6000 and counting....

Today will be another milestone as I'll reach the grand total of six thousand caches found. The plan is to start in Weeley and work myself down into St Oysth, then out to Point Clear. After that, should come Jaywick!🙁 Not the nicest place in the county but usually the place to come in the Winter if you want to see Snow Buntings.

So an early start, kicking off with the Weeley VS, a DNF at Ducks Delight and back on track, literally, with the SideTracked down the road.😀 This was followed by a Stamped, two DNFs and a little series of three trads celebrating Power Sources on the way into St. Osyth village.

Now I really like this village and am always pleased to spend time here. Luckily it has a good selection of caches. I started at the trad, Welcome Again To St. Osyth, replacing the full log before I left and then moved on to two multis, both worthy of a fave. These were The Cage, a medieval gaol last used in 1905 and then the CM at the fine church. I spent a while finding out the answers but struck lucky with an important one. I had a good walk around the town trying to get an intro to a path to GZ but I did find a fine E2R wall box at the now closed Post Office, before find the cache.

I next tried the St. Osyth Priory Cache Mystery and found that the GZ was way back down the track that I'd taken for the CM so I had to retrace my steps.🙁 Out at GZ, I looked at the hint and was mystified by GIYF! A quick cry for help on the Essex cachers FB came up with the answer "Google Is Your Friend." It did say in the description that some of the answers could be googled. Anyway by the time the answer arrived, I'd found the well hidden cache.

Next cache on the list was the nearby Stumped. I parked nearby and was then standing at GZ sizing up where the cache could be, when a tractor/hedge-trimmer driver pulled up near me for his lunch. I'm not normally perturbed by an audience but was having no luck finding the nano. Curiosity got the better of the tractor driver, who came over to check what I was doing!🤔 So I explained what geocaching was all about and told him what I was looking for. He looked oddly at me, then bent down, came up with the cache and said "Is this what you are looking for?" Doh!😤 To round things off, I filled in the log noting that Richard had found the cache and we watched the green dot turn smiley! Hopefully a convert.😎

I drove out to Point Clear, picking up one of the trads in the Stamp series and then spent some time looking around the exterior of the Martello Tower, one of a series of defences in Essex built to deter Napoleon at the end of the 17th century. Whilst I was there I picked up,the trad hiding on the ironwork. I then drove back to St. Osyth to pick the final cache, Welcome to St. Osyth.

I was off to Jaywick now but dropped off on the way for a 4/2.5 trad called Pump's Hill Windmills. I had a DNF here Even though I had a piece of inside info.☹️ I was looking for a piece of false grass amongst 3' high nettles and real grass! I gave it 30 mins and slunk off defeated.

In Jaywick, I found three trads of the Red Gates series including the milestone 6K cache Way To Go, before setting off on the long trek along the sea wall for the trad at Jaywick Martello Tower and failing a further 800 yards on at Through The Barricades trad.🙁 It was a gloomy walk all that way back to the car knowing that I'd have to return here in the future.

The final cache of the day was Rush Green Ground next to the stadium home of FC Clacton. I saw them play a pre season friendly against Southend United just over a decade ago. I remember it being a friendly little club with a fine clubhouse. 🍻

Thinking back, it was a fine day out with 20 finds and five didn't finds plus clocking up cache #6000.👏

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