If I get out early, before I start work, I (Dan Q) might be able to make it to the hashpoint by bike before
about 9am. Most of the fields round here have already been harvested and so nobody’s likely to object if I step into this one for a couple of minutes (it looks like there’s a promising
looking gate at N 51°43.2′, W 1°29.722′).
Expedition
I was out and about anwyay, dropping my kids off at rehearsals for a play they’re in later this week, so I figured it’d do no harm to swing by Cote – the settlement nearest the hashpoint – this morning. Cote turns out to be a delightful and quaint little
hamlet, and when I passed through everybody and their dog seemed to be out on a morning constitutional and I got a few odd looks from the locals who are, on account of their hamlet’s
location, probably unused to “through” traffic and so may well have been wondering who exactly I was visiting!
Round here most of the farms grow wheat, and it’s harvest season. I had to pull aside on one of the narrow roads that criss-cross this part of Oxfordshire to allow a combine harvester –
fully the width of the entire road! – to pass in the opposite direction. It was followed closely by a line of impatient drivers crawling along behind the enormous mechanical beast, and
I was glad to be going the other way! When I first saw that the hashpoint appeared to be in a field I was optimistic that it might be one that had been recently harvested, like all the
ones near my house, or else left fallow, and I’d be able to get close to the hashpoint without causing any disruption.
Unfortunately, the field with the hashpoint was very-much still growing, full of corn for harvesting later in the season, so my expedition ended abruptly at the gate. I took a sad-face
photo and attached a “The Internet Was Here” sign to the gate, for good measure (and perhaps as an explanation to the locals who looked at me curiously as I passed!), then continued my
journey home.
For GC9EXXX Church Micro 14129…Sutton, a geocache I recently set up, I wanted to use a “pole topper”
style cache. I’ve always felt slightly let down by finding yet another magnetic nano stuck inside a pipe, so I wanted to do something better. You can watch the video here or on YouTube, or scroll down for written instructions.
Sand down the lid and the inside of the pole topper so the glue adheres to it better.
Mix up your 2-part epoxy in the pole topper. Don’t use too much or it’ll overflow and block the lid from closing.
Put the lid into the pole topper and press down firmly and evenly to squeeze out any air bubbles.
While you’re waiting for the epoxy to set, file off the flange around the edge of the tub. It’s there to catch drips but
you’re not going to be storing food anyway! The lid is easier to take on and off with the flange filed away.
Finally, roughen the bottom edge of the tub with some sandpaper to make it easier to grip when opening and closing the
container.
Music:
For Lorilyn by Casey LaLonde, used under a CC-NC Creative Commons License.
We’ve missed out on or delayed a number of trips and holidays over the last year and a half for, you know, pandemic-related reasons. So this summer, in addition to our trip to Lichfield, we arranged a series of back-to-back expeditions.
1. Alton Towers
The first leg of our holiday saw us spend a long weekend at Alton Towers, staying over at one of their themed hotels in between days at the water park and theme park:
2. Darwin Forest
The second leg of our holiday took us to a log cabin in the Darwin Forest Country Park for a week:
3. Preston
Kicking off the second week of our holiday, we crossed the Pennines to Preston to hang out with my family (with the exception of JTA,
who had work to do back in Oxfordshire that he needed to return to):
4. Forest of Bowland
Ruth and I then left the kids with my mother and sisters for a few days to take an “anniversary mini-break” of glamping in the gorgeous Forest of Bowland:
The children, back in Preston, were apparently having a whale of a time:
6. Suddenly, A Ping
The plan from this point was simple: Ruth and I would return to Preston for a few days, hang out with my family some more, and eventually make a leisurely return to Oxfordshire. But it
wasn’t to be…
I got a “ping”. What that means is that my phone was in close proximity to somebody else’s phone on 29 August and that other person subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.
My risk from this contact is exceptionally low. There’s only one place that my phone was in close proximity to the phone of anybody else outside of my immediate family, that
day, and it’s when I left it in a locker at the swimming pool near our cabin in the Darwin Forest. Also, of course, I’d been double-jabbed for a month and a half and I’m more-cautious
than most about contact, distance, mask usage etc. But my family are, for their own (good) reasons, more-cautious still, so self-isolating at Preston didn’t look like a possibility for
us.
As soon as I got the notification we redirected to the nearest testing facility and both got swabs done. 8 days after possible exposure we ought to have a detectable viral
load, if we’ve been infected. But, of course, the tests take a day or so to process, so we still needed to do a socially-distanced pickup of the kids and all their stuff from Preston
and turn tail for Oxfordshire immediately, cutting our trip short.
The results would turn up negative, and subsequent tests would confirm that the “ping” was a false positive. And in an ironic twist, heading straight home actually put us
closer to an actual COVID case as Ruth’s brother Owen turned out to have contracted the bug at almost exactly the same time and had, while we’d been travelling down
the motorway, been working on isolating himself in an annex of the “North wing” of our house for the duration of his quarantine.
