Honorary crumbling amblers of London Colney

For our GeoDate this week, Shar and I went to London Colney. I know what you are thinking… oh the glamour! Well glamourous it may not be but it suited us down to the ground. I had spotted a couple of caches set by a local scout group as part of the requirement for their geocaching badge. Having been through this process with Sam a while back (see Scouts geocaching badge), I thought it would be nice to go and find some placed by some other scouts.

After parking on a verge down a quietish lane we entered the woods and took a pleasant walk around the edge of some fields to get to the first cache, LC Scout Cache 4. Side of the woods (GC7EX04). Admittedly there was a bit of a constant hum of the nearby M25 and a couple of other roads but it wasn’t that bad and the weather was just about perfect for caching, the sun popping out every now and then but not for long enough to melt skin.

After about 1km we reached GZ and then ducked into the trees in search of the cache. Well, I ducked into the trees and Shar held back, wary of the rather high stingers and such that guarded the treeline. Logistically this meant that as I ventured in, Sharlene attempted to shout general directions to me where she thought the cache might be. Not the easiest of tasks but pretty standard stuff for us and so we got on with it. After about 5 mins Shar braved the stingers and despite the two of us searching around we still found nothing.

Then we realised that we might have ducked into the trees a little too soon and so fought our way back out and followed the arrow staying outside the trees for as long as we could. Sure enough we got down to about 3 metres and there was a likely looking tree right there in front of us. Job done.

After replacing the cache we went back to the path just in time to meet a large group of rambling old people, although as Sharlene pointed out they didn’t really look like proper ramblers so more like just amblers. As the group filed past we paused for some water and when the tail-enders got to us, they stopped and enquired as to whether we were with them, as they were meant to wait for stragglers and not let the group get split up. We explained that we were indeed not part of their group, a fact which you would think perhaps they should know, and off they trotted.

Thinking about this as we walked to the next cache I wondered if we somehow looked as if we fitted into their group and Sharlene said that no, the entire group was much older looking than us. Hmmm, not sure whether or not to be insulted by this, surely we don’t look like we belong to a group of ambling oldies do we? Maybe it was the white cane that lumped us into their demographic, perhaps being disabled qualified us to be a part of the group.

Honorary ambling crumbly

Next one, LC Scout Cache 5. Corner of a field (GC7EX0H), was a frustrating DNF with us not even being able to find GZ let alone the cache. Various logs had stated that the coordinates were way off and despite about 30 minutes of searching we couldn’t find anything that matched the description of the massive tree that was supposed to mark the hide. Sometimes you just gotta know when to give up and move on, not always an easy thing.

Thankfully the last cache we attempted, Tribute to Bonnie Boo Boos (GC1E31C), was there and in good condition. It was a regular container but could probably pass for a large and it was nestled safely in the crack of a tree at the side of the path. I only endured a half a dozen or so nettle stings to retrieve it, so that wasn’t so bad. Pro tip: When you retrieve a cache in a nettle infested area, don’t put the sticks that were covering it down on the ground in the nettles while you extract the log, cos then you have to pick the bloody things up again and get another couple nettle stings into the bargain.

No pain, no gain

Ironic really, finding such a large cache, as I have been trying to find one for months to drop off a cumbersome TB and then last week I finally dropped it off in one of our own hides just to be rid of it, and pretty much the next cache we find is a super large one and would have been perfect.

Two out of three found and back home in time for a curry lunch. Happy days.

This geocaching adventure took place on Thursday May 10th, 2018 and took our total geocache count up to 1867.