Why is that always the case...?

Log signed. Is slightly damp and a little mulchy at one end but it was retrievable and signable. Job done!

Thank you WestwardHo! for a puzzle that, as usual, I think I ought to have sussed the first time, and for an adventure that could easily have cost me mobility from the neck down. Still, signing little bits of paper is worth the risk.

Isn't it...?!


ARBOREAL ADVENTURES 1

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Fantastic! Thank you for some excellent fun, for which I invested in a harness and learned about Blake's Hitch...!

Thanks for the cache!

I'm not from round here, but should be back before Christmas to tidy up. Tempted to arrive much earlier (5am...!) to tackle Gargantuan before AA4 and AAbonus...

BA- The White Bird

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Well, today was my final visit to the BareClawz five, to tidy up the final two - White Bird and Fallen Monarch. Purely by chance I have managed to do them in entirely reverse order.....

Today I had my old schoolfriend LobsterBoy with me for his first caving experience and White Bird truly is an excellent introduction to the caching underworld..... After the initial letterbox entrance it was a relatively straightforward in and out for the find. It did take us a while to find the Usual Symbol because we'd simply not travelled far enough. Once we found it it was nice and strong and the cache was quickly in hand.

Excellent. Thanks for the cache!


Below Above - Fallen Monarch

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Well this was truly tremendous. After a rather pathetic start traipsing around the woodland looking for the correct entrance and finding another entrance twice, we elected to go for that instead. It does not look safe and I wouldn't recommend it, as the cache owner indeed stipulates, but, well, I'm a dick. Go figure.

We became misplaced on a couple of occasions, but it was trivial to reorient ourselves. Plenty of exciting historical artefacts to be found such as tools and hoof prints, old (and new) graffiti, and The Tremendous Crane. Will post pictures from home as they are locked into the half-decent camera at present. Hopefully they are ok as I really want a record of this excellent location.

I grew up around here and spent New Year's Eve every year of my childhood in the building opposite. I'd seen the tools on the wall and the photos on the wall, but never even knew where the mines were, let alone ventured inside. Completely brilliant.

Found easily with LobsterBoy for his second cache find. This was my final cache of the BareClawz Below Aboves (I think, unless I've missed something) and it's with a rather heavy heart that I will not be able to do these for the first time ever again....! Oh well. I'll just have to come back for fun and grab a church micro or two nearby....!

Thanks BareClawz. For accompanying me around the gargantuan Multi2, for bringing me back to my childhood haunts, for being incredibly supportive with the decodes, for the friendly advice, and for being an all round great bloke. I'm just sorry about Ermintrude...! I hope she gets better soon.


Below Above - Multi 1

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RAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

HOW rock hard are we? ROCK hard. THAT'S how hard. HARD.

As rock.

It's a loooooong way. But the happy little glowing signs are very encouraging when you find them. Lots and lots of historical thingummyjiggers to distract you from the route. Nothing too scary. Other than the conversation with inkpot monkey about what we would do if we found a stash of money. (Keep it... Leave it... Kill the other and take it all...etc.) Turns out it's ME with the sinister intent but having put it into her mind I couldn't shake the feeling of a malicious glint whenever I shone my torch into her face.

Another astonishingly fun cache. Thanks to BareClawz. I'm doing White Bird and Fallen Monarch tomorrow and may well return to this one too if I am not muddy enough.

And you can never be too muddy.


Below Above - Mind The Trains

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One word review: Tremendous!

But this cache is worthy of FAR more than a one word review. Where to start.....? You know my friend Sam? The neophyte cacher who boldly completed Cave Troll's Other Lair in her tights? Yeah her. Well she remains unflinchingly trusting and I was able to lie to her about how straightforward this cache was and we found ourselves in the dark and moisty mine. It was gratifyingly easy to... Actually no it wasn't... It was not easy at all to glean a sense of direction or a cognitive map of the place, but bit by bit we managed to piece one together, as evidenced by the fact that we are no longer sat in the dark clinging to each other and drying each other's tears.