7. Ruth & JTA go to Berwick
Thanks to negative tests and quick action in quarantining Owen, Ruth and JTA were still able to undertake the next part of this three-week holiday period and take
their anniversary break (which technically should be later in the year, but who knows what the situation will be by then?) to Berwick-upon-Tweed. That’s their story to tell, if
they want to, but the kids and I had fun in their absence:
8. Reunited again
Finally, Ruth and JTA returned from their mini-break and we got to do a few things together as a family again before our extended holiday drew to a close:
9. Back to work?
Tomorrow I’m back at work, and after 23 days “off” I’m honestly not sure I remember what I do for a living any more. Something to do with the Internet, right? Maybe ecommerce?
I’m sure it’ll all come right back to me, at least by the time I’ve read through all the messages and notifications that doubtless await me (I’ve been especially good at the discipline,
this break, of not looking at work notifications while I’ve been on holiday; I’m pretty proud of myself.)
But looking back, it’s been a hell of a three weeks. After a year and a half of being pretty-well confined to one place, doing a “grand tour” of so many destinations as a family and
getting to do so many new and exciting things has made the break feel even longer than it was. It seems like it must have been months since I last had a Zoom meeting with a
work colleague!
For now, though, it’s time to try to get the old brain back into work mode and get back to making the Web a better place!
When I first placed this cache I failed to accommodate for how high the river might get during summer floods. I’d chained it to the bridge to help stop it from disappearing, but that
instead introduced a new problem: after a flood it’d be left hanging in a highly-visible spot and attract muggle vandalism. The net result is I’ve had to retire this cache.
Visited to check on this container and can confirm that it’s completely seized and unopenable. The end cap that used to provide it with cover (and a hiding place for a pencil) is gone,
too, and this (combined with the fact that I no longer live around the corner) feels like a sign that this one needs archiving.
Following a run of DNFs I drove over here to check on this cache but it is indeed missing. As this location is no longer in walking
distance of my home I’m retiring it to free up what is a pretty convenient hook for some other cacher!
One final visit to retrieve the container from this increasingly inaccessible multi. Braved copious nettle stings to get there and back the “short way”, then
began a quick tour of Kidlington to retrieve any surviving clue stages. Sad to see this one go, but the epic container will live on in a future cache, someday!
Nice easy find for fleeblewidget and I while on the way to pick up our kids from my mother’s house and take them home to Oxfordshire. A
beautiful day for an explore around the dunes but sadly we can’t stop, we’ve places to be! Nice to see the lake, though. TFTC.
Coming back down from our walk, this was fleeblewidget and I’s last cache of the morning. The shadow of the hill disrupted my GNSS signals and threw us off by a few metres, but fleeblewidget soon spotted the right hiding place and we had the cache in
hand. TFTC.
A very easy find (with spot-on coordinates fed good sky views to ensure a solid lock) for fleeblewidget and I late this morning, after a hot
hit satisfying ascent up the Big End. TFTC.
My partner fleeblewidget and I are celebrating 14 years together as a couple with a glamping holiday near Sawley and took the opportunity to
climb up Pendle Hill this morning. I’ve many fond memories of taking this route with my father, when he was alive, and it’s interesting to be able to see how, just on the timescales of
my own life, the shape of this hillside has changed owing to smaller landslides. Lower down, for example, human-caused erosion (picture attached) has damaged our destroyed paths I used
to take, and new fences encourage climbers onto alternative routes. We also observed evidence (picture attached) of an older landslide, with a cliff of relatively new earth exposed
where there clearly used to be a grassy/rocky slope.
Views were very good today and we could just about make out what we assume is the Ribble estuary in the distance from near the summit. A great and enjoyable expedition. Picture of the
two of us at the trig point attached. TFTC.
fleeblewidget and I were on the “high road” and so I had to scramble down to the GZ. The
coordinates and the hint both point to a very obvious specific place (pictured) but no cache in sight: strongly suspect this one might be missing.
My partner fleeblewidget and I are glamping up near Sawley to celebrate our 14th anniversary and came out today for a walk up Pendle Hill.
Cache container was in the third place we looked; a nice easy find! Log a little damp but usable. TFTC.
My partner fleeblewidget and I are staying at nearby Calder Farm to celebrate our anniversary and took a walk this afternoon to find this
cache. Only around 300m as the crow flies from the GZ we figured this would be a quick expedition, but there’s no convenient path down to
the riverside from where we are. Our first attempt at an approach took us to the North end of the footpath, but this seems to be through a garden centre/nursery that’s closed, and we
couldn’t confirm whether or not the public footpath was open “through” or despite this, so we doubled go past our accommodation and approached from the South instead, ultimately
resulting in a ~2km walk to and from the GZ!
Coordinates seemed off by about 5m based on my GPSr and phone, but the hint pointed us towards the obvious candidate and the cache was
easily visible (although a bit of a stretch to reach!). Log had been inserted deep into the tube rather than the lid of the container and we struggled to extract it but got there in the
end (we put it back in the lid for the benefit of the next cacher). TFTC.