Venturing from Home
Our first successful venture on home turf was on Sunday 13th June in the afternoon. A bit of a frenzy around Furzton, in fact. We fooled the girls by using the “going to the pub” ruse, which always works because the pub in question has a good play area. Both kids decided they wanted to use the old bike caravan, which we thought we had managed to decommission since Ami got a decent bike and Izzy got a seat on the back of Mummy’s. Doesn’t matter though, it’s just a bit like hard work towing them around.
Our target for the afternoon was a clutch of caches around Furzton Lake – a short ride down the park from home.
Off we go
To get in the mood. we started by (once again) failing to find odysseyboy123’s Linear Trek #3, which is supposed to be within spitting distance of our house. In fact, Ami, Izzy and Kev had a look for this while Kas cycled home to fetch her iPhone. Bit useless trying to cache without a GPS device. Silly mummy.
Enough of that, so let’s go find another one instead. We tried ParRathorne’s Splish Splash Area 51, which appears to be right next to the path running past the “pointy end” of Furzton Lake. We parked the bikes up and dismounted to find Kas had called us up about 200 feet short of target. Oh well, the girls can have a plodge up the path. Don’t want to spoil, but the location can (probably) be approached from two sides. We approached from the lakeside path. The Mrs and Ami did the searching, and actually found it both quickly and without incident. Wey-hey, our first ever successful find in the UK. A nice big cache in a location you definitely wouldn’t trip over. We exchanged a few goodies and set off again.
Reach for the Stars
Next up, we decided, would be mafiu’s Area 51 Stargazing. This is a puzzler, the coords given are in a distinctly wet and difficult to search kind of a place. So you need to read the hint. And when you do, you need to take a punt on whereabouts to start looking. Actually, I think we had made up our minds beforehand because we are locals, and we were right, but there’s still a bit of sleuthing to do when you get there. You will also find that the internet is of absolutely no use here. Neither is local knowledge. Just go there and look around a bit…………….
Round the Lake
Next up was saleagl’s Regatta Sails. This was a first attempt at a nano. The hint makes is pretty easy, but nevertheless, aren’t they small. Smaller than small Jack McSmall. So small, you could quite easily forget to put it back. Unfortunately, in trying to return it to the correct site Kev dropped it somewhere and couldn’t get his enormous ham-fists at. Help required from she of the smaller hands variety.
Next up was MKCurryMan’s No Swim, No Fear. Aside from being a busy location this was pretty easy find. Although the girls spent a lot of their time ripping flowers off a nearby bush. We really must teach them sometime that nature can be appreciated from a distance.
Last up for the day was MKCurryMan’s Furzton Lake View. This one is also Muggle Central but Kas spotted it fairly quickly and Ami retrieved it so we could retire to a conveniently safe bench to have a shufty. Some swapping. The girls extracted a mini puzzle thingy and did their best to shout to everyone about what we were doing. More instruction on sneaky caching required, methinks. Anyway, bung the cache back in the location and retire to the Furzton pub for beer and comestibles.
All in all, a successful afternoon’s caching, with the only downside being that it rained on the way back and we got wet. Plus the girls were a bit late in bed, but hey, Kas gets to deal with that kind of thing……………..
