A Bit More of the Great Circle
What on Earth is he on about this time? Well, thereby hangs a tale. Away back in the Mists of Time, I signed a challenge geocache in Northamptonshire that requires you to find one cache within each of 360 sectors of 1o of arc centre on the location of that cache. Do what John? Imagine a big pie centred on Northamptonshire. Now cut it into 360 slices of equal size. Now find a geocache in each slice. Which leads me nicely to the subject of this post. I was in Lincoln for the weekend, as I often am. Between there and my boyhood home at Southwell there were seven slides of that pie which needed to be filled in (or eaten). These slices were neatly arranged around “due north”, so they were in fact the northern sectors.
All that was a very convoluted way of getting the post title into the first paragraph, because the SEO likes it that way. It also likes it when I use the post title elsewhere in the text. So, Northern Sectors, Northern Sectors, Northern Sectors….
Freedee Neet
I travelled over on Friday night from my new home in Leicestershire. I was expecting the traffic around Nottingham to be a nighwmare of biblical proportions (starring Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Taylor). However I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t much traffic around. I arrived at my hotel at reasonable time and had arranged to meet Daughterus Maximus for some dinner. Our choice was a certain Asian fusion style restaurant chain whose name rhymes with…. I dunno. Beats me. It was Wagamama. I genuinely can’t think of anything that rhymes with it. “Tag a hammer” maybe, if you use certain English accents.
Back at the plot, we had to wait all of five minutes to get a table, and we then proceeded to order pretty much one of every starter and then a main course each. Nice.
After dinner it was still a bit early. We made the obligatory walk up the hill and took a photo of the lit-up catherdral. And then we came back down via a pub, where we say outside (yes, and it was pleasant) with a drink before giving in.
You Know What Comes Next
So Saturday morning. If you’ve read any of my blogs before, you’ll know what comes now. Saturday is parkrun day. Lincoln is blessed with three of them, but one has the very special distinction of beginning with a letter Y. This is important because a lot of parkrunners, like a lot of geocachers, enjoy a good challenge. One of those challenges is to run a parkrun beginning with each available letter of the alphabet. As yet there aren’t any X’s to find, but the other 25 letters are represented somewhere.
Yarborough filled in one of my missing slots. I have about 8 more to go. One of the runners was way in advance of me though. She had a sweatshirt showing she’d run in at least 10 countries, and has done 100 different venues, plus been around the alphabet twice. I’m some way off that. It’s a lofty objective to aim at. Challenging, but not impossible. Even when you’re over 60. I have currently visited four countries and run 37 different venues. Being single now may mean that I attempt a load more.
The actual parkrun was moderately sized, I guess. About 220 people finished on a freezing cold, but sunny, morning. I was 179th, but because I am now in the 60-65 male category I managed a 7th place in my age category. In absolute terms, 33:15 isn’t very fast, but it’s two minutes faster than any other parkrun I’ve done in a year. So that was good in many way.
I didn’t stop there for breakfast though. Nor did I eat at my hotel, because they were shut. So Maximus came round and we went to a favoured cafe on the High Street.
Walkabout
In the afternoon we took a short drive over to Hartsholme Country Park to go for a walk. After all, it was a cold and sunny afternoon but with little wind. I’d been here before (see Lincoln) in 2023 and had walked the northern part of the park doing a few caches. So today we had a pop at the southern half.
A slight misinterpretation of the map placed us in a housing estate, but rather than backtrack we decided to continue on the roads, which allowed me to grab a couple of caches as we passed. At the very southern end we realised there was no path around the edge of the park. So we backtracked here and took a path through the middle that took us around one of the many lakes. I assume these are abandoned gravel pits. Anyway, you can see from the photo on this page that the weather was top-notch for January.
There were a couple more caches we passed actually in the park. Bother were easy enough to find. When we got back to the car park we had a 10 minute break for a hot drink before moving on again.
Shopping Time
I’d planned to go shopping on Sunday morning, but we were left with enough time between Hartsholme and dinner to go what I needed to do. I needed a new shirt for a “smart casual” business trip on Monday. All the shirts I possess were either too smart, or too casual. Many of them are also designed for someone smaller. So I went to get another.
The kids kindly gave me book tokens for Christmas and birthday (mine are quite close together), and I had those with me. So we paid a visit to a local bookstore and I wiped out the tokens on some Isaac Asimov, which I know I’ll enjoy, and also a Ken Liu, who is a new author for me. Check back later (possibly) to see if I enjoyed that one.
