Halloween, Nearly
Not a single post – more of a multi-post describing the multiple visits it took me to get through the caches that were hidden in and around Salcey Forest for the 2013 Halloween Hides and Creepy Caches event. I wasn’t able to go to the event on the day as a result of it being on my brother’s 50th birthday (see Big Bro’s 50th Birthday), so I had to hatch a cunning plan to go find the caches over the subsequent weeks. All in all it took four visits before I decided I’d done enough of them to call it done. I didn’t finish all of them, due to being unable to find some on the day I was there. And I was unwilling to go back over old ground on other days. But I did find 68 caches in the vicinity of Salcey Forest over those 4 days.
October 31st
I evidently took a whole day off on this day, either that or I walked very quickly. Or started very early. Whatever. I’m struggling to believe I made 31 finds in just a morning.
I do remember that I parked in the main car park and made a mad dash around from there. That gave me 31 caches mainly in the north of the forest. They were all quite well grouped together. And for once I actually managed to get enough of a signal in the woods to be able to see what I was doing. As I was quite near to the original event date the crew hadn’t quite removed all of the novelty containers, so there were a few surprises in store.
We were evidently still in the middle of the kids’ autumn half-term break too. I managed to persuade Ami to come with me for the day. As Ami was with me, we almost certainly stopped for drinks and cake in the cafe at some point.
November 8th
Friday night, and I’d arranged to meet up with Wavvy, BingBongLong, Norfolk12 and Little Fair Bear to do one of the night caches they’d placed – Angel of death- Night cache. Ami came with me. The night cache was fun, as I remember it, albeit rather muddy.
November 10th
The Sunday after going for the night cache I returned to the scene of the crime to do a bunch of caches around the southern portion of Salcey Forest. They were fairly quick to do. I don’t remember it being a very strenuous afternoon except for a couple towards the end where darkness was closing in and I got stranded amidst some very wet and boggy pathways (as often happens in Salcey Forest in the winter).
I bumped into Bevaren while I was walking that section too. She was out checking a couple of her own caches and collecting a few of the event ones she’d not been to.
I parked somewhere close to the crossroads on the western edge of the forest, I think. From here I walked in a vaguely clockwise direction. This took me through the north part of the forest before looping back through the south part.
November 15th
For my final day of hacking around Salcey Forest I parked up at what had been the event site, in Hartwell and walked in to do the caches in the two slivers of land between the M1 and the north-south road running through the forest.
There were only 15 or so in there and most were quite easy, apart from the one I couldn’t find.
From there I drove out of the north end of the forest and tramped across a very large, very muddy and very empty field to the trig point that had been made home to the YOSM for the period around the event. I think it had moved on by this time. It was still a relatively fresh incarnation of that particular cache, though.
On the way back I had time to grab a couple of quickies, including the church micro at Grafton Regis.