A New Beginning
A strange title for a post, I know, but new beginnings is exactly where I’m at. I won’t dwell long on why, but essentially I’m splitting up from my wife after a very long time. While I find my feet I am staying up with my dad in Measham. The longer-term plan might well be to settle in the East Midlands permanently, but time will tell.
Back at the plot, “new beginnings” here because it’s my first trip out for a bit of caching since I moved up here. It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the area. If I was, I wouldn’t have moved here. But no. I’m very familiar with the area, having been visiting my parents up here for well over 30 years. It’s just new to live here rather than to visit.
As I write this post, on New Year’s Eve, I’m procrastinating about all the things I need to do, such as re-register my address with everyone, get a new driving license, changing billing addresses, find a new doctor, find a new dentist, and so on. Lots of things that I can’t be bothered with over the Christmas period. They can wait. Anyway, I’ve been knee-deep in plastic boxes for several days.
A New Area to Cache In
An upside to moving (and I need all the upsides I can get) is that I’m in a totally new caching area. I have access to huge quantities of caches now within a few miles of home. I don’t have to travel for half a day to get a good day out. Well, at least not for a couple of years, anyway.
So in the spirit of exploration and generally getting on with stuff, I decided an afternoon out caching would be in order.
Breedon
First up was a trip to Breedon. I won’t bore you with the local history and geography – you can read it on Wikipedia if you want. But the most marked feature of the village is a massive limestone hill, with a church on top. It had several other things up there too – an Iron Age hill fort and a priory for instance – but the church stands out. That limestone hill has been significantly quarried away on the south-east side. There’s been a quarry there as long as I can remember. Somehow, they have yet to undercut the bit with the church on. I suspect they never will.
Back at the plot though, there’s a set of adventure labs based solely on the top of the hill, and another covering the broader village. On top of that, I’d solved a couple of puzzles nearby and there’s a virtual on the top of the hill too. That makes enough for a visit.
The top of the hill was rather windy, and as a result, rather cold. I don’t know what I expected, but the weather was better than the forecast, so that was good. It was supposed to be raining all day, but it held off all the time I was out. It was definitely “big coat” weather. And hat. And gloves.
Motoring
From Breedon I headed east a little bit to the edge of the Donington Park Circuit, where there was an “outlier” for that second set of ad labs. There’s an even further out one on the other side of East Midlands Airport, but I did that one ages ago, so it doesn’t count.
Anyway, I drove back and forth past the site of a “Really Sidetracked” but ultimately I decided I didn’t like any of the possible places to leave my car. After the motor racing circuit I also popped into Wilson for a Village Sign cache, but it wasn’t there. If only I’d checked the logs beforehand.
Not Australia
I’d planned also to spend some time in Melbourne, as there looked to be a whole host of caches there, but by the time I got there it was quite late. So I skirted the northern edge, around King’s Newton, and then followed a small country road that had a few trads alongside.
This bought me down into the town centre, where I focused on gathering information to solve other things. There’s about 5 Church Micros (all bar one is a multi) and a couple of letterboxes as well as another set of labs. I knew I didn’t have time to both collect all of the information for the multis and then find them, so I plumped for finding the ad labs and walking enough of the town centre to get the information. It turns out most of the multis are spread far and wide, so it’s a good job didn’t attempt to do both.
Anyway, so when I return there next (as I surely will) I have the final locations of both letterboxes and four multis. There’s another multi in the village too, but it looks complicated, so I’ll probably never attempt it. You have to find ten different places, but there’s no waypoints for them. That feels like a recipe for disaster.
Nuffski
So a pleasant afternoon of new beginnings, familiarising myself a little bit with the local area. In total I made 27 finds – 13 “proper” caches and 14 lab stages. It was a good way to end the caching year.
Given my initial coment at the top of this post, I have no idea what next year will bring, but I am very much hoping it will bring me some peace and a few good caching trips at least. I’m hoping I’ll get some mojo back for doing these posts too. I can’t help but think my writing style has become a bit dull. That maybe reflects my levels of stress. I’m working on it.
