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Brian Hyland, remember him? Probably not but you'll have heard his most famous song, which was recorded when he was 16, propelling him to the top of the Billboard charts in 1960! That dirge of a pop song, Itsy Witsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini which I last heard being murdered by an Eastern European cabaret duo on a Mediterranean cruise last month, is my least favourite song of all time!😡 And I'm reminded of all this because my plan is to visit Hylands Park near Widford, Chelmsford this morning for the newly published series of caches. 🙁
The park opens at 0730 and I drop Grace off at the station at 0630 so I have time to fill. There's only one unfound cache on the way and that's near Lake Meadows in Billericay. Luckily parking is free until 0800 around there so I park up and walk down the footpath to Nano near to Nanna's. This was a quick find of a magnetic nano.
I then drove up to Brian's park to look for seven trads in a series which has received some good reports. The first cache, Old Kitchen Garden, was a quickish find. However I would have like to have a glimpse of the kitchen garden to the big house, hopefully someone can restore it to its former glory.
Next up was The Old Drive Way, another quick find, then Fallen Policemen where I liberated a TB, with the final one in this section From Noise To Peace. All these caches were quick finds of well hidden caches.
I was looking forward to the next one, Wellies Needed (sometime) which had more DNFs than finds. The hint seemed to be a little misleading but I had come prepared with a pair of Wellington boots. Once at GZ, the brook was low in water so the boots were a waste of time. The first part of the hint was apparent but the second part wasn't obvious. I had a good look all over where I thought the cache would be but the gps was jumping around like a crackerjack. I gave it 20 mins and set off for the next one.
For the second time in two days, I contacted Caz with a plea for help. Apparently I'd been looking in the right place so after I found the South Woods Gate cache, I went straight back to Wellies. I had another 20 mins going over and over the same ground. I knew that if it had fallen, it would be in the brook so didn't bother there Even though I had the wellies. In the end I had to call it a day and move on to the final cache of the day.
It was a brisk walk of the 500m to Confusing The Squirrels which was at the edge of woods covered in nettles around a couple of big oaks. True to form, I picked the wrong oak to start with so got stung unnecessarily. However once I got on track, I had a quick find of the squirrel confuser. 🐿
So another seven caches under my belt and its now 234/250. I've only got Thursday left this week to cache and I'm out all day.😀 Fingers crossed here that by the end of the month that I'll qualify for JJ500.😎