Finding Boxes

We couldn't wait to get out geocaching again today. My eldest daughter decided she wanted to join us to so now we are truly an official family group. We've called ourselves the CityPirates.

We decided we'd try a find at a local and very lovely church cemetary. It is situated near a resevoir which is so beautiful it's hard to believe it's a resevoir, and the church is right in the middle of a group of fields. Sometimes it's hard to believe this wonderful countryside is so close by our home in the middle of the city. The cache was a slightly more difficult one 1.5/1.5 four part multi cache. You what? I hear you say. In layman terms, you have to solve a four part puzzle to get the co-ordinates for the final hiding place. First we needed to complete the date that the British defeated the Spanish Armada. This was relevent because one of the bells at the church was installed in the same year and is called the Armada Bell. The second part required finding out the dates the church was built, the third to find the date of birth of a Joshua ling and the fourth to find the final hiding place.

Gray didnt' want to work out the clues he just wanted to go looking! I worked out as much as I could at home then found Joshua Lings birthdate, but when I put the co-ordinates into my GPS they wouldn't work as they were in the wrong format. On the geocaching site you can reformat the co-ords, but I don't have a clue how to reformat them myself. So minus the co-ords we had a good hunt around but no find. :-( We are determined to try this one again though.

The next was nearby at the reservoir, a nice easy one in the bluebell woods.....or so we thought. The co-ordinates were pre-set and already reformatted and there on the screen was the little flag. The rain was getting heavier and it was pretty muddy but off we set. Just as we were getting close the GPS died of a flat battery. It should have still been an easy find but there are an awful lot of trees, and clusters of trees and without knowing exactly which cluster we needed to look in we were in for a long search. In the end the rain got the better of us and that's another one we have to go back for.

Sad though it is not to achieve a find it's still a fun way to get out of the house and get a bit of fresh air and exercise. And today we've had fun thinking up a name and logo for our geocaching family group. This is the logo as designed by my daughter.