Caching in South Gloucestershire

Hello!

This is my first post of 2016, so I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

I hadn't been caching since the CacheWalker Twinew event a couple of weeks ago. That was an enjoyable but wet experience, it's a shame that it's the second CacheWalker Twixmas/Twinew event to see the rain - the sun has shone for the others. Let's hope the weather's better for this year's event.

We fancied visiting a new area today; I noticed the 'Toy Story' series, which is in a part of South Gloucestershire we had not been to before.

Toy Story series, 10 miles, 39 caches, Tytherington, South Glos

It was unusually warm today due to the tropical air mass which was blown up to the UK. Unfortunately it wasn't sunny, but at least it was dry, unlike the day of the CacheWalker event! Our first find was a Church Micro; in fact, today was the day for finding caches from several nationwide series'. Overall, I found 5 Little Bridges, 2 Fine Pair's and 2 Church Micro's. Several of these were incorporated into the Toy Story series whilst a couple were extras.

St. James, Tytherington - opposite the first Church Micro of the day.

We were soon out on the trail; the footpaths were incredibly muddy and the ground was generally waterlogged, which meant that walking was difficult to begin with. However, we soon got used to it and some stretches were better than others. Luckily, we had good boots and gaters on - essential if you too decide to complete this series during the winter!

What I loved about it was the thought that went into the caches. There were hardly any Micros, and the Small/Regular caches were very well stocked. In fact, some were extremely generous in size whilst others were ingenious, with GC5ERP1 particularly coming to mind - it was one of those caches where you instantly decide they're deserving of a favourite point!

Everything was going well until #17, where the cache was quickly spotted at the base of an oak prior to a swarm of bees, or even wasps, emerging from the tree hollow. I was surprised that no one had mentioned the fact that there is a nest in any of the previous logs, so we reckon the cacher ahead of us must have unintentionally disturbed them earlier. I'm sure that you'll agree that it is odd to see bees/wasps at this time of year!

There were various Multi's to complete throughout the walk and none of these were too difficult, which was a relief. We were soon walking along some pleasant tracks and country lanes finding more caches before it was time to calculate the coordinates for the Bonus. We had missed a value in one of the caches and we tried our best but the coords we came up with weren't logical. After tweaking them we thought we had a more likely location, and the cache was found - it was huge, and the twist within was a great surprise!

Nice views on the way back to Tytherington

It was then back to Tytherington, concluding a pleasant walk through some quiet countryside, finding some good caches along the way. Overall, a nice series which was made even more fun by its theme. We reckon that a lot of the fields will be filled with livestock in the summer, but we only encountered one field, with sheep, today. Looking forward to doing more long walks this year; in fact, I've already got the next one planned.

Unfortunately, life continues to get in the way of Geocaching, so it might be a case of finding a couple of special caches closer to home over the next couple of weeks - which is just as good!

Griff Grof