Chebsy Circular

The end of a lovely walk

Isn't it a bit early for lambing season?

Snowy lanes

Frozen rivers

A nice boxing day bimble with the Boppers to walk off the huge dinner consumed the day before. As we started the walk we were joined by Ticklebrick and Bashful. They soon went on ahead as we were taking out time photographing the lovely landscape.
Unfortunately I was having trouble with the batteries in my camera and had to keep a couple of sets warm in my trouser pocket as every 10 minutes or so they froze :(

20 caches completed on the circular and another one bagged on the way home. What a lovely location to put a cache...a nice warm pub :)

The Mill at Worsten

Pretty Polly gets a gagging order

Out of all of the caches that were completed on our day out caching locally, this is the one that is the most memorable. Memorable for many reasons really. First of all the walk from the local industrial estate was quite a nice amble and fairly easy.It didn't take us long to get to the GZ at all.

Me, Alleghnee and Pretty Polly

When we arrived I spotted something that was a little out of the ordinary, more like a flash of colour which shouldn't really have been there, so hopping over all the bushes and bramble on the floor I went towards this odd sight. As you can see from the picture above, this is what we found, what a fabulous cache to find in the middle of the woods. Then shock horror, the parrot found its voice. Well what can I say, as well as the parrot being blue in colour, the same can certainly be said of what comes out of its beak. Certainly unrepeatable on here that's for sure. I would definitely recommend this cache as it was absolutely hilarious but certainly not for children. I had to cover Alleghnee's ears up. So whilst we messed around and looked for the logbook, we gagged the mouthy bird.

Pretty Polly gets gagged.

I won't even comment where we found the log book either!!! The Whacky Cachers certainly had a sense of humour with this one!!!

Lights, Camera and a Beer. Manchester Nocturnal Event Cache

Well I hadn't planned on attending this event cache but I'm certainly glad that I did.

Got a phone call of Mum in the morning to say that she was ill and would I go with Dad in her place, and even better, she would babysit the kids. Hmmmm that was about 11ish so I asked the question, so what time would we need to set off. Well about 4.30 was the response, mind racing, damn, I'm working till 4.30 and my kit isn't packed, and worst of all, didn't know where it all was either. Believe me, I'm not normally disorganised but these lastminute.com things send me in a bit of a tizz. So in my 1/2 hour lunch break I dashed around the house, dragging things out of cupboards, stuck the batteries on a quick charge and was sat back at the computer all organised with time to spare.

Although I enjoy taking photos, I've never been really that adventurous with the settings and haven't had the chance to play around with the manual settings, neither have I ever taken photos at night without the use of a flash. Hadn't a clue what to do so got Dad to give me a 5 minute whistle stop tour of the buttons on the camera before we set off.

Arrived in Manchester City Centre with time to spare and wandered over to meet the group. Well what do you look for...a group of people with camera's and tripod's...well yeah, that's exactly what it was like, all stood on the steps busy taking photos of the wheel. I thought I'd give it a try and test out the little bit of knowledge that I had of some of the settings on the camera. Actually I think I did a fairly good job for my first ever attempt.

The wheel at exchange square, Manchester

Got chatting to some of the group as we walked round, in particular Don "The Syllogiser" who had me in stitches for most of the evening...great hat as well!!!

Its amazing what you find out when chatting to people. We met a couple who were visiting from America and their hosts only come from the same village as I live in, it's such a small world. So to Mary of the Oz's, thank you for the lovely keyring, I think I'll be keeping that to myself rather than putting it into a cache.

So on we went, the town hall was next on the agenda and a bonus for the evening was to grab a local cache. Pretty much all of the group descended on the GZ and the log and pen was passed around for all to sign...a great group effort. We stayed around and took a few more pictures before moving on.

The group in front of the town hall

St Anne's Square

Next stop was Central station...I think. We spent quite a long time here taking a variety of shots. Also had to get my gloves out as it was getting incredibly cold :(

Central Station

Although I was getting quite comfortable with the settings, I was struggling a bit without the use of a tripod. The shutter opening for such a long time made it really difficult not to get camera shake and make the pictures blurred. Ahh well, you have to start from somewhere and learn from your mistakes (my excuse)

I'd always wondered how people got those great pics in the dark with the lights streaming from the back of cars...now I know...I tried it and Yippee...I got a photo. Now it may not be the greatest photo in the world but hey, with plenty more practice, I may get a picture that I could be really proud of.

