The Sketch
It felt like a good day to try to get past 1,000 total finds by ryo62. There’s some benefit in doing that. Anyone who passes that milestone gets awarded a “Congratulations” cache, which is a nice touch. At the start of the day I needed a further 79 ryo62 finds. That may sound a lot, but to be honest it’s not that many for a day in June. What better way than by sketching a rabbit’s head onto my caching map by attempting the Heidi Rose Bunny Hop series, near Bassingbourn.
When Ross sets puzzles he sets puzzles which are very doable. His real speciality is series of 50 or more caches that are packed in at near maximum density over a closed loop. And he’s working in an area where there isn’t much challenging terrain. What all that means is that it’s generally fairly easy to sustain 12 finds an hour or higher when walking his series.
Couple that with the fact that there were two new series (new to me, anyway) in close proximity which totalled 70 of the required 79, and which also take you close to a selection of Village Signs, War Memorials, Village Halls, Church Micros and his own “Congratulations” caches. I reckoned I could see more than 90 of Ross’s caches that could be done in those two loops.
On with the Bunny Hop
The first loop started in Bassingbourn, which is a village I’ve cached through several times on Ross’s other series (especially the Hatley Heart Attack). I’m fairly sure I’d had record-breaking days here, but after the 2018 journey to France, setting a new record for finds in a day has become a lot harder. This first series was the “Heidi Rose Bunny Hop” – a series of puzzles on a vaguely rabbity theme. In reality, the series is basically all straight lines.
I parked up in the leisure centre car park in the village and started the series at the official #01, which is a bit of a rarity for me. This loop notched up the first 63 finds for me, which was good.
Off to Wrestlingworth
Once I’d finished with the hopping bunnies, I set off for the way to the second loop. I grabbed a couple more random village caches on the way past before finding myself in Wrestlingworth. Well, I wasn’t actually in the village itself. Wrestlingworth is, to be honest, one of my bogey locations. There’s nowhere to park in the village that I like the look of. The roads are narrow and there’s no village hall or leisure centre that has nice off-road parking. So when I go there, I tend to park on a small lay-by just outside. Again, it’s a place I’ve been to on several previous occasions, chiefly for bits of the Hatley Heart Attack.
The walk on this occasion was quite slow and quite hard work. I’d already walked for more than six hours. My feet were struggling a bit, and this series was uphill on the way out of the village. The loop has 23 caches on it and there were another 5 in the village, which took me to a very creditable 95 total finds for the day. You can’t argue with days like that. I have to say though, that by the time I got back to the car I had most definitely had enough. I’m getting older, and I’m carrying too much weight. The result of that is that I get very stiff when I spend all day walking.
Anyway, it was a Sunday, so there was a traditional Sunday dinner with the family waiting for me at home.
The Finds
I found 95 caches in Wrestlingworth and on the Heidi Rose Bunny Hop. These are on the map below.