More Dinner of the Asian Persuasion
Maximus says she likes to go for Asian food when I’m in town. She enjoys it and so do I, but her mum doesn’t so much. She therefore wanted to go Asian again tonight, and she’d booked us a table at Pho (where they serve Pho) in central Lincoln.
We ate a lot again.
I had to sit in the hotel bar for a while reading one of my Asimov books until I was ready for bed.
Easy Like Sunday Morning
We began with a hotel breakfast at 9:30, because why not. As we’d done the shopping yesterday we were out of things to do. I suggested we might try the International Bomber Command Centre, if only because it has an indoor bit. The weather was grey and very windy. IBCC tells the story of the RAF Bomber Command, its history, its missions, and those whose lives were either enriched or destroyed by its actions. Bomber Command’s “area bombing” campaigns in World War II are a controversial subject these days, and the memorial makes no attempt to gloss over the controversy. As with other war memorials I’ve visited, the sheer number of people who gave their lives, or lost them, in bombing raids is frankly staggering. The memorial does a good job in telling both sides, and of bringing to live the day-to-day grind of flying heavy bombers during wartime.
On the edge of the site there was a geocache from the “War Memorials” series. It took me ages to find it.
And that was that as far as seeing Maximus goes. She plays sport on Sunday afternoons, so she generally wants me out of the place by 2pm. It was only just about 1, but there wasn’t much we could do in an hour.
A Bit of Geocaching
I’d spent some time before breakfast marking some caches on the phone that would fit into each target sector. Most of those I chose were in small villages. As a result, lots of them were members of national caching series – namely Church Micros, Village Signs, Village Halls, Fine Pairs, and the like. There were a few non-series ones too, but most fell into those categories. So off we go. I’d got about 4 hours before needing to be in Southwell for a dinner date with my brother and dad.
Sector 8-9o
The first sector to be ticked off was centred around Thorpe-on-the-Hill. The village contained a bunch of caches from national series. You know, Church Micros, War Memorials, Village Halls, Village Signs, Fine Pairs, Sidetracked, and so on. In this case, I found a Church Micro, a Village Hall and a Village Sign. I didn’t find the War Memorial one. I don’t think it was there. Either that, or the coordinates were some way off. Never mind. A decent start.
Sector 6-7o
This sector was centred on Swinderby. Two Church Micros and a Village Hall here. I parked at one of the churches and walked to the first two. The second Church Micro was on the road out of town. Cha-ching. Move on!
I made an unscheduled stop in Collingham. I was driving that way anyway, and there was a very convenient Fine Pair and a Church Micro right by the main road. It would have been rude to drive past them. There are several other caches in Collingham too, and one day I might drive in or out that way and grab some of them.
Sectors 359-360o and 0-1o
Two sectors in one here, because the boundary runs right through the village of Averham. The two caches in that village conveniently lie either side of the boundary. Two sectors in one stop.
Before that, though, I tried to go for the Church Micro at Kelham. I was aware it was on the site of Kelham Hall, however I didn’t realise that it was a private hotel. There was a big gate on the road. So rather than mess around, I just drove down to Averham instead.
In Averham (pronounced “Air-um”), the first cache was a Church Micro and the second was a Post Post. That seems to be a series of tiny caches attached to the bottoms of Post Boxes (ones that are on a post, rather than pillars or built into walls). But I digress. Another two sectors done, tick, move on!
Sectors 357-358o and 358-359o
As with Averham, the village of Upton lies astride two of the sectors. Excellent. Another opportunity to do two sectors from one parking spot.
I found a quiet road to park on and walked around the village to find a Village Sign, a Fine Pair and another Post Post. I couldn’t find the Village Hall, and didn’t bother with the Church Micro, as that was 250m away down a muddy field, and I wasn’t wearing suitable footwear. Maybe another day.
Sector 356-357o
My final stop was in Hockerton. I could have gone straight to Southwell from Upton, but the caches in the right sector there involved a bit of a walk. The ones in Hockerton were of the drive-by variety.
So I parked rather dodgily by a roadside and made a quick dash around for a Village Hall and a Church Micro. And then I moved my car a bit to park right next to a Victoria’s Post Box.
The Reckoning
All-in-all, a productive afternoon. It was followed by top notch Indian food and then a 70 minute drive home. I had to get ready for a silly-early start to my Monday. Seven sectors ticked off the challenge. 33 more to go.