Yay Car Lights!!!

At this point we decided that we had best be making tracks home, we were both starving hungry and had an hours journey to get home, so we bid goodbye to the group and made our way back to the car....detouring into Macdonalds for a large meal.

So a fantastic event cache was over with thanks to Kev AKA Scubaclogger for organising this very unique event. It was great and I hope that there will be many more to come.

Keele Kippa Series

Again, its been a while since I have posted anything on my blog, its also been a while since I cached as well. So with recent changes in my life I decided that it was high time to drag the GPSr out of its hidey hole, dust it off, upgrade GC.com back to being a premium member and get my backside out and do some caching. It's amazing, lay off the caching for a couple of months and how many local caches appear...absolutely hundreds. So many to do and so many places to visit.


Unfortunately, I had planned to go out on Saturday but looking out of the window in the morning, the rain was coming down in buckets so decided that the housework could get done and spent the rest of the day praying that Sunday would bring a nice clear day. I certainly wasn't disappointed. Sunday morning came, bright sunshine but very very cold.

So first on my list was to clear all of the Keele caches. I've been there a fair few times, mostly for caching so knew the area pretty well but its alway a pleasure to revisit, especially the walk around the lake. It also gave me a chance to play with a new app that I had found for the i-phone.

My new toy

Keele kippa series

EveryTrail - Find the best hikes in California and beyond

31 Caches completed in all and some more lovely walks local walks completed.

A trip down memory lane

Secret Scotland - Pitreavie

Apart from the Mega Event, this was the only cache on "my must do list" whilst up in sunny Scotland. Why....Well back in the early nineties in my first career I was based at Pitreavie Castle. I have many many good memories of the 18 months that I was posted in this area and wanted to see what they had done to the place. My friend lived in the area for many years and had told me that Sky had built its headquarters there and that they had turned the rest into a housing estate once the base closed in 1996.

The cache site gave me quite a bit of information that either I didn't actually know or had completely forgotten about. If my memory serves me right  the cache isn't  located where the "Pit head" used to be but at one of the other shafts. I remember the pit head being just to the side and behind the "Castle". In front of that was the mess hall where we used to go for our scran (as the matelots called it) after trooping up all the stairs from the depths below. Often I remember going down first thing in the morning to start a shift in the dark and not come up again until it was evening and dark again. In the winter we often felt like moles as it would be days on end before we had the chance to go into proper sunlight. Might explain why I'm still not much of a sun worshipper.

I am happy to say though that the "castle" is still there albeit in the form of flats now. I'll bet there are nice carpets on the stairs to the attic and the walls are painted other colours than magnolia and that really grotty light blue which seemed to adorn most of the walls in the RAF. Our admin bods were based right up in the attic so after climbing all the stairs to the pit head, it didnt stop there. Who needed extra PT when you had all those stairs to climb, it was enough to keep you in the peak of fitness.

Pitreavie Castle

It was also nice to see that they had left the base of the flag pole in place. You can find this if you cross the road from the front of the castle.

Although it was a bit sad to see what they had done to the place and wiped out pretty much anything that you could have recognised of the place, it was really nice to go back again.

Pithead Site

We were accommodated across the Forth at RAF Turnhouse so continuing with our journey south, I just had to take a drive to see what had happened to that place. I was so disappointed when I arrived as the accommodation area - which housed the barrack blocks, mess hall and NAAFI bar and shop, had been bulldozed with most of the rubble still in piles and a huge wire fence around it. It seems like its been earmarked for development of business premises, I suppose ideal as its located near to the cargo area for Edinburgh Airport.

Accommodation Site

Across the road however are still the main gates which now has a commemarative plaque to all who served at Turnhouse over the years. In place is the guardroom on the right and on the left is the Admin offices.

