Into the Woods
A windy Sunday afternoon in July, what better fun than to shuffle round a bit of ancient woodland in Shenley looking for small clip-lock boxes. It beats sitting indoors. You can do that in the winter.h3 In fact, we decided to go two days in a row, because why not?
So we decided on a bit of caching. The Shenley Wood Donder by Sensei TSKC is a nice little offset multi where you have to visit an information board at Shenley Wood and simply locate the coordinates of another location in Shenley Wood. We had a theory on the coordinates which proved true. Hey, we must be getting good at this lark. So suitably armed we set off in the general direction, which proved to be a fair way round the other side of the wood. And boy was it windy. It was windy enough that the GPS was all over the place. We were wandering up all sorts of incorrect directions and generally getting well lost. Eventually we got a a reasonable GZ but experienced the old “which tree is it?” syndrome.
It took several minutes of mooching about before Kas had the bright idea of looking at the coordinates rather than trusting the compass. Weird though that was, because the destination was a bit deeper into the woods than we thought it might be. Hey Presto, there it was. We decided leave Brook the Dragonfly. Brook wants to travel the world and meet interesting new people. At the time of writing this entry she has got to Shenley Church End, but will most likely move shortly. The Dragonfly is the emblem of Ami’s school, Giles Brook in Tattenhoe. Ami’s class will be avidly watching Brook to see where she gets to.
Holy Wandering Signals, Batman!
From here we targeted another couple of thingummies in the wood starting with Emily’s bramble ramble by teamjaybro. This proved to be a bit of a bramble and nettle infested jungle, so a good old Size 9 or two from Kev was required to clear a path for Ami. It proved pretty easy to find though. The densest jungle is right up against the path. The rest was really quite clear once you got into the actual trees. We did a quick sign and run job and headed off for the next target……….
………..Which was Joshua’s Kids Cache, shown a few hundred yards away only. Unfortunately though the GPS was showing this deep in the forest even though the description says “just off the path” We had a party to get someone to anyway, so we gave up, resolving to have another pop on another day.
Well, two in an hour or so isn’t bad with two kids and two scooters in tow.
Wandering Off-Piste
The very next day after the original Shenley Wood Shuffle we had a spare hour or so after work, and decided we might as well return to go and clear the remaining two caches in Shenley Wood.
First was Joshua’s Kids Cache by teamjaybro. Shown in the very deepest, darkest bit of the deep, dark wood. Our plan was to mooch along the path and dive into the wood at the nearest likely looking break in the trees. The one we picked turned out to be the right one. We wandered in and out of trees for about 20 yards and reached a nice little clearing. It was a little clearing though, so the GPS had helicopter compass syndrome. We did the cacher shuffle for a bit until we eventually decided on a tree. And Kas wandered around and thought “that doesn’t look quite right” – suspicious looking bits of tree bark. Behind which was, of course, said cache. Easy life. Sign it, bag it, gone.
Reading the Fine Print
Next on the list was Mission Impossible MK9: Shenley Wood by Kitey – See the Mission Impossible Mega Blog Special. Kas had cunningly spotted a gimme in the printed details so we loaded that into the GPS on the off chance. Ami lead the way into the trees with the GPS and found one matching the description, which we gave a good old searching. It was the right one, but it required someone to go in elbow deep to get at the goodies. Thanks to Kas, who went for a ferret and hit the jackpot.
So that is another MK estate where we have cleared all the available caches. If we keep going at this rate we’re going to have to start travelling further afield. Well, we cleared the two remaining ones that are actually really where they appear to be. It turned out there were some more, but that’s a whole different water boiling device filled with swimming creatures.
