I’ve been gathering at least 150 caches a month since February for a challenge cache in Kent. I have the numbers for October so I decided to have a Dengie Day especially as the weather forecast predicted a fine day.

As usual I’m over in Kent early doors for a couple of hours to find some more caches. The clocks have altered overnight so I have an extra hour of daylight, which is nice.😀 I’m going to start off in Crayford and then work my way over to Hall Place and Gardens for a series of “On Tour” Challenge caches. I found the mystery Coalpost #214 and the trad Propellant on the way over here. I parked up in the free car park to have a go at this series of mystery caches. I qualified for all but one and that’s Top Trump #8 . For this I’d have to find three different cache types in the USA. I only have only found two types of cache - trad and virtual in NYC and it’s unlikely that I will go back there. If only I’d known about this challenge before I visited the States.🙁 I wandered round the fields collecting caches that I’d qualified for from the “On Tour” series. it’s just occurred to me, it’s VangeRover On Tour doing “On Tour.” 🤔 It was starting to pour with rain and I’d found Hall Place : River View and Hall Place Gardens but I had to leave the park to look for more. I left the car in the car park and followed the GPSr over to the Eighty Oak Woods multi. I was relying on that as this was all new territory for me.🤔 I got to the search area and spotted the info source and quickly worked out the coords for the final stage for a quick find. Now it was time for home. 1 Multi, 2 Trad, 2 Letterbox, 8 Mystery #8220

I needed a cache today and I had noticed that George’s Gorge and Paula’s Passion had recently been published near Kent Hill Road in Benfleet recently. I was very familiar with this neck of the woods as my daughters had gone to one of the nearby schools, my wife had been a teaching assistant there and I had been a school governor there too. So I knew my way around. I parked not far from the cache and very quickly spotted it. However seeing is not the only thing as the magnet was one of the strongest that I’ve come across whilst geocaching.🤔 Once I’d got the cache open, I quickly carried out the paper work. For Paula’s Passion,I parked not far from the start of the footpath to the search are. I had been down here many times before and it would be a good place for a series.🤔 The cache was very well tucked away but I soon had it in hand. 2 Traditional #8207

My plan for today was to visit the Manningtree and Mistley area again to try to pick up some more caches in this neck of the woods.

I’d come over to Meopham for a couple of hours to find a few more caches here. I usually came down into Kent early morning on either Saturday or Sunday to do part or all of a series and today I had my eyes on this “It’s All Greek To Me” series. I have visited Greece many times and have a smattering of the language so I was not deterred by anything Greek.😀 I parked up in the High Street as dawn broke and set off on my mission. It was cool but dry which help me move quickly.😀 I didn’t do the series in any order, I just worked out a decent route and got on with it. I had worked out four mysteries before, some written Greek including numbers and text. I found 2 : Beta, 3 : Gamma, 33 : Zenodutus, 5 : Epsilon, 8 : Theta, 9 : Iota, 10 : Kappa, 12 : Mu, 14 : Ksi, 15 : Omicron and 16 : Pi. I only failed at 11 : Lambda which was galling as it had been found the day before.☹️ Still it gives me a chance to come back this way.😀 1 Letterbox, 4 Mystery, 6 Traditional #8170

It was time to come over to Colchester for a day’s caching so I prepared my list which included quite a few multis, CMs and some that had eluded me in the past. I was planning to park up near the Balkerne Gate car park and take it from there. However there still a few on the western part of town that I wanted to visit first. Here’s how the day went. I found four trads, a multi and one of the Foxy’s Blocks mysteries on the way into town, parking up in the Balkerne Gate car park. I spent almost four hours hunting for caches, working my way up to East Hill via the Town Station. Down East Hill. I found the St George’s CM and the excellent Writing On The Wall multis before walking along the river towards the Rock of Cages series. On the way, I collected a number of trads and multis including the Eastern Command Line. I saw loads of interesting stuff including many memorials to WW1 and WW2 air raid victims around the town as I’d never seen these anywhere before. I walked back into town by a different route, finding the SideTracked in Hythe plus the nearby supermarket trad and then after the long walk up East Hill back to the centre, the Earthcache based on the Ammonites (see the photograph) in the church wall at St Martin’s and then a couple of trad caches. I had finished my targets in the town centre and after picking up the car, drove over to Greenstead for the church micro. I finished the day with some of the recently published trad caches by DaveonTour. 1 Earthcache 1 Mystery 7 Mult 18 Traditional #8159

Just to break up the monotony of life we came over to Maldon for a couple of hours today. My wife hadn’t been to the Barge Tea rooms on the Resourceful, the scene of one of my better event venues last year. Just too late for the breakfast bap, I had to make do with a chunkie sandwich. My, was that chunky bread. 😀 After a short walk along the High Street to the car park in Butt Lane, it was was off for the short drive done to Nathan’s lair for shopping. I took the opportunity afterwards to take the quick walk up to this CM for a quick find of a well placed cache here. 1 Traditional #8132

After a not “too heavy“ night in the hotel, I got up early and went for a walk to a nearby cache keen to tick Cheshire off my geocaching map of England.

We are on a coach trip from VangeRover up to the Lake District via the Derbyshire Dales and returning on Sunday via Chester. I know that we are staying in Farnworth near Runcorn which is in Cheshire which will be a new county for me. If that fails, Chester is definitely in Cheshire.😀 I found a couple of trads in the Dales yesterday and today we were off to the Haverthwaite - Lakeside Steam Railway and then catching the boat up to Bowness-on-Windermere. However the weather was atrocious and the rain was chucking it down. I found the REALLY SideTracked at Haverthwaite and partly dried off on the train and boat trip up to Bowness. I had one chance of a cache here and chose SWIFT VISIT, a 3.5/1.5 trad in the centre of town. It was hidden in the middle of a bush. Normally it would been so busy here but everyone apart from me was hiding from the deluge. Only mad dogs and geocachers go out in the pouring of rain.😀 All we had to do now is get back through the flooded roads back to the hotel. 🤔 2 Traditional #8126

We are on a coach trip from VangeRover up to the Lake District via the Derbyshire Dales and returning on Sunday via Chester. I know that we are staying on the outskirts of Widnes which is in Cheshire which will be a new county for me. If that fails, Chester is definitely in Cheshire.😀 As the weather was rather poor, we didn’t stop in Matlock as planned but spent an hour at the Masson Mill on the outskirts of Matlock Bath so we could shelter from the elements. I took the opportunity to find the 2/3.5 DVMHS : Masson Mill trad up the bank across the road. The climb up the slippery track was well worth its 3.5T.🙁 Check out the photograph.🤔 We left the mill and set off up to Bakewell. We had spent part of our honeymoon here thirty years ago so visited a couple of places we knew before setting back for the coach. Luckily the well placed Lemon Drizzle~Bakewell Puddings, in its splendid container, was on the route to the coach park.😀 2 Traditional #8124