Tavy Treasure Trail

GC2GE1N

Well I have to be honest, I began this about two years ago having read the cache page and the logs and thought to myself,

"My God people are soft. I've got all day. Let's go knock this baby off the map."

Two years later and I'm standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the night in a forest having phoned many a friend over the months, driven and hiked miles to find big Deliverance-style "PRIVATE!" signs thwarting my progress, and generally marvelled and cursed at the genius of the creator.

I love how it escalates. Particularly how Stages One to Six are in fact, gasp, Stage One! Brilliant. All of it.

The final task thwarted me, but that could easily be due to the pouring rain making it impossible to pay close enough attention, but phoning a friend rescued me, and then after what felt like hours searching in the rain I've got my hands on the final container. Fittingly, it was exactly what I was thinking at the time.

Previous finders will understand.

Thanks for an amazing cache. Obviously a favourite.


a Cracking Cache

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14/09/2013

 Well, I made a meal of this. First off I had decided that "approaching from above" meant doing that from the outset, only to discover that it is quite possible to be WAY above with no way to the intended drop-zone! Then It took me an age to spot the actual launch-pad thanks to being dense, not bringing the spoiler images, and just pacing around like a loon.

And then once I got to the exact perfect crack.... it was gone. It's easy to claim that for a DNF, but I've included a pic and I'm certain it's not there. I checked up and down the length of that particular fissure but to no avail.

One for the watch list, sadly. (Fave though, regardless!)
18/10/2013 

 Well, seeing the cache container had been replaced, I felt compelled to rush to it as soon as possible as I didn't fancy another abortive effort. The problem today was that I've got laryngitis and made the journey and the climb with a fever and pouring with sweat.

And I left my pen in the car.

Frankly I felt too wretched to go all the way back and fetch it, so please be satisfied with my photos of the logsheet, container, and my ugly mug.

Despite all the very good reasons why you should pity me and mop my poor brow I still had a fabulous time because the landscape is so extraordinary, and the retrieval is still great fun.

(I wondered if with a 60m rope it would be possible to secure above the first level, and rope down both descents... Didn't try it though.)

Thanks for a great cache.


Kieron N Karas Dowles Bridge

GC3VC18

Yay! I've been eyeing this one for what feels like 18 months but what must be since it was published as it's not as old as I thought! My first problem was living in Devon. The second was doing reconnaissance on the wrong side of the river. The third was being a big girl's blouse and not daring to park in the fishermen's car park (I know... what's wrong with me?!). The fourth was doing reconnaissance from the easterly embankment and failing to notice the riverbank access (thanks to car park patheticness)... The fifth was not being in the area with a boat.

All these on separate trips (I visit Belbroughton monthly for meetings with limited time before each meeting)...

This time I reckoned I had it sussed. I'd done quite a lot of 'doing it in your head' - which is surprisingly difficult, particularly for what is quite a puzzling cache even when you are there... doing it in your head is hugely complicated (to the point that, in my boat, looking at the pillar, I realised I'd not thought of one key thing.....)

I won't say too much about my strategy for getting it done, as the lion's share of the satisfaction on this, I think, is working it out yourself. But suffice to say I was inspired by DizzyPair's solo effort (knowing I'd have to do the same thing) and managed it in 1h25m from car-to-car.

Thank you for providing a pen since, having so much else in my head to think about, the inevitable pen was forgotten.

I came equipped with the trusty machete, since the nettles were quite in evidence on the last recce trip, and spent a few minutes cutting a nice path down the bank and then, typically, slipped down the bloody thing shoving both legs and both arms into the remaining stumpy nettles...

I want to say so much, but can't...! Suffice to say it was brilliant, a great cache to do in your head, and a highly memorable cache to actually tackle, even if I had to rush it in time to get to my meeting (at which I had to wash the mud off my legs and apply antiseptic cream to the cuts and grazes I hadn't noticed inflicting in the excitement...!)

Sadly no pictures due to having chucked my last phone in a river doing a 5/5 river climb and not wishing to make the same mistake! Have instead a picture of my drying ropes, all of which suffered total immersion despite my clever plan to only dunk two feet of one rope...

Loved it.

(Wet gear drying out!)

? Kara n Keirons Upper Arley Loop, 5/5

GC3VBZQ

Well that was very ace indeed. Thanks for the cache.

In fact I was up here quite a few months ago but could not find the cache in the end. I don't think I posted a DNF as I suspected it was more a reflection of my carelessness than a difficult hide or a missing cache.