We were fine.

Really.

Anyway. THERE IT WAS! And we were so distracted by the cache that we failed to look for the interesting historical feature indicated by the key words at GZ. Signed. Took pictures. Walked back to embark on cache number two....

Thanks for the great cache. I did Multi2 with CO last weekend and he's a top bloke. Rah!


Feet in the Leat!

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Found! In your face!

Well, woo to the hoo! Cache-page puzzle? Piece of cake Mrs. Lemon Drizzle cake. With little chewy lemon bits in and dainty scrunchy icing. Problematic? Nay sir. NAY! Chirpy chirpy stage? Problematic. No chirp. Thank you to **** for helping me out with this. Identity redacted so as he is not inundated by chirpless people asking for hints. Next stage? Hmm. An oddish location so confidence was down, although there was a leat and I did wander up and down it a bit. Thanks to Mr Rickard for pointing me in the right direction.

It was at this point that I began to feel rather mothered, and as if I would not really deserve the find. Were I ever to make it.

Still... Got that, and found myself looking at another (quite soggy) code which pointed me towards the final location! Zippidy-doooooo! (Both codes were soggy and beginning to run. I had this trouble with codes in one of my caches and someone pointed out waterproof paper (as well as laminating). Seems to be good. Just sayin'.)

Final location. Hmm. THAT looks a lot smaller than the GZ in the gallery....... Ooookaaaaay, let's just creep on in there..... Ew. I am NOT a big spider fan. That is, I am not a fan of big spiders. Particularly not military-grade spidroids with webs slung right across the bloody leat! In I crept. It was impossible to look simultaneously at the contents of the webs I was plunging through and the water level perilously near the tops of my boots, and I elected without a second thought to neglect the boots entirely. On exit I found I had a dry half inch around the tops of my boots. Result. I have not yet found a nest of shiny brown spiders in my hoodie, but I'm hoping the terror around that will decay over the next few years.

Turns out I DID deserve it after all!

LOG. SIGNED. Blinking marvellous Old Bean. I see you have a posh and overpriced cache container. As indeed do I in a soggy location. Mine doesn't work either...! Your log is wet and mouldy. Part of the problem may well be that when I found it, the string was caught in the lid. I did ping it out when signing my name and leaving you an offensive message.

Great stuff. Added a fave, although it hardly touches the sides on this oft-favourited cache.


Below Above - Jack In A Box (Multi 2)

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Well. That was freakin' AWESOME!

I found I had a spare day and could not muster a friend to come along so pinged a tentative email to BareClawz to see if he was around for the day... Yes! And the marvellous Cass! And half a dozen other nice people including the magnificent Cass and Sienna (4 & 6. Reportedly the youngest cachers to ever to brave the mighty Multi 2.)

And so we crawled through the entrance gate, which was mysteriously hanging open, locking it behind us - shortly to meet a small group of people ambling out in jeans and trainers with little torches. WE were all in helmets, headtorches, stout boots and rubble gloves. It was like that bit in Shaun of the Dead where the two groups of people meet each other and they are all the same, except on this occasion we were all kitted out decently and they were FREAKING IMBECILES. Shall we tell them we locked the gate? Spose.

And, we ALL had the route instructions printed out and waterproofed by various laminations or machinations. We ALL had compasses. Two or three had maps of the entire quarry system. We ALL went in the wrong direction. SEVERAL times. Not catastrophically but, to be honest, monstrously off-piste to the extent that certainly I only managed to follow our route on two of the paragraphs of the instructions. I REALLY would advise against attempting this cache without a knowledgeable guide AND a quarry map (available from the pub).

We found most of the incredible attractions and eventually, ultimately, found the cache.

After three hours underground it was glorious to be back out in the crispy autumn sunshine, to peel off the thickly muddied overalls, and retire to the pub for a pint of stonking local cider and to marvel at BareClawz' magnificent coin collection.

