Objectives
Time to write my 2016 Caching Diary. It turned out that I had a bit of a problem with my caching mojo for much of the year. I was also quite busy with work, and therefore more interested in spending the weekends with Kas and the girls. What I did do though, I greatly enjoyed. I went out less often, but enjoyed it more, so it was a good thing to do, consciously or otherwise.
2016 had the lowest number of finds in the year that I’d had since 2012. That was offset by having a number of fantastic individual days and involved some fairly epic locations for finds.
January (131 finds)
- 1st January – I got the year off to a decent start on the first day. I took a walk along the MKBW Yellow series (see Say Yellow, Wave Goodbye) – 28 finds
- 10th January – I followed this up by walking along the Blue and Magenta sections (see Bye Bye Magenta and Blue) – 42 finds
- 17th January – I walked round another part of the Hatley Heart Attack (see Another Heart Attack) – 38 finds
- 19th January – I popped out to a local event down in Wiltshire. I was in the area for work – 3 finds
- 31st January – I finished the month by walking around the woods to complete Charlie’s Sixth Loop (see Charlie’s Sixth Loop) – 20 finds
February (172 finds)
- 6th February – I walked my way around another chunk of the Hatley Heart Attack series (see Hacking Around Hatley) – 68 finds
- 16th February – I was in Melksham again for another local caching event – 6 finds
- 20th February – I still hadn’t finished the Hatley Heart Attack (see Will This Ever End) – 79 finds
- 28th February – I had a bit of a depressing day near Castle Donington (see Around Castle Donington) – 17 finds
- 29th February – I found myself with a bit more time on my hands. A monster project I’d been working on in the south-west got canned. I was therefore able to attend a couple of local Leap Day events – 2 finds
March (114 finds)
- 15th March – I attended an event in Leighton Buzzard (BBH #99 Bordering on Pigling Towers) – 1 find
- 21st March – I grabbed a nearby “Village Sign” cache whilst planning a few of my own (VS#136 NASH Buck’s) – 1 find
- 25th March – I made up for a slow month by going a bit mad on the Hatley Heart Attack (see A New Personal Best) – 112 finds
April (128 finds)
- 3rd April – I still hadn’t finished the Hatley Heart Attack. So I went for over that way to finally lay the series to rest (see No More Heart Attack) – 83 finds
- 15th April – I attended an event in Leighton Buzzard (BBH #99 Bordering on Pigling Towers) – 1 find
- 24th April – I grabbed a random central London cache on the day Kas was running the London Marathon – 1 find
- 30th April – I hacked my way around a couple of local series (see PAT and Charlie’s Seventh Loop) – 43 finds
May (122 finds)
- 5th May – I grabbed a couple of quickies whilst on a business trip to the south-west – 2 finds
- 11th May – I attended a BBH event down near Hemel Hempstead – 2 finds
- 14th May – I went for a bit of a spree over towards the south side of Cambridge (see Meldreth Madness) – 96 finds
- 21st May – I grabbed a handful of caches on Hampstead Heath while we were in London for a running event – 6 finds
- 28th May – I went for a Saturday afternoon walk on the riverfront in Liverpool during our annual pilgrimmage for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon – 13 finds
- 30th May – We’d moved up to the Lake District for a week’s holiday. We grabbed a couple on the way up to Keswick (see The Drive Up) – 2 finds
- 31st May – We walked up Skiddaw and there was a cache on the top (see Climbing Skiddaw) – 1 find
June (53 finds)
- 1st June – We were still in the Lake District and had a day out at Ullswater. Before that I’d popped up to Castlerigg Stone Circle for a couple of caches in the morning (see Ullswater) – 4 finds
- 2nd June – I grabbed a single cache while we were walking along the side of Derwent Water ( see Happy Birthday ) – 1 find
- 3rd June – We did a handful of caches while we were climbing up Cat Bells (see Cat Bells) – 8 finds
- 19th June – I had an ultimately quite disappointing trip up to Thrapston (see Thrapston Crapston) – 40 finds
