Tonight was the 49th meeting of the Essex Geocachers (other cachers are welcome😀) in the Woolpack PH in Chelmsford. I walked through the door and didn’t stop talking until two hours later when I left. In hindsight, I didn’t even get up to the bar for a drink. I spoke to a couple of new faces to me Fire Scouter and colapop68 for quite a while and then managed a quick chat with dizzygirl before she left. I found out some good information on herseries - Bishop’s Bumble in Stortford especially about #8 - Below.😉 I also spoke to Beastmarsta who is coming to my event for Oz Day in Maldon and nathanjhunt about our trip to Dublin in a couple of weeks. This was one of the best events, socially, that I’ve been to. Perhaps I‘m feeling more confident.🤔 1 Event #6536

I’m still hobbling but today is the selected day of the weekend for geocaching. I must be home by 10 am so I’ve come for an early start around Greenhithe and Northfleet across the bridge in Kent. My first cache was the trad at SideTracked Greenhithe but everywhere was yellow lines. I found a car park free on weekends about 300 yards away. Wow, did I hobble! I must have seized up on the 28 minute drive over so it took me a time to loosen up. I had a quick find of a well positioned cache and after signing the log, I had to hobble back to the car park. There was another cache down the road called Virtually Free, I Mean Three Challenge. The qualification for this 4/2 Challenge is to find three virtual caches in another non UK country. I’ve done this in the US and Prague, Hungary so I’m in luck. The cache was a quick find as it was 6’ up a street sign so I was just tall enough.😀 I was just checking what other caches were around and another Mystery cache, Hedwig’s Roost was just down the road. I had solved this one some time ago and had put the checked coords in. So this was an unexpected treat for me and the 2.5/1.5 was soon in hand. All I had to do now was get back to the car. 😬 Next up were a couple of trads close together called Red Bridge Footpath #1 and #2. I finally found the start of the footpath and walked down to #2 for a quick find. Unfortunately, the footpath was completely sealed off due to a dangerous bridge over the railway. Fair enough, but I had to walk miles around the estate to #1 when it is probably 200 yards down the path in a straight line.🤔 I had to crouch down to get the cache which I could have done without! 😢 I now had to walk all the way back.😡 I had time for three more caches. The first was ebbsfleet, a trad which had had a long line of DNFs. Looking at the hint, the cache could only have been on one place but it was certainly a MIA. I walked on to Eye spy - give me an O, another trad and I had a quick find of a well placed cache. I’d parked outside the Ebbsfleet FC (Up The Fleet!) so whilst walking back there, I had another look at the notes for the ebbsfleet and saw that the CO hadn’t been active for a couple of years. I had a replacement cache in hand so made the difficult decision to replace it. I could have left the cache to be archived sometime to give someone else a go at placing the cache but decided that having something to find would be better.😀 The last cache of the day was the CM Northfleet- Christian, another traditional. Once I had found a place to park, I made a very quick find of a well placed cache. Now it was back to the lottery of the traffic through the tunnel. Luckily I had a smooth ride through for a change. 2 Mystery, 6 Traditional #6535

