The Sketch
Time for some more excuses about how I meant to go caching on my new bike but ended up going in the car again. I went to finish poshrule’s peloton, so pelotoff, as it were. The excuse this time was that I’d been ill in the week, and I wasn’t sure I was up to either a long walk or a long bike ride. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t up to it. Candleford once again volunteered to drive me, as she did a couple of weeks ago (see Peloton). And as with last time, she’d already done all of the peloton series. After the last trip I’d got 96 more to do.
96 may seem like a lot for a winter day, but after getting 200 on the previous trip, 96 in a day is obviously a bit lightweight. On that basis, we decided to meet at the same place (in Alconbury) but somewhat later in the day.
As ever, I had stocked up with cold drinks, sandwiches and chocolate on the way out. I’d also filled my car with diesel and nearly feinted at the price.
Start Your Engines
Well, first of all there were a few around Alconbury that Candleford hadn’t done. Seems fair enough to go do those before heading to the peloton again. There were 10 of them, in fact. That got my morning off to a good start.
And then we drove up the A1 to Yaxley and to the end of the stretch where I’d left a big gap just after New Year (see Yaxley Peloton). This took us on an anti-clockwise loop around the Morborne Transmitter. You can see from the photo that it was a beautiful day. It was after 10:30 when we started doing these ones, and we were done with all 46 of them by 12:30. Not bad.
Get a Move On
This gave us time to waste. And as it happens, we found some ways of wasting it. Going into Yaxley to grab a Village Sign cache for Candleford wasn’t a waste, but the next 50 minutes or so could have been better used. I needed to turn my bike round, as it were, so we tried the centre of Yaxley but singularly failed to find anywhere. So we then decided to jump on the motorway and drive up to the Peterborough Services. At least there we were guaranteed some vaguely usable toilets and a coffee shop. So one out and one in, as it were, before heading down to Stilton. Oh, and there was a cache in the car park.
Anyway, yes! That Stilton. The Home of the Cheese. Great!
Before we began the afternoon’s caching, we sat with the windows open and scoffed the scoffables.
Last time out I’d deliberately left a few near to Stilton because I wanted to leave enough to be worth coming back. So we had about a dozen or so here to get. All were easy.
Connington
The last bit of the peloton I needed to do was a loop around Connington. I’d been here before, many moons ago. On that previous attempt I remember parking on the field near the church. There was some kind of summer fair on. That meant I couldn’t find one of the caches because there was a bunch of kids playing right next to it and I felt uncomfortable asking them to leave. So I left instead. This time, the whole area was quieter than a minute’s silence at a Trappist’s funeral. So we were able to flip our way around without any hassle. I was glad we were in Candleford’s car though. There were several stopping places where I wouldn’t have been happy leaving mine.
That lot took us past 4pm, once we’d cleared the main road too, and I was done with the peloton series. So we drove back to Alconbury and found my car where I’d left it. At this point I’d found 113 caches during the day.
Oh, go on then
Can’t finish on a 13 though, can you? Bad karma, is that. It’s nearly as bad as going round a loop anti-clockwise. Which we did on two out of three loops today. That needs sorting. So Candleford suggested I could waste a few minutes by checking her Village Sign and Village Hall caches in Diddington. Oh, go on then.
So 115 finds it was. Another fantastic day, and thanks once more to Candleford for driving all day. I wouldn’t have been willing to do these as drive-bys either on my own, or in my own car. So that’s a couple of tiddlywinks thrown into the “days owing” bucket.
The caches I found on this day were: