A First for the Year
My first trip into Ryoland for 2024. I’d had a slow start to the year, what with one thing and another. In fact I’d not really done any caches at all until March. Earlier in the month I’d made a couple of trips out, but this was my first time this year when I drove east. The main target was the Fulbourn Frolics series. It’s in (strangely) Fulbourn, which is a village over the far side of Cambridge.
For this trip I’d arranged to meet up with Candleford and Pumpkin67. I prefer long walks in the company of someone else rather than alone. It makes the day pass more happily and makes the finding much easier.
I set off from home really, really early so that I could grab a few finds just off the A14 on my way out.
Fulbourn
The Fulbourn Frolics series has 29 caches. They are all traditionals and they lie in an extended rectangular shape running south-west from the village. When added to the various multis, a set of labs and a few other trads this initial walk there were 49 finds around quite a small area.
We set off at good pace, walking in a clockwise loop (which kept the caches in number order). To be honest they were really easy and we whistled around the whole series in well under four hours. That’s a good thing in March, because the light doesn’t last for ever. We’d started quite early, but I was grateful I had the majority of the afternoon left for a few more.
Off on my own
Candleford and Pumpkin67 had some other plans for the afternoon, so I left them after we’d done in Fulbourn. I had some other things in mind. Mainly, driving around a few villages to the south of Cambridge, hoovering up as many geocaches as I could manage.
I found 3 in Stapleford, four in Great Shelford, 1 in Hauxton and 3 in the wonderfully named Trumpington.
Grantchester
My final stop of the afternoon was in Grantchester. This proved to be a lovely little village, although it took me a while to find somewhere to park. It sits on the River Cam, and a number of the caches were in the river valley. It was cold and there’d been a fair amount of rain, which means the river was up quite a long way. That didn’t affect what I was doing, but it makes things look more dramatic.
Anyway, I stretched my legs up and down the main road in both directions, finding another 10 caches.
At the end of the day I’d made 75 finds, which is good for a day in March.