THIS time it was lying right out in the open. I imagine CO will be able to guess where I found it as there is a natural settling point for a dislodged cache. I explored the obvious location from both directions but could not find a fixing that lent itself to a mini-karabiner on which to replace it. So the cache is now back in approximately the right area, and certainly in a place in keeping with the obvious spirit of the hide, but unless I was VERY lucky, it is not where it should be. It would probably benefit from investigation and fixing more securely, though I did a pretty good job I think.

Thanks for a great cache.

Below Above - The Great Rift

GC4JDG8

Thanks to records taken during my last visit to this cache, answering the questions today is easy peasy!

Thanks for the cache. I wonder how many 5/5 Earthcaches there are...? I'll go find out...

Animal Kingdom 01 - Woody The Woodpecker !!

GC3P2T6

Joint FTF with jackncallan! Nice one!

There's a sting in the tail on this one, isn't there?! Not least of which is the blinkin' cipher which foxed me completely - hence the joint-forces of Tank as climbing-buddy and Callan as Keeper Of The Coords...!

Excellent climb - nice one mate - thanks! I like this sort of tree best of all. And great company too - good to meet you chaps!

Can't wait for the next ones. Get a move on!


Up, Up You Go

GC3VBC9

Great cache.

I used to work around here for a bit and Leith Hill rang a huge bell, but I don't think I'd ever been up here before. A quick jog up from the carpark ;O) and a visit up the tower before remembering my camera (phone) was in the bottom of the River Mole thanks to Friday's shenanigans, and then I was strolling around with a cup of tea grabbing numbers.

One of the numbers was indistinct, and one of the numbers was, for me and my simple mind, impossible to find while following the instructions, so I did a Dirk Gently and followed people around instead before alighting on something that fitted the bill, and which yielded two numbers to my suspicious mind, so I made two coordinates and drew a line of probability between them. And off I drove.

Arriving at my preferred location was a treat because it fitted the description perfectly, but then I could not find the tree for love nor money.

So I read a lot of logs - and learned the lesson that while logs are often helpful, they are of course other people's experiences, so in no particular order my counter-experience was:

  1. It was not ~20m from the coordinates (for me)
  2. The cache was not visible from the path (for me)
  3. The tree was not free-climbable (for me)
  4. The cache was not notably high (for me)

So that didn't help! In the end I went to the most likely place near the arrow and looked VERY HARD until I spotted it. Then the challenge was to get up without relying unnecessarily on the many dead limbs. Do please look carefully where you choose to weight-bear!

None of which is supposed to demean this excellent cache in any way. I LOVED it, and recommend it. I was just amused at how the experiences of everyone else were so different to mine!

Thanks for the cache.


Where The Monsters Hide Extreme 4

GC3JKKF

Well, I did number three yesterday and it was excellent, so I could hardly go home to Devon without checking this one out as it was so close to the hotel I was in. I didn't think it would be feasible by myself, and figured it would probably need a distractor-pal and a flo-vest, but worth a recce.

Recce I did, then skipped back to the car for pen, gloves and head torch, and it was in, sign, out (with a certain amount of [spoiler text redacted] while at GZ of course ;) )

Nice one. Didn't appreciate the [spoiler text redacted] at the time, but giggled about it on the way home.

Thanks for the caches. I've got a few left so next time I'm in the area no doubt.....


How Long man? - AA7

GC44H4C

17/08/2013
Can't say anything for fear of giving it away, but suffice to say that this failure to find in no way implies that others should doubt it is there. It almost certainly is.

18/08/2013
I thought I'd just pop along and grab this in the evening yesterday. Hell, I'd done four 5/5's on Friday, and four more on Saturday, so what harm could another do before bedtime?

Lots of harm. Yesterday's log in no way illustrates the three hours I spent in the tree using all my nascent and ropey rope skills, swinging, limbwalking, and a kind of rope-over-rope hand-over-hand thingy along the underside of limbs all to no avail..! That's not to say I didn't achieve anything. I achieved two things: a sore leg (the one drawback of a pantin) and hatred of The Celts.

So back today, this time with a very explicit and helpful email from one of the hated Celts, making me hate him even more for being so damned nice. I couldn't fail.

Except I could. Up high. Down low. Spidering about all over the place. Nowt.

Let me just count how many emails passed between me and the COs while I was there... EIGHTEEN! (I swear, gentlemen, count them yourselves!) And by the eighteenth I was there!

As I said in one of them, I don't feel I really deserve to claim this, but since it's SUCH an evil cache, I absolutely totally and undeniably do.

