I was back in Kent for another early few hours geocaching before I had to be home by ten o’clock. The plan was do some of the Froggies Leap Around Shorne series but there were a couple of caches from the Smiley Bandit Tour that I wanted to do first. It was on the way to this one that I noticed that the maps app on my iPhone wasn’t giving me audible instructions which continues to give me problems despite Apple’s best efforts. I’d done a couple of the Smiley Bandit Tour series and was now about to Leap Around Shorne. I parked up in Coutts Avenue and walked up the Gravesend Road to get on the northern half of the circuit. i had a splendid walk along the paths around the village picking up some clever multis and straight forward trads. I had a couple of DNFs and some MIAs. Once I’d finished the top section, I drove down across the A226 into the heart of the village. I had enough time to find another of the Smiley Bandit series and the #1 of the Leap series. I decided to save the rest for another day. On the way out of the village, I gathered the info for the VS Shorne multi.😀 3 Multi 10 Traditional #7801

Today is the 11th anniversary of the first placement of a SideTracked cache. There is a special souvenir if you find a ST cache on the anniversary and a unique one for attending a ST event.😀 Just to do my bit, I decided to hold an event to give local cachers the opportunity to gain the souvenir. I held the event in the free carpark of the very large supermarket next to Pitsea Station. I timed it so cachers had an hour to show up either before the school run or for cacher/commuters to attend. I had a decent turnout including pitbul69 and pippit who braved the Dartford Tunnel to get over here. Many thanks to everyone for attending.👏 1 Event #7788

Love them or loathe them, team caches are a fact of Geocaching life. I participate in many of them but would only claim them in a country that I have already cached in. What normally happens is that sir_spectre, an Australian cacher, contacts me for assistance on a team cache. This one is GC21X2B Le polyglotte 2 : trop tard! (Unknown cache) in Ile-de-France, France. Once again sir_spectre invited me to join his team and I was pleased to help with the necessary information. The team was sir_spectre, funny52, le panadas, Malix007, jacknor, sydman, Picarax, Crazedllama, A J Pombo, schnurpenturp, lucinda1904 N48, Nickanddonna, Team Glandouillage, Team Talog, peegeenine, Team Vella, ufridolin, Saaruska, Exploradora73, Cache&Cookies, jojoklot, leenie222, TeamLarcee, Tami TamTam, Blue Nora, L+K, bruno_batista, Matyasus and WillowZilla. Many thanks to slackmac for signing the whole team in and especially to axey for setting this one for us.👍 1 Traditional #7777

After a good night’s sleep, I had an early breakfast and started looking for some local caches killing time until the Mega event started at ten o’clock. My first cache of the day was the A different 366 challenge (unknown) cache in Assenby just down the road from the village pub in Dishforth just after 0830. I then did a tour of the local villages picking up trad CMs and an RST multi. I found the CM Christ the Consoler just outside the gates of Newby Hall, in Skelton-on-Ure, the venue for the Mega, a few minutes before ten. This was a fantastic event and the Committee and volunteers much be really proud of what they achieved today. I set about seeing who was here, texting mates and meeting up. I spoke to many people, mainly to ask if they minded me taking photos of their trackable garments.🤔 A team of us went after the Lab caches eventually finding all of them. However it was impossible to log the finds as everyone else was jamming the server.😢 I found out where the Lock Pick Village was and went over there to meet up with Susan aka Lulybelle, until now only a Twitter Geocaching friend. I got right into this lock picking lark and now have my own kit to practice with.🤔 After a cup of artisan local coffee, I made a couple more circuits bumping into more familiar faces until it got to noon when I needed to set off for the long drive down south. I took my time getting home meandering on and off of the A1 collecting a few CMs and selected trads. It was certainly less frantic than yesterday.😀 However I was still a little tired and I wanted to get home in one piece. I arrived home just after six. 1 Mega, 2 Mystery, 3 Mult, 13 Traditional #7776

This is going to be a busy day! I am driving from Vange up to the Yorkshire Mega and then on a bit more. To make sure that I get there alright, I decided to hire a car as my motor has been suffering a bit lately and I don’t want to take any chances. The hire car is a brand new Bremen Motor Works specimen with just the eighteen miles on the clock. There will be quite a few more on there when I return the car back on Monday morning. The car has that eco on/off feature that will take some getting used to but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.🤔 I am planning to cache in 16 counties today - Essex, Herts, Beds, Bucks, Northants, Warks, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Notts, South Yorks, East Riding of Yorks, West Yorks, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, Northumberland and North Yorks. There would be 11 new counties for me on the trip. I am also planning to get some challenges and some early Jasmer caches on the way. I’ve also worked out a selection of caches that should hopefully qualify me for the “Up The Thirteen Steps” Challenge too. So what happened? My first cache was in Waltham Abbey at 0355 and I found at least one cache in each of my target counties thus giving me eleven new English counties. Just four more to get. 😀 I found some early Jasmers including a 1/04, 12/02 and a 4/01. I had to miss out on a 10/3 but I just ran out of time. Other highlights were CM Underwood in Notts to qualify me for the AEIOU CM Challenge cache and the 10 Counties In A Day Challenge In West Yorkshire. I even qualified for the Up The 13 Steps Challenge on the way.😀 Another one that stood out was “I Love Eddie” in the East Riding of Yorkshire. As I parked up to go for the trad, I saw a couple of young chaps with cameras and binoculars nearby, one of them sitting on the central reservation in a deck chair. 🤔I thought that we were on a flight path and asked them whether they were air spotting. They said that they were spotting Eddie Stobart lorries.🤣 Well, I get some strange looks when I say that I’m a geocacher so each to his own.😀 I attended the Blow Your Horn ceremony in Ripon square at 9 o’clock to gain a virtual but this wasn’t my final cache of the day.😀 I went to the 80s Disco event at the Mega site but there was no time to boogie. I got back to the village pub where I was staying for the night about ten and had three pints of hand-pumped Tetley’s Bitter. After that, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. It had been a very long day but oh so worth it, probably my best ever Geocaching day. 😀 1 Event, 2 Virtual, 3 Mystery, 27 Traditional #7757

Today, I needed to get a cache but didn’t want to go too far. However I also needed a longish walk to blow a few cobwebs away. I’d been struggling with Cazmockett’s Brains Not Brawn (BNB) Mystery series based around Hanningfield Reservoir for a few months now. I had worked up about six or seven but ideally wanted to do them all in one hit.

Another weekend morning so I must be somewhere in Kent. This week, I’m back in Chelsfield to hopefully finish off a circular series that I did part of last week. After that, I’m going over into Green Street Green to find some more caches around there. Here’s how the morning went.

I was sorting out my garage the other day and I came across the pair of waders that I got for Christmas. As soon as I saw them, I thought of one of Nathan’s new caches, the 2.5/3.5 River Wid Ford where waders are essential. Now with the weather expected to break and lots of rain forecast, I decided that I must get out there.

Hopefully, after spending a few quid, my car problems are behind me so I’m taking a chance coming out for a day’s caching. I don’t want to go to far but there are slimmer than slim pickings near me. My plan is to pick off a few orphan caches that had been eluding me, hoping to end up in Tiptree. Here’s how the day panned out.

OSGS has been playing on my mind. What does that remind me of? Well hold on to your hat! In 1964, West Ham won the FA Cup. My cousin Stefan, was a Hammer and wanted me to go with him to the 4th Round home tie vs. Chelsea in January 1965 so we went and queued up for tickets really early on outside the Boleyn.