I’m just about getting over this sodding flu and decided that I needed a short walk for a couple of hours to get back into the swing of things. There was a nice circular series about 4.5 miles and 19 caches - Bishop’s Bumble in Bishop‘s Stortford that looked good so I decided to give it a try to break myself in gently. At least that was the plan.🤔 What looked good in practice turned out to be a poor choice out in the cold light of day. The conditions deteriorated after an hour or so and later into the walk, it became very wet underneath. There were a lot of caches that need maintenance because of missing tops and very damp logs. Some of the caches may be missing. I say this because I DNFed three film pots in a row when they were billed as easy finds. There has also been a legal change to the route of the footpath, which has put another cache out of bounds. However, it was a great walk although I suffered for it later.😬 I parked up in the free car park of Bishop Stortford Swifts FC and realised that there was a trad nearby - Hit The Hut. Once found, I noticed that the cache was close to a Scout Hut and that it had a TB. I had one on board that I knew had a Scouting connection so I did a swap.😀 I then set out of the Bumble series. At #1 - The Off, I had a quick find of a 2/2 trad, very cleverly hidden in an electrical junction box. #2 - Come On You Blues was an easy trad which I saw on the approach. Due to the new housing estate being built, #3 had been archived so I walked down the muddy road to #4. This had been DNFed for a long time now but I could see where it had been and it was a MIA. #5 - Horses For Courses was a quick find of a well hidden cache. The ground underfoot was getting heavy but I was moving easily and quickly got to #6 - Lake View. This one had been in trouble and the previous cacher had put a logsheet in a plastic cliptop bag down it up but the log was still damp and just signable. #7 - Ted was an odd one.🤔 It was listed as 3.5/2 and was supposed to be a field puzzle, however, the cache must have been compromised. All I found was a film pot with a log sheet so I claimed it anyway. As I approached the next cache #8, I noticed for the first time that it was called - Below and was a 3.5/4.5 - Oh, Oh!🤬 I went down to explore and suspected that the cache was in a water drainage tunnel. The water was only a trickle so I took stock. I had boots, a torch, gloves and a hat plus my normal motto - I’m here so I’m going for it. So off I went, crawling on my hands but not on my knees about 100 yards into the tunnel and up to the second inspection compartment. I suppose at this point, my bottle went.😢 Is it missing, have I gone far enough, I dunno but I decided that it was time to turn and get out. I didn't really have a problem getting back and up the bank but suddenly my legs turned all wobbly. I wobbled off to #9. The notes said that the cache wasn’t down the bank but I couldn’t find the cache at all at GZ so decided to hobble off to #10 - The First Little Pig. The previous log said that this cache was in trouble without a lid and the log sheet held in place with leaves. You can imagine that the log was a sodden mess and it was.🙁 I put a replacement log sheet in a cliptop bag and the cache back where I‘d found it. As I turned the corner, I could see that a young lady on a horse was waiting for me. I asked her which way, the horse was going and I let them go first. We parted company a few hundred yards up the track and I went onto GZ. It was a quick find but again the lid was missing and the log was sodden. This time I didn’t have a cliptop bag but I left a new log. How long would it remain dry though? The next cache - #12 - Withering Wood was another in trouble. The path of the footpath had been officially changed and the cache was somewhere in the prohibited area.🙁 I did go and have a look anyway and I couldn’t find the cache. However this one definitely needs to be re-sited. The next one - #13 was a 2.5/2trad, well tucked away in the dry at the bottom of a tree stump so no problems. What I hadn’t said was that the ground was now waterlogged and heavy so my legs were starting to ache. However according to the satellite map, a farm road was coming up so things should improve. There was a line of Eiffel tower type electricity pylons coming up and it seemed that the next three caches were placed on one of the four bases of each pylon. However every one was missing and it had begun to hiss down. To be honest, I was running out of time so it was head down and finish the walk time. I missed out the next two caches, didn’t even look for them, however I did think about the final cache, #19. However the log showed that the cache was MIA so I ploughed straight on. The footpath finished back at #4 so I carried on down the muddy road through the construction site until I reached the car. Here I changed my shoes, socks, trousers; took off my two wet top layers and had my lunch. I drove home through the rain, realising that I had done far too much. The next morning, however, I needed no reminders as I ached. No, I didn’t ache; my thigh muscles were silently screaming with pain. They were even painful to touch.😫 I‘m going to have a couple of days hobbling around until this goes.😢 9 Traditional #6527

I’m feeling much better and this sodding flu is starting to wane so I gave myself an hour to stretch my legs and get some stamina back. A few caches in a reasonably closed proximity had been published in Great Warley near Brentwood so It seemed silly not to have a try for them. The trouble was that I couldn’t get parked anywhere near where I wanted to be. However, a plan emerged. I parked on double yellow lines and did a speedy cache & cache at - the postman has got the post - and then I drove up to Warley Hill where I knew that I could get two hours free parking. The trouble with this was that it was half a mile from where I wanted to be.🙁 After I’d got back to the next cache, a traditional- Leafy, I noted that it had had more than its share of DNFs in its short life. However, I didn’t have any trouble and quickly found and logged the cache. Now there was a bonus for this cache. I looked for the written coords for the mystery Leafy Bonus and found that they were in radians.☹️ This caused me some grief as I didn’t know how to convert them but the old Geocaching Toolbox came to my rescue. The “proper“ coords showed that the bonus cache was about a half a mile away and between me and it was a Letterbox cache - Warleys Letterbox so I decided to tackle that first. Arriving at GZ, I found a notice board to the Warley Park and had to work out the coords from the information on the board. I quickly had this sorted and took off in the same direction as the Leafy Bonus. I had a quick find of the Letterbox cache, retrieving a TB too, then crossed the road and picked up the bonus cache hidden behind a huge tree trunk. All I had to do now was get back to the car. I walked through the re-developed grounds of the former Essex Regiment barracks and latter Lunatic Asylum which was renamed Warley Mental Hospital wishing that there were more caches to be found on route. However, it was a good walk and I didn’t suffer any after effects. 2 Traditional, 1 Mystery, 1 Letterbox #6518

