Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. Two days before Christmas … the turkey was defrosting, the homemade Christmas pudding had been checked (a year old but fine), and all was pretty much under control, Christmas-wise.    On a dry, bright morning we made our way to Kingsclere in north Hampshire for some geocaching in the countryside around the village.   We planned to find the caches in the Kingsclere Kaper series, and maybe add in a few others as we went. From the Fieldgate Centre on the edge of the village, we made our way uphill along a country lane and into the bare, wintry coun ..read more

A morning of reminiscing for Mr Hg137 who used to live about a mile or so from Buckhurst Meadow, on the outskirts of Wokingham. Back then the area was known as Buckhurst Farm and in the late 90s, the area could have been made the stadium for Wokingham Town FC. Instead local residents complained, the football club move was vetoed, and an estate of 620 houses was built. As well as the housing estate much of the farmland has been turned into a 30-acre country park ideal for walking around and of course geocaching! Normally our diaries are quite busy on a Thursday, but today, a few days before Ch ..read more

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. Don’s Gin Tonic Rabbit Like my owner, I love travelling and drinking Gin Tonics. My mission is to see nice hotels/hostels and bars and even planes and airports!  ‘Nice’ doesn’t have to be ‘expensive’,of course. Any hotel, hostel, bar or plane you like and which has an interesting touch or view is well worth it. If possible, and the barkeeper allows it, take a picture with me at a bar with a bottle of Gin. Preferably with Hendrick’s or Bombay Sapphire, but that’s just my owners personal preference…  Please handle me with care and take me to places around the wor ..read more

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. Manor Park, Aldershot After a cold, wet start to the month, Friday dawned bright and sunny.  We headed off to Aldershot for a morning’s caching on dry (we hoped) pavements. We found a parking space in a quiet suburban road, and strolled along to our first cache, hidden close to St. Mary’s, the first of four Church Micro caches we would attempt today (Church Micro, or CM geocaches are hidden near churches / chapels / cathedrals, active or redundant.  There are just over 15000 in the series, making it the largest geocache series in the world.) From there, we made ..read more

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. St Mary’s, Kingsclere Kingsclere : as described by a local resident and fellow geocacher, TadleyTrailblazers:   Kingsclere has a Post Office, three pubs, two local stores, a library, hairdresser, butchers, and art gallery, everything a small community could want in this north Hampshire village.  A bustling parish with strong community ties and a unique, friendly atmosphere, Kingsclere is a fantastic place to sample the surrounding views and neighbouring villages. This area inspired the novelist Richard Adams to create the world-famous story of Watership Do ..read more

The rain had subsided. The roads were less flooded. It seemed a good day to complete the Yateley Lakes series that we had started 4 days previously. We had 3 Yateley Lakes caches to find, a couple of stages from a 5-stage ad lab, and one other cache part of the 50+ cache Drive By series. We could have driven to this cache ourselves, but it was only a short walk from one of the Yateley Lake caches, so we decided to include it in our morning’s walk. We parked the car in an almost identical spot to our previous visit, and Mrs Hg137 set about getting the ad lab started on her phone. For some inex ..read more

A new-ish series had been placed around Yateley Lakes. This is an area we have walked and cached several times. It seems a popular place for a cache owner to place a few caches, leave them in place for a couple of years and then remove them, allowing the space for other caches to be placed. We had previously found two of the Yateley Lakes caches in 2018 and 2021, but now there were another 10 to find. The River Blackwater runs parallel to the Lakes, and perhaps it was not a good idea to undertake a series so close to a river and lakes the day after 2/3 of an inch had fallen. Hindsight is wond ..read more

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. After a very wet few weeks, a countryside geocaching trip was not really an option (way too muddy!). As an alternative, to find a 5-stage Adventure Lab (AdLab) cache based around Sandhurst Memorial Park and Shepherd Meadows.  We hoped we would stay dry! How AdLab caches work: Using your mobile as a GPS, you find your way to various locations, then answer a question which your phone reveals once you are there.   After visiting all the locations, that completes the AdLab cache.  It’s similar to a multicache, which offers up clues and numbers at each st ..read more

Hello, Mrs Hg137 here. Ockwells Manor … plus tank! Finally the sun came out.  But it had rained on each of the last 13 days – a total of 78.6 mm or 3 inches – and everywhere was waterlogged.   Where could we go, and have a chance of staying mainly dry?   We chose Ockwells Park which lies to the west of Maidenhead, just north of the M4 and just west of the A404M.  Some of the park was once part of the Ockwells Manor Estate, and the manor house can be seen to the west of the park.   The park opened to the public in the 1980s and now includes a café, a ..read more

The trackable is in the form of a pseudo-ticket for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. The steam railway runs for 13.5 miles along the Kent coastline to Dungeness. The locomotives and carriages are 1/3 actual size… so its a bit of a squeeze! We travelled on the railway in June 2010 (in our pre-geocaching days). Back in 2018, a German geocacher was so impressed by the railway, they purchased the pseudo-ticket (from presumably a gift shop), attached it to a trackable tag and sent it on its way. In reality the gecoacher placed it in a cache near Dungeness Power Station, retrieved it second ..read more