The Sketch
A day walking around the countryside near Therfield, south of Royston. This is the very heart of Ryoland, and to make the experience more real, the man himself was in the party. That meant the walk was fast and all of the finds were guaranteed. It made for a big day of caching.
It was a Friday and I’d taken the day off work because I had a few holidays left to use before the end of the year.
Therfield
The day began with a meet up in the village of Therfield. Candleford had been to fetch Ryo62 on the way and they were waiting for me when I arrived. So after a quick change into my walking boots we were off on our way. The plan was to walk around the series at Therfield and then to move the cars round to the other nearby series at Kelshall.
We started our walk heading west and then north, tidying up a few caches there before heading off around the extended figure-8 shape of the series along it’s left side. There were a few “hangers-on” on the route too. Much as expected, the caching was quick. The weather was dry and the underfoot conditions were firm, so progress over the ground was easy. Searching was also easy. Ryo’s caches are generally easy to find, with good coordinates and useful hints. Obviously in this case it was made even easier by Ryo being with us. He walks quickly and remembers pretty much every location. Candleford had also suggested that we should aim for a 100 finds in the day (at least for me) and with that in mind we were basically on a bit of a mission.
On this section we walked about 12km over 4.5 hours and found over 40 caches. That was a decent start and it was therefore deemed to be lunchtime when we got back to the cars. We treated ourselves to a fairly unhealthy lunch sitting in Candleford’s car.
Kelshall
We moved Candleford’s car round to the Village Hall in Kelshall for the second loop of the day. I left mine on the road outside the pub in Therfield, where it had been all morning. It looked perfectly safe there.
This second loop of the day was 7.7km long and took us well under 3 hours to complete. It yielded a further 34 finds. That put me just over 80 finds. By this time it was after 3:30pm and the light was closing in, so we switched to hunting in Candleford’s car.
Time for Drive-Bys
Ryo suggested we could make a good number of easy drive-bys if we headed for Nuthampstead, so that’s where we went. We found 13 in double-quick time there and then headed to Royston to complete a set of Ad Labs. Those could be done in the car.
By this time it was well after 5pm and I was pooped, so I got Candleford to drive me back to my car and we went our separate ways.
My separate way didn’t involve going straight home though. There was an event being held in a pub that was sort of on my way home, so I went straight there for half an hour before finally packing up. I’d got a long day planned for the following day, so didn’t want to leave it too late.
When I added everything up, I’d found 105 caches during the day. That was by far and away the most I’d ever found on a December day, so I was happy as.