I’m still suffering but I have to get out, see the previous blog.😀 There were a couple of trad caches in Rayleigh that looked reasonable to get. The first was the new CM at Holy Trinity at the top of the High Street. I didn’t realise that the one that was here had been archived. The new one was near a car park with free parking on Sundays so I was onto a winner already. The cache was in the first place that I looked so I was a double winner.😀 I then drove down to Rayleigh Station to try for Nathan’s SideTracked cache. The hint was spot on and the cache couldn’t be anywhere else but it was MIA. I had a good look but the wind was bitter so I didn’t stay longer than ten minutes. I have my one cache and that’s enough for me. I’ll be so pleased when I’m back to my normal fit and active self again. 1 Traditional #6514

I’ve got this rule that I can’t go more than two days without finding a cache, e.g, if I find one on Day 1 then I must find one at least on Day 4. Now I’m in the grip of this sodding flu but I need to get out for a cache. Fool, but I have this rule!🤔 So the nearest unfound to me is a new trad called Happy Hall Hunting in Orsett. I knew Orsett had a hall which burnt down recently but I’d never been there or seen it and I still haven’t.🙁 I parked up in the designated car parking space near the Village Hall, (maybe this is the hall in question?) and had a quick find of a very well placed cache as per the hint. Now it was back home to the warm with my rule still unbroken. 😀 1 Traditional #6513

After the starting of a cold yesterday, I think that I’ve got the start of this sodding flu going around.🤧 If I was a sane, rational person and not a geocacher, I would have used what little sense that I had left and stayed in bed or at least stayed indoors in the warm, listening to Cheap Trick albums.😀 I bought their Christmas album recently and their version of Chuck Berry’s - Run Run Rudolph is the best one that I’ve ever heard. However, trying a version of Silent Night was a track too far!☹️ Anyway back to “Tales Of A Nutcase” it’s New Year‘s Day and there’s a souvenir up for grabs so I have to venture out.🤔 Luckily I have a cache on my emergency list not too far away and once SideTracked East Tilbury, a trad, was found, logged and replaced, it was back to the warm and another splendid aural experience. Happy New Year everyone. 1 Traditional #6512

Things tied up really nicely here.😀 I’ve been holding an event on the last Sunday of the month all year. However today is a Sunday, New Years Eve and Groundspeak have issued a souvenir to wave the Old Year goodbye so it all worked a treat. I‘d found a cracking little cafe/coffee house in Ramsden Heath called Hall &Co. so this was the venue. They open at ten and it’s popular with cyclist groups and is dog friendly so I had booked a couple of tables. As we mingled outside waiting for opening time, I announced Nathan and I’s day trip to Dublin in the event that someone fancied it. Anyway the time flew, the breakfasts were great and there was so much chatting! I must thank all the attendees for coming to my meets this year. After a shaky start, they have been more popular than I can have imagined. Many thanks to Mathsnut, cazmockett, alistair_uk, Fenners184, Mini F, Izybuzyfingers, GregsterMonkey, RachelnRedd, The Avenue Two, nathanjhunt, Infinison and family for attending today. My thanks to Frantically, TheCorletts, kareninwb, pitbul99, pippitt, JimHoney, Rinkey, snoopyus, BTL101092, Slaphead59, Whizzer28, Wandafree, Goldilox97, ShiftyDuck, Boomeisters, Vanessa335, grobo59, Boots218, Vanguard3, Bean & Sprout, DRC1808 and Bex2110 for attending meetings during the year.👏 1 Event #6511

So there was I, sitting in my lounge, mooching around on Facebook, looking at Geocaching group pages. I was looking at the Essex & Suffolk Piffle Group page and suddenly up popped a message from Yorkie63 announcing an event just starting in Torcross in Devon. It seemed that the E&S Piffle crew were on a New Years jolly in a pub and inviting members of the group to take part via the Internet. Now this was a new one on me! John aka Yorkie said that all those taking part even those via Facebook could claim the cache. Quote - it’s our event, so it’s our rules - Unquote. So I took part for 30 minutes until the transmission finished and serious wassailing commenced. So what a treat! This hobby turns up so many possibilities, it’s hard to keep up. So completely unexpectedly, I was able to claim a cache for virtually attending the event - Tinsel and Toe-dipping in Torcross. 1 Event #6510