July (144 finds)
- 8th July – I went to Silverstone for a bit of Formula 1 and grabbed a YOSM while I was there (see Silverstone) – 1 find
- 12th July – there was a “Roundabout MK” event – 1 find
- 16th July – I was at the GeoNord event in Valenciennes with Izzy, Carolynn and Alibags (see Valenciennes) – 27 finds plus 10 lab caches
- 17th July – We were still in France and attended the closing event. We followed that by driving up to Coudekerque for a walking series there (see Coudekerque) – 31 finds
- 29th July – It was Geolympix weekend and I took the Friday off to do a few of the caches near the site (see Geolympix 2016) – 24 finds
- 31st July – It was Geolympix day, so the girls and me went down to Ashridge for a bit of cache-based wandering (see Geolympix 2016) – 40 finds plus 10 lab caches
August (255 finds)
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- 4th August – Ami and me started an epic weekend of caching for the UK Mega in Llangollen ( see Whitchurch ) – 101 finds
- 5th August – Ami and me spent the day hacking around North Wales with the Happy Hunter (see Llangolen) – 61 finds plus 10 lab caches
- 6th August – It was UK Mega Event day. We had a relatively easy day there (see North Wales Mega) – 6 finds plus 10 lab caches
- 12th August – We began our holiday to Chamonix by driving down to Reims (see From Home to Reims) – 4 finds
- 13th August – We drove down to Chamonix (see Run to the Hills) – 2 finds
- 14th August – We went up a very big hill (see Aiguille du Midi) – 2 finds
- 15th August – We spent the day studying geography – mainly the bits about glaciers and mountains ( see Ups and Downs ) – 6 finds
- 16th August – It all went a bit free-form but ended up being quite good (see Not Quite to Plan) – 3 finds
- 17th August – We made ourselves eligible for any challenge cache that requires three countries in a day (see Three Countries) – 9 finds
- 18th August – The weather was a bit depressing so we stayed in Chamonix town (see Chamonix Town) – 2 finds
- 19th August – We had a fairly quiet day exploring a high alpine valley in the sunshine (see Reserved Nature) – 1 finds
- 20th August – We began our trip home, and punctuated it with a stopover in Dijon (see Cutting the Mustard) – 6 finds
- 21st August – We drove from Dijon back home. We stopped in a couple of service stations to eat and grab a cache on the way (see Cutting the Mustard) – 2 finds
September (71 finds)
- 3rd September – We were in Cumbria for Kas to do a ridiculously long run. I grabbed a few caches while following her around the mountains ( see Grand Tour of Skiddaw ) – 7 finds
- 18th September – I went over to Poundon for a bit of a dash around (see Poundon Around) – 64 finds
October (114 finds)
- 16th October – I went over to Wrestlingworth to do a couple of fairly short series (see Finbarr Saunders) – 54 finds
- 23rd October – I was checking through my list of challenge caches signed but not eligible. Whilst doing so I discovered one I was now eligible for (High – On Tour Challenge 7) – 1 find
- 30th October – I took Izzy over to the west of Milton Keynes, where we completed a couple of local series. One of those involved a very dodgy field full of cows (see Thornborough) – 59 finds
November (17 finds)
- 3rd November – I grabbed a few random caches whilst on a business trip to Solihull – 3 finds
- 12th and 13th November – I made a few local finds in Milton Keynes – 3 finds
- Over the weekend of November 18th – 21st I went on a lads weekend away in Wales and found a few caches while we were there (see Welsh Weekend) – 11 finds
December (66 finds)
- 4th December – I made my final “epic” trip out for the year over near Keyston. Ami came with me (see Keyston Kaper) – 56 finds
- 17th December – My final caching trip of the year was a fairly disappointing jaunt around Milton Keynes. It reminded me of why I don’t really like urban caching – 10 finds
So that’s the end of the 2016 Caching Diary. 1,358 total finds was reasonable for what was ultimately quite a busy year personally.