I'll be back next weekend to do the remaining four. And THANKS to BareClawz for being willing to take me around Multi 1 next week because frankly, trying it without him is probably ridiculous!



going the extra mile 3

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Well... after making several attempts over the past few weeks by foot and being thwarted by time and tide, this time I hauled a kayak all the way down (and later, significantly, up) the steps at Maidencombe to catch the Going The Extra Mile series and the final Balancing Act.

This was the first of those, thinking I'd do the furthest and pick up others on the return journey. Woah. It looks kind of straightforward on the approach, but once you get your face up to it, and your slippery wetsuit shoes on the crumbly sandstone, it's evidently anything but!

I took the leftmost crack up, then edged along the top to the clearly visible little cache-cairn. This, it turned out, was MUCH easier than the return journey and I was tempted to just give up and leap into the sea (it was high tide). Made it down though, with a dark sense, as usual, of my own impatience in not waiting for somebody to buddy up with.

Fabulous. This is what caching is about. A definite top cache!


Click here for panorama.


UnderWorld 8 (Bonus)

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Done it!

So... The Dartmoor Striders very kindly offered to let me tag along on their assault on this final Underworld cache. When we met at the parking place there were six of us in three cars. One strider remained in the car, and then there were five.

Five of us strode off down the path to the Y-shaped tree and the start of the Death-Defying Descent, where one strider returned to the car with Small Dog. And then there were four.

Four of us managed the descent on a combination of boots and bums (using the word "managed" in its loosest possible sense) and arrived at the most unassuming little hole in the slope where the three Striders confidently said "here we are!"

"Really...?!" Well, don't judge the portal to hell by its sweet little porch.

Yours truly slithered through the mouth of the cave closely followed by Strider Jr. And...

"Kevin?!"

"Torch trouble!"

A-ha... We believed him (!) and kindly offered him my spare so shortly thereafter we were three, as Mrs Strider remained at the cave mouth. A confident slither through the first real squeeze meant that soon Will and I sat bent into funny angles looking at the next squeeze while Mr Strider tried attacking Squeeze#1 from different positions before finally being defeated. And thus, we were two.

Will and the only remaining adult sat bent in the darkness looking at the next squeeze. It was very squeezy. Tank found little important jobs to do, like deciding where to put his phone (it had the instructions on it), finding a pen, deciding where to stash his bag, and discovering that this squeeze was harder with a helmet than without. These jobs were all strikingly transparent strategies to conceal being a Big Girlie Wuss, but once all such distractions were exhausted, we decided that I'd press on and call back to describe to Will what he could expect.

What Will could expect was to be half-submerged on his stomach in freezywater while sliding like a chemically disoriented otter around and under the pointy rocks in the roof of the tunnel. At least, if he adopted my style.

To his credit, Will had the good sense to decide that sliding head-first into a freezing and dark gullet with no idea where it headed or how to reverse was, and I paraphrase of course, a Bloody Stupid Thing To Do. Instead he agreed to stay where he was in case I needed to shout for help in a big manly voice (for which read in case I became overwhelmed with flouncy-blouse panic and needed someone to talk me down again.

And then we were one.

So... alone...

And on pressed the Tank. He can't really recall the twists and turns of the rest of the journey due to using all of his cortex telling himself distracting stories of being at home drinking tea and eating a sausage sandwich. The only things that persist in his memory are:

1) It being really far.
2) There being suddenly a very loud waterfall sound. That sounds exactly the same as gallons of rushing water racing down the tunnel like Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Quest for Tupperware.
3) Choosing the wrong side of a divided tunnel and only realising that when it became too pinchy on all sides to be correct and having to back up quite some way to find the right way.

By this time the shine on the adventure was rather overwhelmed by the crushing imperative to findthebloodythingandgetout. Happily, just as I was looking at the instructions and deciding I had quite a way to go I looked to one side and found the cache! THANK YOU GOD!

