Chiltern Hundred 1

The beginning of a six month long journey to complete one of the biggest series of caches in the area – the Chiltern Hundred series near Chesham.

It was a cold February day and I had the day to myself, so I planned to go and have a crack at as many as possible. The Chiltern Hundred series consists of three loops which interlink at a couple of points to the north of the town. The total length of walking on the three loops is about 20 miles and there are about 110 caches to collect, as well as a a bonus cache that has a very high Difficulty/Terrain rating. To get the bonus you have to gather at least 100 of the 110 caches (and the bonus codes within them) and then type these into a web page to reveal the coordinates. It’s a bit of an epic.

Anyway, on my first day I parked up at Chesham Tube Station, which happens to be the host for the first cache in the series, and began my walk. I lose track of how many miles I walked on this day but it was a lot. Estimates made retrospectively using my favourite mapping software indicate that I walked about 13 miles. It was only just light when I started walking and it was completely dark when I got back. I set a new personal best for number of caches found in one day – 60 finds – although, had I found all of those on the route I walked it would have been well over 70. There were certain stretches where I was missing caches more often than finding them, and had I been closer to home and closer to my car at the time I might well have just given up on the day, but seeing as I was miles out in the middle of nowhere I decided I might as well keep looking. I had to do the walking anyway, as I was miles from the car for most of the day.

The caches I found on the day were: