Our First Family Trip
Our second geocaching trip was the first full family, bike mounted affair. We rode through Tattenhoe on a balmy Friday night in June, but it proved to be a bit of a trial.
It seemed a simple objective really. Find three geocaches within spitting distance of our home, all listed as easy finds. The reality, however, was rather different.
Some Initial Trouble
The three items in question are all from odysseyboy123’s Linear Trek series, and we decided to attempt them in order of distance from our house. In fact, when we set off, we probably only meant to go to the closest – Linear Trek #5. But we didn’t find it. We searched all the obvious places and it wasn’t there. We searched a few less obvious places and it wasn’t there either. I think the problem is twofold. First fold is the iPhone’s limited positioning ability. Second fold is that (as we now know) this is a nano-cache, and nano-caches aren’t very big. It is a magnetic one, but the area is fairly short on ferrous objects, so we wondered whether it is some sort of cunning vegetable magnet. Eventually we reached the kids’ tolerance limit and got back on the bikes for another pop.
Linear Trek #1 is further along the park near to the bandstand. The inaccuracy of the iPhone positioning here gave the fairly serious problem of which side of the stream was required, and then which piece of vegetation. Whatever! Problem with vegetated areas and no useful hints is that there’s quite a big area to search. Which meant we couldn’t find it. Bananas ! Back on the bikes.
A Final Failure
The final trial in Tattenhoe is Linear Trek #3, which is meant to be in the woods below Giles Brook School at the south-west end of the estate. Again, the iPhone’s inaccurate positioning and the lack of signal in the woods meant a lot of fruitless searching. We did, however, provide a very substantial meal for the numerous insect life forms thereabouts. Which is not brilliant, I can tell you. In fact, the insects were very hungry.
So all in all, this was a bit of a frustrating evening, and it’s fair to say that we were beginning to lose the faith by the end of it. We retired home for some consolatory beverages and to force the kids reluctantly into their beds. Maybe we’ll have more luck on another day.
