For a quick after-work cache, Terri organised a magical mystery tour around South Shields – including snacks! We started at Air Raids on Shields 1 (Queens Theatre) (GC3JA6A) which was a very quick find – wonderfully hidden in plain sight, but we had seen a similar one before.
Industrial History (GC2FR80) is a mystery cache, and involved going to a HUGE mural and counting various things like the number of steel workers, the number of cranes… it took us about twenty minutes of searching and counting but we did get the correct coordinates eventually!
Part of the mural
Rather than head up the hill to grab that cache, we went back down to the Customs House Theatre and gathered clues for a short multi cache which told the history of The UK’s First Racial Riot (GCVCVT) – quite a claim to (in)fame…
Blue plaque
We gathered the numbers and then did the maths – somehow we ended up with coordinates on the other side of the river! Now, there is a ferry, but that seemed a bit extreme. I checked my maths and nothing was amiss… then Terri checked she’d written her numbers down right…
View over the river.
New (much more reasonable!) coordinates in hand we quickly found the magnetic cache and signed the log – now to find the end of the mystery cache.
Customs House – evidence of editing
We went to the coordinates and had a quick hunt around, and paid close attention to this particular bush… surely not! Though there was a place you could just about fit your hand in. Was the cache owner really so devious?
Really?
I suppose you’ll have to check there yourselves to find out.
To celebrate my last day of freedom before starting my new job, and because we’d been meaning to go on a proper day trip for ages, Terri and I spent a day caching on holy island! We checked the tide tables and reckoned we’d have time to get all of the island’s caches in one day – the challenge was on.
On we go!
Our first stop was the endpoint of the mystery cache Lindisfarne Puzzler (GC51Z7Y), for which we had already solved the puzzle. Our coordinates were correct, and the find itself was very straightforward.
One puzzle down…
One down in short order! There’s a lovely multi cache on Lindisfarne, Lindisfarne Gospels (Holy Island) (GC49XKX), which takes you around the whole island. We decided to use it as our guide and pick up the traditional caches on the way around the island, recording the multi clues as we went.
The beautiful priory
We got the first clue at the prory and moved on swiftly to a traditional cache – Lindisfarne. View of St Cuthbert’s Isle. (GC51Z42). We found the cache quite quickly, and Terri braved the nettles to get it out. When we took the camo bag off, we found a caterpillar inside! Luckily it wasn’t inside the tupperware!
No code on this Travel Bug.
This one also had some really lovely treasure inside for the youngsters.
Marbles, shells, a pine cone – what lovely treasure.
The cache location also offered us a few nice views.
A view of St Cuthbert’s IslandThe priory over the cache.
Next, we went off to the castle for more of the multi, playing tourist as we went. There were SO many people though…
Boat sheds and the castle.
A busy little spot! We couldn’t find the multi clue, so we had to hope we could guess it…
A piper and the castle.
After picking up a few more multi clues, time for the trads. This one was accessible only through Terri’s premium app, but she graciously allowed me to join in looking for Time for thought (GC3QV2D), which was tucked away behind a wall.
Ah, back out to the quiet side of the island.
We continued around the perimeter of the island to pick up a few more multi clues, including one at a bird hide overlooking a lake.
View from the hide.
It was here where we learned about the Pirri-Pirri burr… we would become much more acquainted with it later!
These would turn out to be a theme of the day! They’re very tenacious.
We passed some lovely bays and walked through lots of dune paths on the way to Cuthbert’s Ghost (GC1HAJ2), which was sited in an old quarry, with a ghostly tale…
Just around this bay…Pathways through the dunes.Nando’s Seeds.
We didn’t see any of Cuthbert’s Ghost’s beads, but we did find a solitary soldier climbing the rocks. Terri noticed that the log directly before ours was always by the same cachers, and we realised we must be following them around the island!
One man war.
We went on to the next cache around the next bay and over some more dunes looking for Greenshiel Stamps (GC1TF34).
And just around THIS bay…We spent plenty of time in the dunes.An ancient settlement.
We found it tucked away amongst the ruins of an old settlement… now for us to get back to civilisation!
Another gorgeous beach.Guess the prevailing wind direction.The mainland.
We rounded the last corner and got onto the home straight to Cache and Tache (GC49X05) which made no sense for a cache name until we discovered it was full of stick on moustaches! We of course graced the log with a picture of our moustachioed selves!
Blue – Yellow – GreenWe logged this cache. HA!
There’s always room for a pun… we were getting really quite tired by now, but we had also got all of the clues for the multicache! With a couple of hours left to get off the island we only had one more traditional cache and the multi’s final stage to find and log to finish off all the caches!
