This checkin to GC93M2N Segsbury Fort reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A challenging but worthwhile find during a walk along and around the Ridgeway.
My initial attempt to collect the coordinates was way off because I misinterpreted some of the instructions and it yielded a point almost 2km away! My second attempt looked better, giving a likely-looking spot… but the checksum was out by one!
I triple-checked all the sources and was still out! I was most-confident in my calculated latitude, so I permuted all possible one-point longitude changes that would satisfy the checksum. This yielded two candidates: one a tenth of a minute out from my original calculation, and one a thousandth of a minute out.
The one that was a tenth of a minute out from my calculation “felt wrong”, being way off the path, so I merely glanced its way as I walked past to the other. The one that was a thousandth of a minute – which equates to only around a metre! – looked better, and sure enough when I got there I found a multitude of likely hiding spots.
The hide itself was sneaky too: I had to go further from the path than I expected in order to “look back” and spot the cache – very tricky in the thickening undergrowth! But find it I did, and duly signed the log before returning it to its snug little spot.
TFTC! FP awarded for the adventure.
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