And there I took pictures of the cache and my Clearly Enjoying It expression, and turned around to tackle the nagging fears that I might never find my way out and that the Dartmoor Striders were not responding to my calls*.

Thank you WillDeBeast for a truly horrible cache ;O)

Find 1001.

*Dartmoor Striders, to their credit, were entertaining parallel concerns that I was not responding to them...!



Put This In Ya PIPE And Smoke It !!

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REALLY good fun.

Puzzle: I knew what to do but needed help for the exact system.

Stage 1: Newts! It's FULL of newts! Tried not to disturb whoever was in the tent. Assuming he wasn't dead. Quite spooky. Let him watch my bag anyway.

Stage 2: Rope arousing suspicion. Needed CO reassurance before being a Mutant Ninja Turtle again.

Result! A definite favourite.


Code Breaker V: CRYPTOLOGY

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*** GOT IT!!! ***

Well, that was a culmination of an excellent series of caches. I'm a bit of a fan of puzzle caches as it brings the joy of caching to idle moments at home and, er, work as well as out in the field. I like the idea of a series of increasing difficulty and think that the difficulty and terrain ratings were reflected very well in the puzzles and locations.

I completed the caches in the order of IV, III, II, I, then V as I wasn't sure how tricky they would get. IV was a wonderful start, but even after that, III, II, and I did not disappoint. Codes broken, and bonus codes collected, I worked on V and finally derived the coordinates. A cold afternoon in March took me through the hail to the cold, remote and, well, sheer location. Such was the nature of the place that I tumbled gracelessly into it and added a half-hour walk to navigate my way out of the other side.

This, of course, having discovered the contents of the box.....

A second trip today tidied up the loose ends. I came equipped with sensible equipment but decided just to push ahead au naturel. WWWWWOAHHHH!!! My mind was quickly changed. Back to base camp, gear donned, and back to GZ where two mother ducks on nests full of eggs were not impressed with me lumbering up.

All in all a FANTASTIC series and a wonderful culmination. Thanks for looking after these caches. They are definite faves.


Flotsam & Jetsam EXTREME

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Well.... I first came across this cache on the final evening of the only other time this year it was manageable, so imagine my delight when I heard of the lovely group from Cornwall planning to do it today! Despite the parking suggestions some distance away it appeared that everyone had the same idea as me, to ignore them and just pepper ourselves along the road near the start point. A few minutes of introductions and name-forgetting, and we were off in search of stage one, which was gratifyingly easy.

After that we strolled lightly to stage two where the full gravity of our task spread before us looking for all the world like hundreds of square miles of sucking oozing probably-sentient mud. The first tentative footsteps were not the gentle introduction to the terrain we might otherwise have liked. Hard-packed mud with a surface like soap, plus a not-insignificant gradient, leant the initial entry an atmosphere best described as day-glo Keystone Cops. And off to stage three. That way? You mean, straight out into the estuary towards, essentially, bugger all? O...kay.... It was jolly good fun. And easier than initial entry since the terrain was flat and the mud quite deep and tended to keep you upright. How deep? Well, a few inches - so it appeared - until I poked my five-foot walking staff into it and it did not stop going down until I gave up to preserve a clean five inches to hold on to...! Riiiiiiight.... We won't be standing still for TOO long then...

Six inches of a five-toot stick

Stage three to four, as intended by CO, was just the right combination of muddy and firm to be a relatively straightforward, if oozy, walk. Somewhere along this walk we found a UXB; Bally interesting, what?! And like the safety-conscious grown-ups that we are we wrestled with the urge to poke it. One wag suggested attaching a trackable code which, on reflection, we REALLY SHOULD HAVE DONE!

Do not hit with stick.

