Monday 1 April 2013

Quest for Ziggy

Ziggy Stardust, 6 miles, 4 caches. First cache: GC173RX

There cannot be a better choice of series to set out and complete than a Wrighty series. Long on the agenda, we chose our most local unfound, the Ziggy Stardust walk, to tackle on a chilly Easter Monday afternoon.

Bitter wind challenged us on the way to 'The man who sold the world' (#1,) but nothing could take away from the stunning scenery of the area, with GZ being in a good spot, in typical Wrighty style.

Unfortunately it was a DNF on the second cache (we were bitten by a dog on the way - maybe this sidetracked our search?!) and, so, as we continued, the question regarding whether we'd be able to deduce Ziggy's location missing a value began to (unfortunately) lure upon us.

The third cache, 'China Girl', was the highlight of the walk for me. The views were brilliant along this stretch, though we had to be very cautious walking along the lane, which was covered in ice! In fact, just to prove that I'm not exaggerating, have a look at what we spotted in a spiny to our right shortly before GZ:


Yes, that is a large piece of self-standing ice!!! :O 

When we did arrive at GZ we weren't disappointed. I couldn't have thought of a better place to put a cache, above a meandering valley! Despite the cold and the DNF, we were still enjoying the walk, and I was determined that we'd be able to find Ziggy! 


Did nearly slip on the ice along the same lane to #4 - it's outrageous the council don't place salt along these roads; we did see several cars drive by, thankfully they didn't seem to have a problem. So, the time had come to calculate the coordinates for Ziggy's location. Nope, we weren't going to get him. The strangest locations were produced as I substituted possible numbers into the coordinates! 

Nevertheless, we continued. I really didn't want to finish without collecting Ziggy, so by this point I was raiding the CacheWalker shoutbox and texting Wrighty himself for help. Unfortunately, no one on CacheWalker could remember exactly where GZ was, and Wrighty was working so never got to see the texts on time. 

We did enjoy the remainder of the walk, with more stunning views to supplement for the DNFs on two of the four caches. This did make up for that, and, at the end of the day, for me, it's the walk that counts, and not the caches: and this was a simply fantastic route. Furthermore, on the plus-side, it's a reason to return, perhaps with the whole family, to pick up the two we missed. 

A highly recommended series - hopefully you can top it off with finding Ziggy but, if not, you won't get back to your car feeling disappointed!

Griff Grof

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