Thanks.

For the cache.

And the ground support!

(Image from the cache page)

A Bridge Too Far

GC124HF

Where to start......?!

Well... We arrived at GZ, knew what we were up against, and had it all planned so we could quickly, efficiently, and unobtrusively hop over, grab it, sign it, and put it back. We eyeballed it from a vantage point to identify the optimal point at which to launch, and then I tied off a rope and flicked 10ft of business end through the gap and down towards the water.

"Well, that's the cache floating away then."

"Ha ha! Nice one."

"..."

"Christ! There it is! You were serious!"

And lo, we watched the little floaty swine bob merrily and agonizingly slowly down the bloody river. God knows how I hit it.

Mrs Wizbit went off down the bank to see if she could fish it out were it by some miracle to drift away from the centre line of the river. Only when it was virtually out of sight did it drift slowly behind a tree obscuring our view from the bridge, but we could see Mrs W's stick reflected in the river jabbing, jabbing, prodding, teasing the jar towards the bank.

We could hardly see a thing.

However, we DID hear the loud crack and splash and the suspiciously large circular waves emanating from her location.

"She's gone in..."

"Yup..."

Hmm...! Mr W tried to raise the intrepid Mrs on the radio while I shot off downstream with the rope just in case. And there she was! Soaked to the skin having snapped a branch that was a good eight inches in diameter but, with hindsight, quite rotten, and gone straight in the river.

She had the cache though! Soaked the radio and her phone, but had the cache and, frankly, that's what counts...!

So back we went, we signed, we tied off and we put it back.

It was quite the adventure. And we didn't need to carry out the plan formulating in my mind as we watched it sailing away, which was to buy a jar of jam and notepad in the petrol station, chuck the jam down the loo, wash it out, dry it with loo roll and New Cache...... Just as well really, it was workable, but weird and stupid.

Thanks for the adventure. I had a great time. Time will tell what Wizbit100 writes in her log.....

Thanks for the cache..........

(Not my picture)


Beastleytoo !!!

GC11M36

Fabulous!

It took me a long time to not find the launch point, then Mr Wizbit100 took 90 seconds! A quick look at the image gallery confirmed the somewhat claustrophobic dive-point and we rigged up.

Mrs Wizbit took the first descent, found the cache in the only intuitive place, signed, and continued to the bottom. It was only as I had descended half way that she radioed in to announce that the field at the foot of the drop contained half a dozen large and rather intimidating bulls. Meh! Girls are so soft.....

So I signed off and posed for a celebratory photo, and rapelled down to Bull City.

Whoa! I take it all back. Them's some badass bulls! One even bellowed and kicked up dust with its head down..... I thought that only happened in cartoons! So I, er, ran to the second gate (they were guarding the first, sensible, one) and hopped over for the long walk back up, during which Mr W indulged in a breakneck Mach 5 rapelle.

This whole series from Hamish up to here has been absolutely fantastic. Thanks SO much Cache-U-Nutter for everything. For setting it all up in the first place; for not archiving the lot when you moved away; for maintaining it all; for retrieving, hiding, and telling me where you'd hidden the sunglasses I dropped and abandoned at Tip Toe Wall(!); and for the prompt, friendly, and clear help along the way.

An absolute favourite and a Definite Recommend.

Thanks again!



Several Species Of Small Furry Animals

GC19VWQ

Again, excellent!

It took us a short while to find the correct launch point, but it was soon found and confidently so thanks to the clear hint. I took first descent, and that's where's the Curious Series Of Events occurred. About two-thirds of the way down I found a small cache container identical to that in Have You Seen My Baby, with a Furry Animals log sheet and a log from Cache-Eh dated 15/06/12... A little further down I found a container as identical as I can imagine to that in the container image in the gallery (image dated 2011) with a replacement log from Cache-Eh and others, dated (I think) later than 2012.

Twilight Zone.....

I signed both! (Having chatted to CO, I've removed the small old container.)

Neither had the further information we expected, so thanks very much to Cache-U-Nutter for the relevant facts.

Another winner. Thanks for the cache.


Have you seen my baby?

GC19RQ0

A quick find with Mr and Mrs Wizbit100. It would have been quicker, but Mr Wizbit checked all but one part of the initial location. A repeat visit soon had it in hand...! ;O) I like the container. Neat idea.

Thanks for the cache. Onwards and upwards.

