The Sketch
One of the weirdest day’s caching ever, not because of the actual caching, but because of the almost Higgs-boson-like timespan that the caches were available, and, if I’m honest, the almost Higgs-boson-like difficulty in locating some of them. I think the two things were, as is often the case, related to each other. Anyway, the day was spent in an area formerly famous for its treacle mining industry.
Do what?
Well, when I was a kid, my folks, and particularly my paternal grandfather, used to refer to Ticknall as being the home of a now-abandoned treacle mine. Still, my paternal grandfather used to make up all sorts of stuff. He spoke in a language that I never could understand. Nor could anyone else. Let’s just say he spoke very much in the vernacular. Although in his case the region in which his dialect was spoken was limited pretty much to his own house.
Some Caching, I Suppose
The series in question was located around Ticknall and I did it one morning while we were up at my folks’ pad in Measham. The series had only appeared on the caching radar a few days earlier. OK, they’d been out since Christmas, but this was the first time we’d been going up there since then. I noticed them just early enough to capture them onto the GPS the day before we set off.
It was a loop series of around 10km in distance, mainly on roads or good paths apart from one section over fields. However, I digress from the main gist of this post, which was the short-lived nature of the series and the difficulty in finding the caches.
The first few were OK, but once I’d reached about one-third distance I started having problems with finding the caches. Things got progressively worse until on the back straight I more or less gave up apart from a cursory glance. The cursory glances found me about a third of the available caches. It was tedious. They weren’t brilliant caches anyway. It seems that the CO was relatively new to the game and had not exercised a great deal of care in placing them, especially those along the road. Many were located (or not) in full view of adjacent buildings. Some were right on the edge of private land in some cases. Basically it was as though someone local had noticed the number of walkers and had deliberately followed someone around, removing caches as they went.
Stop Moaning
I still found a healthy number of caches on the day but it was an unsatisfying and frustrating day. The whole series got archived about a week after I did it.
I consoled myself on the way home by grabbing a couple of new (to me) Church Micros – one in Packington and one in Ashby.
The caches I managed to find whilst treacle mining were :