Day 222: 4 Sidetracked Caches, 3 FTFs, 2 Souvenirs & A Fish Pie For Our Tea

Ha! I’ve wanted to get a title like that for ages…

Firstly, we had a little plumbing incident this morning. Nothing too amazing, but it’s at least sorted. A slight leak from an outdoor pipe, that’s all. Luckily we had all these skilled plumbers come by to help us out, if you ever need help you should give them a call.

The appointment window we were given was from 8am until 6pm which meant clearing the day. As it happened, all was done and dusted by 10:30am giving us the rest of the day to do whatever we liked. Which, of course, meant geocaching!

Now, six years ago, a series of caches across the country was launched. These are all by at the side of railway stations and the first one was placed at Evesham station on August 10th 2007, placed by schnarff & bikermel76. Up until 28th July there are 1570 caches in the series to find… Anyway, today we grabbed four of them and since today was a celebration, we have an additional unofficial souvenir.

• GC2MV13: Sidetracked – Airedale Line: Saltaire – A very sneaky hide in a set of railings with a large hole inside it. Very close to the track too.
• GC2MTYA: SideTracked – Airedale Line: Shipley – A quick find here. The cache owner had provided a photo of the location to help people, but it wasn’t really needed as it was a pretty straightforward hide.
• GC2MQN1: Sidetracked – Airedale Line: Frizinghall – This was a lovely hide. It blended in perfectly with the surroundings and is something that hundreds of people pass everyday and wouldn’t bat an eyelid about.
• GC2MQGM: Sidetracked – Airedale Line: Forster Square – This one was a bit of a nightmare. It is very close to Bradford City’s football ground (they won, 4-0) and, of course, they were playing at home today. Still, we managed to grab this cache and get it signed relatively quickly.

We found two other caches around Bradford too to keep up the numbers; GC3VQWD was hidden in a little subway just under a railway line and GC3N9JT was located under a set of steps by the road.

While we were out, a set of 9 or 10 caches were published very close to home. This was very frustrating as, as I’ve written before, being FTF (first to find) on a cache is quite prestigious – obviously there can only be one FTF for every cache released. Today, we gained three more FTFs from the following caches:

• GC4JE61: Mr Men Collection – Mr Daydream
• GC4JE6F: Mr Men Collection – Mr Lazy
• GC4JE6B: Mr Men Collection – Mr Bump

The creator of Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves, was born in Cleckheaton and, since Mr Tickle was first published in 1971, 85 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and these caches are meant to celebrate him. Since these are fairly new, I won’t go into their locations here.

Today’s souvenir is below.

The day ended with a lovely fish pie made by Mrs Pitts. A really nice day.