It’s All About The Numbers, Isn’t It?

Now some cachers say that Geocaching isn’t just about the numbers, it’s much more than that. I’m not sure if there are any tongues in cheeks though. However, this morning, it is most definitely all about the numbers. I am after the 5/5 “It’s all about the numbers” Challenge Cache on the North Downs Way in the back of beyond.

The qualification for this one is to find a Monkey of caches in a calendar month or at least two days with a Century of caches in a calendar month. I fulfilled the two centuries in July this year (see the photo) but fell short of the Monkey by 26 caches.🥴

As dawn broke, at maybe 7:20, I parked up in a tiny spot on a tiny lane and walked up to the NDW. It was quite dry and I set off fo a half mile walk down to the search area. With only grazing horses for company, I quickly found the well placed cache and boy, was I pleased.😀

I skipped all the way back to the car and set off north to West Kingsdown. There were three caches here that I was after and the first was one of a new series for me. I hadn’t heard of the National Police Memorial Day before and this particular memorial was for DC John Fordham, who was murdered whilst investigating the Brink Mat bullion heist.

There was a multi based around the memorial and I quickly solved the riddle before moving on to the cache. There was also a WM multi and a CM mystery in the village and these were soon solved and collected.

I headed north again into Hartley and collected the 3/2 CM Hartley - St Frances de Sales multi. Just up the road in some woods were two Wherigo caches - Santa’s House and Santa’s Tree House. These were play anywhere wherigos so I had solved them during the week.

I set off through the woods and on a fir tree, quickly found the 3/2 former. However the latter was a 3.5/5 and the blurb sort of hinted that it could be a free climb. However when I reached the enormous Beech, I spotted the cache pretty quickly and contemplated a free climb for about a second and then thought nah!! 😨 ...and then it was time for home.

1 Wherigo 2 Mystery 3 Multi

#13873

‍