This checkin to GLDXE83R Sandford Lock reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
After lunch in the pub on the other side, came over to hunt for this. Search was expedited by another geocacher walking by and saying “you’re getting warm…”
Nice cache. Thanks!
This checkin to GC4KTD0 Beaumont Palace reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Muggles kept wandering past and hampering my search (which was already slowed down by the fact that I didn’t “get” the hint; ah well!). Ran out of time on my lunchbreak: I’ll have to come back another time.
This checkin to GC24ZNF Oxford United FC reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
What a shame for this, one of the best caches in Oxford, to disappear. CotswoldOx: if you’re not planning on replacing it, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if I did so instead? Drop me a message.
This checkin to GC4H3P7 Alleyways of Oxford - Brasenose Lane reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Hunted as well as I was willing to, without putting my hands into anything particularly disgusting in the improvised toilet that is this GZ. :-( No luck, though: perhaps I’m not looking in the right place, or perhaps it’s somewhere that I wasn’t happy to put my fingers…
This checkin to GLDWG38D Dogfort v Catfort - Dogfort Scientist reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Let battle commence! My first Dogfort vs. Catfort find, but hopefully not my last.
Great location, but took me a while to get the cache out of it’s hiding place – perhaps I’ve not got the dexterity that I used to have!
This checkin to GLDWG1F9 Alleyways of Oxford - St Helen's Passage reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Basically next door to where I work, so stepped out for a quick lunchtime expedition. Easy enough find, but some stealth was required: muggles everywhere!
This checkin to GC3VJAT Route Canal - Dukes Cut reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My last hunt of the day, as it started to get dark and my GPSr’s battery finally died and it made a sad noise and fell asleep. The hint only told me what I already knew: my signal had been spot on! But that didn’t help me find the cache. I wondered if it might have been too high for me to see, or reach, so I climbed a tree (haven’t done that in a while!) and looked down at where I suspected it might be, but no luck. Searched a lot of places, but eventually had to give up.
Wonderful location, though: I’ll certainly be coming back for another hunt.
This checkin to GC4CFE3 Route Canal - Court View reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Battery was starting to get low on my phone, which I was using as my GPS and which I’d forgotten to properly charge before I left the office this afternoon, so I didn’t hunt for long… but I wonder if it might be missing, because that’s a few of us now that haven’t been able to spot it…
This checkin to GC3XVHG Route Canal - Plough View reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A narrowboater had moored nearby and struck up a conversation with me as I parked my bike and sat on the bench near this cache. It’s a shame he was so friendly, because it gave me no opportunity to surreptitiously reach for the cache!
This checkin to GCN69F Never at Sea - Grog reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Took a diversion on my way home from work to try to get this and some of the Route Canal series. Unfortunately I failed at this, my first cache of the day, when I found that the location of the cache has somewhat turned into a building site – a bustle of workmen coming and going and where I THINK the cache is made inaccessible by a pile of construction materials. Shall try again another time.
This checkin to GLDTXPFT Route Canal - End of the Road reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
It’s been over a year since I’ve done a “serious” caching expedition, and the clue threw me for a while as I tried to dredge up an old memory of what it meant. Once I’d done that, it was easy… although I did have a moment of panic when I dropped the lid of the cache and (between batches of passing joggers) hunted for it on the floor, only to later discover that it had landed on my bike pannier rack.
This checkin to GLDTXPXH Route Canal - Wolvercote Lock reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A quick and easy find as I cycled home to Kidlington up the Oxford canal.
Battery was getting really low now, so I decided that if I was only going to be able to manage one more cache between here and home, it ought to be a good one. GC3VJAT (“Duke’s Cut”) looked exciting, so I popped this cache back in its spot and sped off to the North.
This checkin to GLDTXP8T Route Canal - Oxford End reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Had to stretch to reach it! Nice cache.
Saw a rabbit skull while hunting in the wrong place.
This checkin to GLDT2A0Y Wreck this Logbook* reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Took my co-workers lizrosemccarthy and kateevery out on their first ever geocaching expedition, and this was their first ever find: what a great first-cache for anybody. Scrawled in the log, along with other vandalism which I’ll leave the others to describe. TFTC!
This checkin to geohash 2014-02-19 51 -0 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
The edge of a field, south of Buckingham.
To commemorate the second anniversary of the death of my father – a keen hiker and cyclist, who was killed during a hiking accident while training for a trek to the North Pole – I thought the best thing to do would be to strike out somewhere random. And where could be more random than a geohash? This was also my first ever geohashing expedition, although I’d been meaning to do it for a long, long while. And so began the Peter Huntley Memorial Geohashing Expedition!
I cycled from Kidlington, near Oxford (in the next graticule over) via National Cycle Network Route 51, through Bicester and towards Milton Keynes. Early on, I had to ford a river which had broken its banks and flooded the cyclepath (and even saw a minnow swimming across the cycle lane – quite surreal!). Later, I had a minor whoopsie when I stayed on the cycle route too long and ended up in Steeple Claydon, on the wrong side of the Padbury Brook valley, but soon corrected it. I’d anticipated having to hop a fence to get to the hashpoint, but it turned out that the field – which had been left to fallow – didn’t have a fence, and I only needed to walk about thirty paces into it in order to reach the hashpoint.
In memory of my dad, I pulled out a drawing of him and drank a bottle of Guinness (his preferred drink after a long day’s cycle), and began to head back. But disaster struck! Somehow, raptors must have gotten to my bike tyre while I wasn’t paying attention, because it was completely slashed. Being that I was now at the furthest point from home in my planned journey, I pushed it to the nearby village of Hillesden in the hope of finding a shop that might sell me sufficient supplies to repair the puncture, but was without luck. I was now faced with a choice: I could continue pushing it home, and try to get to Bicester (a little over three hours walk away) before the bike shop there shut, or I could turn and walk the wrong way (away from home) towards Buckingham (only about an hour’s walk away), and hope that I’d be able to find supplies there.
I headed for Buckingham, but the students I spoke to when I passed the University campus suggested that there wasn’t a bike shop in town, but suggested a hardware store that might sell a bike pump (I’d since found a patch kit at a corner shop, although it was of course useless without a pump). But while looking for the hardware store, I discovered quite by accident Solstice Cycles, a wonderful little bike shop right in the heart of Buckingham (at the time, Google Maps on my phone had been completely unable to find me a bike shop at all). The man there switched out my inner tube in a jiffy (he agreed that it could well have been a raptor attack that had damaged it), and set me on my way.
Unwilling to add further to my diversion, I took a more-direct route back to Bicester, straight down the A4421, and I’m sure I must have agitated the motorists who weren’t used to seeing cyclists on such a major road. In Bicester, I ate the remains of my packed lunch before getting back onto the cyclepath home.
Total distance travelled: 57.75 miles; mostly cycled, but more than I’d have liked on foot. And a spectacular first geohash.
Wish you could’ve been there, dad.