Between the coordinates and the title we were very soon hunting in the right location, but it took the combination of my sharp eyes and my geobuddy Robin’s hardy fingers to extract this cache from its tight and thorny home. Good location, and a fabulous hide.

Thanks for sharing this great series with us; we may not have done the whole thing (and didn’t do ANY of it in the approved order) but we enjoyed it very much. TFTCes!

Suspected missing; no finds in most of a year and plenty of DNFs.

Suggesting that this is archived:

(a) definitely not there (no finds this year, as many DNFs this year as finds last year)
(b) CO appears to have not logged-in in over four years

Funny: I’ve manufactured a cache container similar to this once, too, but for a very-different (and distinctly more-urban) environment (GC54F7V): seems like a bit of a strange design for a rural setting! My geo-sense spotted the hiding place right away but Robin struggled for a bit with this unusual container: he was determined to get “inside” it in some other way than the correct way, e.g. by poking, swinging, bashing, or blowing. It’s my fault, really: some of the Challenge Robin puzzle boxes were pretty devious and involved exactly that kind of manipulation to get at their contents, yesterday.

Soon, I suggested the correct way to open the container and all was well. Great location; TFTC.

Again, we found ourselves reminded that we were doing this series backwards when we briefly puzzled over the title of this cache… before remembering that for others, taking the series in the expected order, they would be getting onto (rather than off, like us) the road at this point. We briefly overshot the GZ but Robin – his geo-sense really coming into its own now and flushed with success after his good showing at GC4HW6W – quickly spotted the “obvious” hiding place for this cache and retreived it.

Done heading East, we were glad to be able to turn to the North-West and start heading back to our accomodation, where snacks and a hot tub awaited.

Swiftly found, but we stared for longer than might be expected at the container before working out which bit of it we had to interact with in order to get access to the log. Embarassing, really. Sploshing away through the mud, we pressed on.

Robin’s first experience of a container like this one (combined with my GPSr, which for a little while couldn’t decide which side of the road we belonged on) slowed him down here: I found the cache quickly but let him find it for himself with as few clues as I could bare to provide. Log in spectacularly-good condition, but a little challenging to retreive without the preferred tool to-hand (I’d not brought out my usual geokit bag). TFTC.

Despite having used the facilities in the pub we’d just left, Robin had needed to stop and relieve himself no less than twice during this stretch of the journey: somehow the three pints he’d enjoyed at The Packet had gone right through him. Meanwhile, I powered ahead for this, another quick find.

Despite the warnings in the cache description, we found the path here to be less wet than we had in the vicinity of GC1EA55, earlier: now that had gotten swampy underfoot!

Another nice quick find for Robin and I. This was his first ever real geocaching expedition, and I think I’ve got him hooked: and he’s already beginning to develop a good sense of where to start looking for a cache, based on a survey of the GZ.

The “ghost pub” Robin and I had sought (see my log on GC4HW7M) had turned out to be The Packet, not “The Track” as Robin has mis-remembered during his Challenge Robin adventure yesterday. After a delightful couple of pints and a roast beef lunch, we plodded on to this cache. We skipped HR9 and HR8 (although we almost didn’t, thanks to a wrong turn!) and found this one instantly: my geo-sense tingled at just the right moment.

Now we were on the way home, working our way up a damp path to the North once more.

Robin and I spent far too long examining the exact place where we’d (correctly) figured the cache to be before, in frustration, examining the recent log entries. One encouraged us to trust the coordinates, and these seemed pretty solid, so we redoubled our efforts and soon Robin had the cache in his hand: not what I was expecting at all from the description nor hint! Good hiding place. TFTC.

Skipping HR18 through HR11, we powered on down Packet Lane. Robin had come up this way yesterday – in the opposite direction – while navigating a (deliberately cryptic) map as part of the final leg of his Challenge Robin adventure, and insisted that there’d been a pub down here somewhere where he was suggesting that we stop for a pint and, perhaps, lunch. I was skeptical: I’d been monitoring his progress using The Gadget, a remote GPS-tracker I’d kitted him out with for his adventure, and from the route it’d looked like he’d taken from the (admittedly shonky) data I’d collected, I couldn’t see a pub that matched his description: he claimed it was called “The Track”, but that definitely didn’t fit.

As we made our way to this cache I continued to mock him for having found a “ghost pub” during his adventure. This was an easy find, so we signed the log and continued on our way to find this “ghost pub” (perhaps, Robin joked, they’d have a great selection of spirits…).

Following yesterday’s Challenge Robin adventure during which I sent my partner’s brother on an extended treasure trail covering London and Penzance, we decided to have a more-relaxed day today with a gentle hike to a few geocaches (and with a pub lunch in the middle).

We didn’t have any intention of hunting for this cache, but as we passed from the remaining Baloo series to the HR caches my GPSr pinged to let me know about the proximity of this one. We were just starting to look at the clue and working out whether we could have made an attempt to solve it “in the field” when the CO happened to pass by and told us that we couldn’t: this was a puzzle to tackle back indoors. (Having come home and looked more-closely at it, I disagree: I could have gotten what I suspect is all the information I need to solve it from in the field, but most ‘cachers probably don’t carry the necessary equipment with them when they’re out and about so CO’s guidance probably still stands.) Nonetheless, we carried on with our walk and it’s only as I write this, later, that I take a cursory look at what it’d have taken to try my luck while out-and-about.

Robin and I aren’t around for much longer on this holiday, so there might not be the opportunity to solve and find this one this time around, but it’ll make the list for if I come back.

Not ones to be told which way to walk, we took on the HRx series only partially. And in reverse order. This mostly proved okay, except when having to remember to translate hints that said things like “right” or “left” in them by remembering that we “should” have been coming from the other direction. This first cache in our run of the series (our fourth of the day) was a quick and easy find.