THE BEAST 666

GC11KM

I met up with Wizbit100 to tackle this one. We figured there were two main decent routes and chose the one nearest to what we considered the coords first, against my better judgment... ;O)

It wasn't there.

So I climbed back up and descended where I thought it was likely to be.

It wasn't there either.

However, from my vantage point I was able to spot it quite a way down what turned out to be a third ascent that we hadn't really considered...! So down we sped and quickly had it signed.

Hooray! My 2000th find and my 50th 5/5. Thanks for a tremendous milestone.

(Not my picture)


Where The Monsters Hide Extreme 3

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Found while kicking around waiting for Wizbit100 to finish work and tackle another climb together. This was great! I was nervous of not finding the track through the trees, but that turned out to be easy.

Then I was nervous of maybe finding it hard to locate the cache during the descent, having read previous logs, but excellently I just descended a bit of a way, stopped to have a look around, and found it next to my face. Ace.

Thanks for a great cache. I've done lots of trees but very few 'proper' descents. This was a cracker.

Thanks for the cache.


Take your punishment Seaman Stanes

GC12J25

Right... So... I arrived after crossing the recently ploughed and therefore evil to walk on field, then the relative bliss of the next grassy one, and on to the bridge. Jumped over, swang around, found I needed a tool, climbed back up, REALISED THE TOOL WAS ON MY HARNESS, signed the cache, climbed down, swang back into place, then climbed back up.

Except, while climbing back up there was a deep and ominous plop, and I quickly realised it was the sound of an iPhone 4 falling irretrievably into the River Mole.

GAAAAAAH!

So this cache has cost me dearly.

However, it was nevertheless a tremendous cache, for which I thank you Mr Nutter.

Find number 1999. Where next...?!

(Phone trajectory)

Lactodorum Towers

GC1C694

Discovered in the drizzly rain but still a great cache. The only drawback turns out to be the little tiny gaps that like to eat throw lines and, having just tidied up at Tip Toe Wall from my stuck throwbag and line last time, AND finding someone else's lost line, I was more than nervous of losing another one! However, three or four throws and I had it neatly between two decently sized gaps and up I went.

If only somebody had warned me HOW BLOODY SCARY IT IS when a train goes past below! Wow!

Thanks for another typically splendid cache.


Tip Toe Wall, Warming up for the BEAST !!

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So I'd planned to come up to t'smurk to try for the caches leading up to Beastleytoo... But realised yesterday that if I abandoned my family TODAY to the Pompeii exhibition I could probably knock off a few to give myself a fighting chance of nailing Beastleytoo for my 2000th....

If anything I thout I'd get as far as Slither today, but now having the coords for this one, it was hard not to resist just going for a little peek. And then, inevitably, once there, it just stared at me, like a big tank-sized Venus flytrap. Beckoning me in.

So I spent about forty minutes chucking my throwbag towards the Useful Structure At Height, until YES! It's there! But... Hang on... It's not coming back... It's... Oh. Gone forever. Tied neatly to the structure about 60m up. No amount of yanking, plucking, stamping on, or begging moved the line off of its captor or the throwbag off the ledge. Very irritatingly, because I hate littering gear, I had to cut the throwline and abandon it. I cut as high as I could. PLEASE if the next person could get up there and dispose of it, there's a 10oz throwbag up there for you. Also, as a special thank you, there is an expensive pair of sunglasses on the ground on the other, less accessible, side of the structure which, by the time I'd got up there, with sunstroke, having forgotten my cameraphone, and having tied my rope to the dodgy gate and gained the attention of several passers-by, I just bloody abandoned. I'm not sure how I'd have got them anyway since my anchor was that side.

Bah.

Anyway... Cache signed! Info for The Beast painstakingly copied out (thanks to no phone). And no chance of finding the Have You Seen info having only an anchor at ankle height and no idea where to start looking because of that. I will be back!

Thanks for the cache.

[I rescued the throwline the following week.]

(Not me.)




Slither !

GC11JKK

So I'd planned to come up to t'smurk to try for the caches leading up to Beastleytoo... But realised yesterday that if I abandoned my family TODAY to the Pompeii exhibition I could probably knock off a few to give myself a fighting chance of nailing Beastleytoo for my 2000th....

Oh yes...! Pleased that I was familiar with the rough area of the cache, as now revealed, I sped off towards the increasingly blazing sun. Finding the key indicator at GZ was quite tough, and inevitably just as I sat down to beg a hint from CO there it was staring me in the face! Hooray! Then it was a rappelle down and stroll back up the, er, rock face.

Thanks for the cache.