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The SpongeBob geo-art series forms a circular route to the south west of Chipping Ongar. I have been solving the puzzles and jigsaw puzzles for the past couple of years but have only tackled the series over the past year. Checking back on the dates, it has taken me four visits to complete the task which is quite good going I reckon.😀 I'm left with sixteen caches in four sections, five of which are previous DNFs although three of them were MIA.
There was one isolated cache, #59, which was a MIA and I parked up for this one just after 0630 on School Road, Stanford Rivers. I walked about half a mile up the footpaths and the muddy fields to the cache that was in plain sight on the approach. I retraced my steps back to the car and set off back down the road until I reached the Romford Road. I drove down to the trail head for the next section but there was nowhere to park so I returned and parked outside the old Stanford Rivers workhouse.🤔
I walked a few hundred yards down to the trail head and set off to find #124 down to #130. I certainly made the correct choice of footwear as my wellies were just right for the wayerlogged fields that I had to pass through. There were two trads from the Little Bridges series along the route which broke things up a bit. The problem with a linear walk is that you have to retrace your steps. However there was a bit of excitement when some Roan deer ran across my path. I also heard a singing Yellowhammer which is always very welcome.
When I got back to the work'us, I set off for Marden Ash. I was after #78 and #79. I hadn't realised that the coords for #78 had changed so I missed that last time but no problem this. #79 was a different proposition though as it had a long list of DNFs.🥴 The CO had visited recently to check that it was there and had provided a spoiler photo. I spent some time trying to line myself up with the photo with no joy. Suddenly I noticed the cache about a foot from my chest.😀
On the other side of Marden Ash in the cattle fields were #83 and #84 which were definitely missing when I was last here. The CO had replaced them both and I didn't need to look at the phone to find them as I knew exactly where they were. I wasn't expecting the ammo box here either or the geo-coin which I took to move on.🤫
I was on the last lap now and set off for an area which was in Navestockside I suppose. I quickly found the isolated #97 and drove down to the final three. I could't find #101 so left that and quickly found #99 and #100. On the return, I read up on the final one. I suddenly realised that I had already had one of the COs trade mark caches in my hand but hadn't turned it over.🥴 There it was and the SpongeBob series is finally done.
2 Traditional 16 Mystery
#16631