Commons Caching

I'd planned a trip down the A34 to a caching series in Wiltshire, but the day dawned grey and mizzly so I decided to give it a miss. Instead I slept in (nothing new there!), and awoke to discover a new Church Micro published; a Church I'd visited only a few days ago. With that cache in the bag I moved on for a short afternoon's stroll around Kempsey Common, which proved to be very enjoyable after I'd overcome my disappointment at not finding the first in the series.

Shaking it all about

What a difference a day makes. The sun is shining, the skies are blue, and all is well with the world. I headed to a new series near Cambridge, the Hauxton Hokey Cokey. A flat, easy walk, great paths, no livestock problems, and caches set to be easy to find - and there was a Church Micro to pick up along the way as well.

Church Micro Hauxton

There were apparently a number of cachers in the area for the weekend attending an event, but I only came across two on the trail, Aldeneywomble and Dora Explorer. They were walking it the 'right' way round, whereas I as usual was traversing it in a contrariwise fashion.

Look both ways

I whizzed - well, ambled - around the 6.6 mile circuit in 3hrs25, then went off to grab a few drivebys - including the worth-visiting Sewer Croc, especially if you have little ones - before a walk up to the Obelix, an interesting memorial.

The Obelisk

Just time to pick up a puzzle cache before darkness fell. This gave me particular pleasure, as its geochecker showed there were just 5 correct answers out of 270 attempts - although the solution is, of course, trivial once you know how :)

A game within a game

Today is Annual Church Micro Day, celebrating the publication of the first Church Micro in 2007. This series, the largest themed series known to the geocaching world, is truly a game within a game. I suspect the dedicated statistics page helps greatly with this; whilst the game is never supposed to be 'About the numbers', there is something about a league table that seems to gee people up to greater lengths. Many cachers will go seriously out of their way to bag a Church Micro.

Nottinghamshire Church Micros

I'd planned a route to take in upwards of 40 Church Micros today. In the end, I managed to visit 26 of them (they seemed much closer together on the map..), and actually found 23. And drove 170 miles.. - that's the penalty you pay for clearing out your local area of Church Micros at every opportunity. Fortunately more and more cachers are now placing them, hence the seemingly exponential rise in numbers in the last 18 months.

On last year's Church Micro day I found 17, so today was an improvement - and I managed to squeeze in a trigpoint as well.