Stage four to five. What's this? Aha! The crossing...! We had walked in a line consistent with attempting the leap of faith, rather than taking the diagonal direct path to the Indiana Jones Crossing and, once there, couldn't quite decide what to do. Walking to the IJ Crossing just to weigh up the pros and cons seemed to me to be needlessly adding to a long walk so, with one buddy, I just waded across and climbed the other side using my frozen toes as crampons...There was every chance in the world that anywhere else on the crossing could have been easier than that route but that one having been demonstrated as non-lethal led everyone else to do it too! I watched (filmed) quietly throughout worrying to myself that any decent human being would point out that it looked distinctly easier ten feet downstream towards open water...! Ach well. No-one died. And I couldn't remember anyone's name so HAD there been any fatalities I think I could have quickly overcome the remorse. ;O)

Stage five was fabulous. The barges, although completely wrecked, remain extremely imposing. It was wonderful to see history in the raw, as it were, rather than with a guided tour, leaflets, and gift shop. I clambered all over wreck one, but regretfully did not explore the second wreck as by then it was very cold indeed and the only thing in my mind was the blissful image of me sitting in the car with the heater on.



That being said, my favourite part of the entire walk was (without giving anything away) the first part of the final stretch to the cache. Properly knee-deep, and very vocal, mud - and thousands upon thousands of I-don't-know-what prehistoric tiny worms that remained only in one's peripheral vision and then darted down holes when you looked directly at them...! Creepy when you stopped to estimate the sheer weight of numbers, and probably physical weight by volume, of these tiny creatures.

After a quick rinse in what, on a normal day, would have been a large uninviting and cold puddle but which under these circumstances had all the welcoming come-hither appeal of a warm bubble-bath, we set off for the cache. By this stage I was personally hypothermic and had to rudely stamp off towards ground zero rather than amble merrily along with everyone else and the unique bon-homie that a only a few hours of wading through thick mud together can engender.

GROUND ZERO! A very satisfying hide indeed and my favourite sort of container - and immediately pertinent to the entire event. I carted it a short distance away so that we would not all draw attention to the hide and everyone at last signed the log.

Thank you followmechaps for a phenomenal cache. It was a brilliant day out, despite my doing it with a running fever and glands up... Your introducing yourself just prior to GZ only AFTER asking if we'd all enjoyed ourselves was, I thought, highly tactical indeed!



The Cave Troll's Other Lair

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Well, that was freakin' MAGNIFICENT! Just the right level of uncertainty and heart pounding fear put this right at the perfect balance of enjoyment and terror for me. Delighted to have bought geocaching innocent Sam along too, who was told merely to wear walking boots and not, perhaps unfairly, that we were looking for a cache with the same difficulty and terrain rating as the International Space Station (I assume...?!) The approach to the lair...? Well... It was funny. And I very much owe Sam a new pair of tights.

The lair... very dramatic. I'm glad the cache wasn't LITERALLY as per the hint as I would have lost my nerve at that point...!

I note that CO found Honiton Supermarket Sweep No.3 today; a cache that has eluded me THREE TIMES. I'm not yet sure what I make of the fact that while I was entering the bowels of the Earth itself and nursing bloodied hands and friend, CO was easily picking up a cache that I manifestly somehow cannot find while no doubt breezily buying a sandwich.

Thanks for a truly splendiferous cache. Fav point undoubtedly.

Also - BATS! Please be aware when entering the lair.



Exon Quest

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GOOOOOOOOOOOOOT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!! Well... THAT was an epic quest. I want to talk SO MUCH about it but I can't think of ANYTHING to say that won't spoil it for others.

Suffice to say, perhaps, that if you are going to be a better parent than me, approach the final stage with a degree more planning than I did so that you aren't slogging through mud in the pitch black calculating how soon the air ambulance could find you, while chatting breezily to your young charge.

I had a LOT of help on this. You know who you are. THANKS!

And thanks Terry. It was amazing. It was awful and I hated it. But I also loved it and I miss it already. :O)