Back to square one.
We started the second lap for Lindisfarne to get our last traditional cache of the day, View across the Pilgrim’s Way (GC51Z12). We came across lots of interesting things in the beach, and could here lots of animals hooting – probably seals!
A natural arrangement..?Team Dunefrog make their mark.A view over the beach.
And that was the last traditional cache of the day! On the way back to civilisation we passed by a strange collection of glass.
Nearly helpful litter collection.
Back in the village we plugged in our answers to the multi cache, got coordinates and went off in search of the final multi stage… we wondered if we were going to run into the cachers who we’d been following all day! We also passed by a farm which had a yard full of birds – chickens, roosters, ducks, geese, swans…
These geese had a nice campervan.
We dived into the bushes off the road and got the multi cache final! We picked up a travel bug and then Terri said that she hadn’t seen the name of the cachers we had been following! We realised they couldn’t be far behind us, so quickly hid the container and sure enough, we spotted a couple walking towards us, GPS in hand! We stopped them and said hello, and it was the two cachers who had been following us all day! They were very nice and had enjoyed their day just as much as we had enjoyed ours.
We went back to the car park and took the weight off our feet – we had been walking for a long time! FInally, we crossed the causeway again, measuring its length for an earthcache, Lindisfarne Causeway (GC2993D).
From the mainland – picture for an Earthcache.
We completed the other Earthcache tasks, and finally, we finished off the tenth cache back on the mainland – A View of Holy Island (GC1BJ3Q). It was another quick find, and we just about made it back to the car without falling to the ground through tiredness!
The last cache of the day was hidden by a large concrete cube. Hm.
We had a lovely day on the island! A little weatherbeaten – and with aching legs – we dived into the nearest pub for a good feed and a refreshing drink. Aaaah… what a brilliant way to spend a day.
My friend Aimee was visiting from Austria, and happily she made it to Edinburgh so we could catch up! We had no real plans in the city until we could meet friends at 6pm, so we just wandered about and I had a go at a few caches because, well… it would be rude not to. Our first success was with a new type of cache for me – a webcam cache. You go and stand in front of a webcam at the specified coordinates, and then use software on your phone or ask a friend to log into it from their computer at home. Jon took this picture for us “Wolfing it in the West End” (GCHWAP).
Webcam Cache
This was lots of fun to do – I don’t really know why but it really appealed! We arranged to see Luke, another friend of ours, and decided to get the tram to a lovely restaurant across town – an excellent excuse for a go on the new trams, and a great opportunity to grab a mystery cache that I had already worked out the answer for. I quickly found the right spot for Tramspotting (GC5359Q) which has a funny description (probably even funnier if you’re an Edinburger) and is well worth a look.
A quick and cheeky multiElementary
After this quick find we jumped onto the tram and went for a well deserved pile of Chinese dumplings at Chop Chop. Yum!
Later, the three of us attempted Greyfriar’s Bobby (GC3B3R2) but had no luck! We had a hunt around for a bit but couldn’t see where the cache could be. Happily, we did meet a nice German family who were doing the same thing. We left before they did, but happened to bump into them while crossing the road to Waverley Station a few hours later – they didn’t find it either!
A visit from Matthew (an out-of-towner) necessitated a tour of Newcastle taking in the sights, and the Newcastle Invasion geocache (GC3Y1AF) fitted the bill perfectly. This cache is a multi-cache, which means there are lots of intermediate stages before the coordinates of the final cache are revealed. We had a lot of fun going around the various sights, finding mosaic aliens all over the city. One of the aliens evaded us, and we missed another one in the Baltic by accidentally waiting too late so it closed – despite having gone into the Baltic and played in the lift earlier in the day!
We didn’t have quite enough information on the first day to complete the cache, so the next morning we had another go at the one we’d missed in the town centre. It was completely obvious where the alien was! No idea how we missed it… We plugged the answers into the clue given, and came up with a set of viable coordinates. These led us to a lovely little spot where we quickly grabbed the cache and signed it. I really enjoyed this one! We headed down to the quayside to watch the bridge tilt and popped into the Baltic to photograph the alien we’d missed…just for the sake of completeness.
Tilt
We also revisited another cache in the centre of town, Meet Under the Clock (GC235X2). I’ve had a few goes at this, but this time a clue from a previous log gave me the prod I needed to look closer at something.
You are here.
I showed Matthew the site of a cache I’d found before, Eldon Square from … New to Old (GC4T967). Which is a brilliant hidden-in-plain-sight cache. He found it very quickly – three in one day isn’t a bad start!
Sun and Cake 