CITO

The CITO has proved to be a very elusive cache for me. They are very few and far between and usually some distance away from me. I only have three of the blighters and they have all been in Essex. It would be very useful to attend one in a different county as this would help me with an Icon County challenge that I have my eye on. Also, if I found just one more, I would qualify for a challenge cache down in Surrey that I have already signed. 😀

I was sort of planning a visit to Suffolk as I needed a Wherigo from the county, when I noted that there was a CITO organised in Lowestoft. Now normally I wouldn’t have given it a second look but it would certainly clear a logjam for me.

So the plan for today was to hit Ipswich early to do the CM Ipswich- St Nicholas wherigo and then poodle my way up to Lowestoft for the CITO which started at 1300. I arrived in town at the “crack of sparrows” and went straight to the Wherigo but it wouldn’t work so I plodded around doing the Historic Buildings of Ipswich AdLab series. I only passed one other cache which was the 2.5/1.5 trad Reflections of the Old in the New. It was a 2.5 as it was in a high muggle area which wasn’t a problem this early.

This brought me close to the start of the Wherigo and amazingly, I was able to proceed even though I was in exactly the same place last time.🤔 I followed the route and was rewarded with the coords for the final stage. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t find the cache. I did contact the CO with a picture of the final area and I was in the right area so will watch developments.

I was now heading out of town via the 3/2 Cubical Challenge which just happened to be on the way. I had to walk through a field of maize to get to the well placed cache. The mention of maize always reminds me of an incident regarding polenta in a mountain hut in the Italian Dolomites. However that’s for another time.🤔

The plan was to go into East Suffolk for some CMs but the first two were MIA but I had more luck with at St Michael and All Saints in Tunstall. I spotted a roadside tea bar that provided breakfast before heading off for the CM in Snape.

Next up was the RST trad in Blythburg and then I spent sometime in and out of the church trying to work out the multi. It took some time but I got there in the end. I had enough time to drive up to Lowestoft and parked up in the road just down from the meeting place.

I had solved the jigsaw for the Geo Puzzle previously and this was a short walk away so I had to give it a try. Whilst I was hunting out the cache observed by a local wino, I was approached by a couple who identified themselves as PatandRoch who were after the cache too.😃

We walked up to the CITO meeting place and reported in. I was paired up with gimmealook, a local cacher, and we walked south along the beach for a couple of hours picking up litter armed with barbecue tongs supplied by the host.

It had occurred to me that GC8NEAT could be possible as this was a litter pick. All I needed was a photograph of me “on the job” and that was taken for me by gimmealook. I sent the photo in and was pleased to be able to qualify for the Let’s improve the outdoors - Locationless Cache.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, there was a bonus attached to attending the CITO. I was now qualified for The Well Rounded Cacher Challenge - Gold, a 4/2.5 mystery so it would be silly not to claim it, wouldn’t it.🤔

1 CITO 1 Locationless 1 Multi 3 Mystery 5 AdLab 5 Traditional

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