Commerative Plaque

All that has really gone has been the picket posts on both sides of the road. Now that does make me giggle at the memories of guard duties on nights. We had to leg it across the road when a car came to go into the accommodation site, now me only being a slight little thing couldn't just push the gate post down, I literally had to jump and lie on the thing to get the gate lifted. Many many people used to take the mickey out of me for that one. We also used to carry round broom handles...can you just imagine the guards shouting...."Stop, or I'll whack you round the head with my broom"...I dont think so, they were having a laugh!!!!!

The old guardroom

Many many a good night was spent in the NAAFI bar and bop and I really cannot imagine just how I managed to get up after a skin full the night before and get into work..I certainly couldnt do it now.

Snowdon Summit

Well folks, the time has come again to post another blog. After a very busy couple of weeks I have so much to blog about having been to some really amazing places.

On the spur of the moment we had decided to get the tent out of the loft and take all of the kids camping for a couple of days seeing it was the start of the school summer holidays. It was a mad dash around the house making sure we had got everything we would need for a couple of days before checking on the internet where to go. I had been wanting to walk up Snowdon again for what has seemed like ages and had been telling the girls that they needed to get themselves walking fit for the climb.

We arrived in Llanberis on a glorious sunny morning, pitched the tent, donned shorts and walking boots and went for an easy bimble into the village. The summit stayed out of sight until the early evening when the cloud finally lifted and the kids could all see how far they had to walk the next day. Rather than putting them off, they were more excited than ever....little did they know how tough it was going to be for them.

We set off the next day round about lunch time with rucksacks packed full of food, water and warm clothing. It always amazes me how many people go walking to places like this unprepared, and judging by the amount of times we saw the rescue helicopter flying above, there were people who still hadnt learnt their lessons.

The climb was fairly uneventful and very busy on the trail. The first half of the walk was fairly easy and all of the kids were still in good spirits until about a mile after Halfway House when the path became incredibly steep.

By this time we had been walking for around 3 hours and all of the kids really struggled at some time within this, but with plenty of words of encouragement they pushed on through it, determined to make the summit, after all thats what they were there to do.

We climbed through the cloud base and went higher and higher until finally I was able to say that we made it. Extra clothing was put on as it was absolutely freezing cold. I just couldnt believe that some people were up there in shorts but I supposed they had gone up on the train and thats exactly the way they were going to get back down.

We took the obligatory picture at the trig so that we could log the Virtual Cache there and took the details of the trig to log on trigpointing before grabbing the most expensive cup of coffee we had ever had from the local cafe. I couldnt believe that there were no cold water taps in the toilets so had to ask for some cold water for the dog (which they were loathe to give us).

Poor little Sprocket, even with all of his fur was shivering cold up there so lay on the rucksacks and had his Mummy's coat wrapped snugly around him (poor baby)

Return Journey - no easy way down for us...it was all by foot again except this time it was so much easier. It had been such a shame that the cloud was so low however on the way back the clouds briefly moved, brilliant sunshine shone down on us and gave us the most spectacular views. The kids were absolutely amazed and all 4 of them shouted "wow look at that" all at the same time. Just those few seconds made the whole experience worth it.

We finally made it back to the campsite after being on foot for nearly 9 hours. The kids were so proud of themselves for getting to the top and back, a feat that not many of their age can say that they have achieved. Yes they struggled at times, but rather than give up and turn back, they pushed through it and gave it their best shot. Even more amazing was the amount of energy they still had when they got back. Unbelievable.

So, what next.....we have warned them off that Scarfell Pike is next on the to do list and then Ben Nevis. Surprisingly, they were well up for it.....MAD!!!

How long????

It seems like ages since I have managed to put fingers to keyboard and write about my exploits. Not that there have been many in the past few months but I have got the bug back again :-)

This week has seen me get out in the beautiful sunshine and complete a 9 mile walk on Sunday around Bangor on Dee in North Wales and a couple of evenings out around the local area of Stoke with 46 caches found.

So another milestone passed......1700th. I hope to make it to 2000 before the year is out and with a lot of trips planned, I don't see this as being a problem at all.

With my motivation back again I hope to be writing more about my jaunts into the undergrowth once again...and boy..this doesn't half feel good. I might even find some time in the busy schedule to make a few tweaks to my blog again.

So there we have it...my first post in 5 months and the start of many more to come

Happy days xxx