Had a two hourish hike to Down in the Dumks this morning which was a glorious walk in the peace and quiet of the countryside with the only sound being the crunch of snow under my feet, the river babbling away on my right (on the way home), the warbling of birds, oh - and I nearly forgot - the bangs of the gun club about 5 miles away and the low flying aircraft :-)
Seriously though, it was nice and peaceful and really relaxing with only the occasional disappearance of a foot in the occasional bog. I was hoping that the ground would still be frozen hard, but it looks like the sun had melted some of the snow so the ground had started to get rather damp again.
I also managed to bag a locationless cache of a rather large birdhouse.I had only seen this locationless about two days ago so it was an unexpected and pleasant suprise. Seeing this locationless reminded me of another cache that I had seen, Arboretum Walkabout. This will be logged when I get home and can upload the photo.
Went to Bollington this afternoon to the Saddle-Up Pale Lady! cache. The views were fantastic despite the snow a mile or so away from where I was (and a few flakes landing on my shoulders). Pictures from White Nancy are posted online and I'll be adding my own I hope.
Update The panorama pictures came out too dark, but pictures of some fancy mosaic artwork
We went geocaching on top of the roaches on Saturday where the wind was howling. Kristen at one point said she was going to wait in the car for me but I was really pleased when she appeared at the top a few minutes after I had been searching for the cache. This photo shows me at the trigpoint, being blown around by the wind and I'm waiting for Kristen to log her find for the cache so I can then upload her picture too.
Not only did they change the interface to pocket queries, but when I went to edit one today I found out that you can now have 20 queries defined, although only run 5 a day. This is much better as it means I can have queries for cities that I am likely to visit, like London, Birmingham etc, and only run them on a as needed basis. With the previous limit for only 5 queries I wasn't able to do this after having a query for found, caches near home and caches near my parents (to keep up to date with what they are up to!)
I won an auction on EBAY for TomTom and a gps for the pocketpc which should make navigating around the uk in search of those customers (and geocaches ) a lot easier. Basically the software is free of charge based on the prices for the CompactFlash GPS card and connecting cable. Looking forward to receiving it. I've found that one of the things that makes Geocaching harder is finding out where to park or even how to get to the place that I'm looking for and which street to take. Hopefully this software and hardware combinationg will help.
Arrived in London at 4.30 so had time to nip out for two caches. I managed to find the Brent River Cache (complete with smells!) but it looks like the locals got to the Elthorne Park one as that was suspiciously missing. The weird thing is that the latter was recently visited, but the former hadn't been visited for three months!
Placed a micro cache near Jodrell bank this morning. A nice walk out and placed in a field with a great view of the telescope. It was really quiet in the field - not a sound could be heard which was nice and relaxing.
Found NewBridge in Winsford this afternoon - yet another place and country park I didn't know existed. Was watched by a Heron that was standing the other side of the canal and didn't have to wait for walkers to get out of sight for once!
A long day today but a total of 7 caches found and 2 travel bugs after going to Superman's rest for the Northern meet. Logs found were Risley Moss and its tower. Then there was a clever hidden cache followed by a mistaken find. A walk right next to the motorway, a quick stay in the pub and then a wet walk to finish the day.
The GPS is back from repair. I sent it off last Thursday and it arrived back in the office on Wednesday (when I was out) so I picked it up on Thursday. They didn't repair it but replaced it with a new one. The new one comes with a UK basemap which is great as I only had the US one on the old unit and the new one has all the neat things like motorways and A-roads (and train stations) on it. The weird thing is the selection of roads that they put on. The A road from Congleton to Sandbach is on, but the one from Congleton to Holmes Chapel isn't. The road map should make it a lot easier to navigate around when I'm driving, although it does make the screen a bit more cluttered. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I go to the Northwest meetup in Bury. I hope to get several caches in as I've a weeks worth of catching up to do :-)