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Well this is going to be an interesting day. I am after quite a few Challenge Caches today including some that are date critical.😀 However they are down near Guildford in Surrey so I have planned a busy day. Here’s what happened.
I was heading to Godalming and then Guildford but I started off in Compton. As dawn broke, I was starting the caching day with the CM ~ Compton multi. This was quickly followed by another multi but this one was from the Post Code series. There was a VS multi here but it was reported as missing so I made do with the nearby Guiding Light trad.
Down the road apiece was the first of a series of challenges that I was after. This was Collecting Counties Challenge - Wales. All you have to do is find a cache in each Welsh county. However, I don’t qualify yet but hope to during my South Wales trip in April.😀
I did qualify for the 3/2 CCC - Unknown 10 though. Just find an Unknown in ten different British counties so with 21, I was ok. I now set off for Godalming, a place that I have never visited. However I first heard of it in 1966 as the Secretary of the John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers fan club lived there. I never saw the Bluesbreakers with Eric in the band but that first night with Peter Green at Poplar Town Hall was literally a turning point in my life .... as was geocaching.🤔
I paid two quid for two hours parking and immediately went to the nearest cache, the CM ...Godalming ~ St Edmund multi. The hint was a bit awry here but the cache was eventually found. I walked down into town and added the FP multi to the list.
I started on the Godalming Stroll AdLab series. What an interesting place this small town is but to give you anymore info would spoil the series for you.😀 As I wandered around the town becoming absorbed in its history, I found the time to collect a CM trad at St Peter’s & St Paul, The Pepper Pot virtual and the LB - Boarden Bridge multi before having breakfast in a Cafe Nero. I worked out the coords to the AdLab Bonus as I finished my sausage bap and then set off for an easy find.
I will share one golden nugget of information with you though and that is the memorial shown in the photo. It was become jaded over the years and is difficult to read even close up but it is in memory of John George Phillips, a native of Godalming who died at his post sending distress messages from the Titanic in April 1912.
With my parking time down into minutes, I went back to the car and set off for Peasmarsh for the main event of the day, I was after the 5/2.5 8-) The Lesser Date Challenge. All you have to do is find seven mystery caches covering Monday to Sunday on a particular day of the month. However you cannot use challenge, bonus, night caches, just straight puzzles. Oh, and you have to find the cache on that particular day.🥴 Oh, and there isn’t a checker.🤯
Oh, and with the recent stupid changes to the official Groundspeak search facility I don’t know how anyone would now be able to check that they qualify.🤬🤬
Luckily I had spent a lot of time building up a spread sheet before the changes so I knew that I had a qualification for the 16th and today’s the day.😀 Luckily I had a quick find of this one.
It was a short drive over to Shalford but it took me a long time to locate the 1.5/3 Shalford book exchange trad. It was worth the hint though as it was another Large cache for the list. I found the ST trad and another at Lemon Bridge. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any info to solve the Shalford Mill mystery but you can’t win them all.🤔
I was hoping for success at the 5/1.5 366 Challenge {-} though. Just find 366 caches (in total) on a particular day of the month. I qualified on many days including the 16th which was handy.😀 I carried on towards Littleton and stopped off for the 5/1.5 CCC - England. This should be a 10/1.5 as it is no mean feat to get a cache from every English county.
I got the last one on the day before the Lincoln Mega last year. I drove from Vange to just inside the Greater Manchester border to get some caches and then worked my way back through Derbyshire, South Yorks and Notts into Lincolnshire.🤔
Whilst I was in Littleton, I collected the CM multi and then headed over to the remainder of the CCC series. I found the 3.5/2.5 CCC - Multi 25 and then the 3.5/2.5 - CM 25. Usual rules, a multi in 25 British counties etc. I picked up two trads on the way including the 2.5/2 Pilgrims Paradise!
The next one on my list was the virtual History Cache : 1497 on the hills overlooking Guildford. I had to park about a mile away and traipse up to the memorial and then back. I didn’t really have to visit the site as I had already researched the relationship between Lord Daubeney and the Cornish rebels but needs must.😀
Time was marching on and I still had a couple of important caches to collect. I drove west towards Flexford for the 3/2 Church Micro K Challenge. The requirement is to find enough CMs in a week to exactly one thousand or multiples thereof. I have taken claim to the 36K spot having found the following.
GC7ZXGN - CM8301... Waltham Chase - 25/5/21
GC6C221 - CM9168... Shedfield - 25/5/21
GC8JNGQ - CM3744... Waresley - 26/5/21
GC8XJXE - CM1163... Murston ~ All Saints Old - 30/5/21
GC91GZV - CM13624... Minster-on-Sea - 30/5/21
So just one more cache to find.🤔 You will have noticed that I have been trying to gather eight icons in eight counties for a challenge cache and I need one more in Surrey to qualify. So a Letterbox would be very handy but they are very thin on the ground in this particular county. I have my eye on A challege of your own in Jacob’s Well. It’s a 1.5/1.5 but I don’t care.😀 By the way, challege is not a spelling mistake, that’s how it’s presented.🥴
So the Letterbox was soon found and I was able to claim the 5/1 3rd Iconic County CC which I had already signed in anticipation down in Dartford.😀
1 Letterbox 2 Virtual 5 AdLab 6 Multi 7 Traditional 9 Mystery
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