Now that Christmas, apart from taking down all the decorations on Twelfh Night, is over, it was time to put a special plan that I’d been working on, into action. I was going down to Paddock Wood in Kent to pick up a number of high end DT challenges that I had been working on. Hopefully I’d fill two of my unfilled grid gaps. I don’t normally go into Kent on a weekday due to the traffic on the return journey but as it is school holidays and workers on leave, I presumed that traffic would be light. It certainly was going over the bridge and I was parking up just as dawn broke on the outskirts of Paddock Wood. One of the next three caches would be on my list of DTs needed so I was pretty excited. The purists amongst the caching fraternity would probably turn their nose up at these as they were ”Liars” caches. I’m not sure exactly what that means but let’s say that they are easier than their DT ratings suggest. In about ten minutes, I had a 3.5/5 🎇🎆, a 2.5/5 and a 2/4.5 in the bag. Let’s say that I was really happy, and you can’t take that away from me. I drove into the centre of the village and was immediately disappointed that the local cafe was closed. I wanted to celebrate with a bacon sandwich and a coffee.🙁 However, I made do with three multis, a VS and two CMs in order to compensate plus a trad. The trad had a missing lid, a sodden log and even grass growing out of the cache. This really deserved a Needs Maintenance tag so it got one! A short drive away was a Mega Rare Challenge cache. The qualification for this one was finding two T5 caches in one day. Back in August when I was struggling to find a 2/5 cache, two were published on the Chelmer Canal but a canoe was needed. I put out a plea for help and the next morning, Izybuzyfingers and I were paddling down the canal picking up the two 2/5s and a 3/4.5 cache, oddly named Chub Roll Minora. So I was well qualified for the Challenge but extracting the cache was more difficult than a 1/4.5. Luckily I had something in my tool kit that helped me a lot. It was twice as difficult putting the cache back in the correct position but I managed it.😀 Now it was back to the “Liars“ series and I added a 3/5 and a 1.5/4.5 to the list. This was followed up with another challenge - Mega SideTracked, a 4/1.5. For this one, I had to find 50 caches from the SideTracked series. By the time I’d got to GZ, the hard work had been done and it was an easy find. Again, I was back to the “Liars“ series and Committed - 5/5 and In Retrospect - 4.5/5 🎆🎇 were in the bag. The last one brought my DT tally up to 80 out of 81 with just one, 5/4.5 to get. I have a challenge cache that I’ve qualified for, that would help me but that’s in Northants so that one may have to wait.🤔 I had planned a nice circular walk near the Hop Farm at Beltring but had decided to try some of the For Ducks Sake series on the way. I had a couple of quick finds of some well hidden nanos and took off for Beltring. It was difficult to park where I wanted but I eventually found a space by the side of the road and set off on the walk. The walk mainly comprised of trads from the COE series with a couple of letter boxes and mysteries on the way. I started with the 148:COE Letter Box and got onto the footpath that I wanted. Next up was 149:COE, a challenge requiring 10 caches in a county in a country outside the UK. I qualified for this one after finding 10 caches in Salzburg, Austria last year. This cache took some finding but I finally dislodged it from its hiding place. The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful but tiring. I found ten more caches in the COE series including eight trads, a letterbox and a challenge cache. I needed have found 25 caches in a day to qualify for the latter, a feat that I’d accomplished many times.😀 I also had two DNFs and hopefully I can come back for these when they have been found again. With, perhaps another hour to go before I had to brave the queues at the tunnel, it was time to wind down. I found a trad at CM Paddock Wood, two multis, the VS and CM at Matfield and two challenges to round off the day. The first was 37.COE, a 4.5/3, where I had to have found at least one cache in 15 countries. As I’ve cached in 22 countries, I more than qualify. The last cache was easier - Five Oak Green Five Challenge as I only had to find at least five caches of seven types. So as you’ve seen, I had a great day. No, a fantastic day, what a day.😀 12 Mystery, 12 Traditional, 3 Letterbox, 5 Multi, #6509