Waseley Country Park

Just before the 'slide' downhill!

The weather being a bit wet yesterday, with nowhere to take the kids to expel some of their energy, as they were driving us up the wall, we decided to take a chance with the weather. We all jumped into the car and headed out towards Waseley Country Park, Rubery.

Upon arrival, there was a break in the clouds with some sun shining through. Yay!

We took the Rabbit trail and walked for a while and I remembered where a cache was and the Golden Eagles attempted to find it, and it was soon in hand.

Carrying on walking round after the cache, we entered the valley where the two eldest GE's decided to go up the hill and run down, not a good idea! Em had run too fast, tripped, then slid about 15ft along the grass on her front, laughing as she slid. Luckily, she wasn't hurt.

After recovering, we walked a little further into the wooded area and I soon spotted another GZ for them to attempt, and after a minutes search, had the cache and log signed.

Walking on further, we came up to the top of the hill towards the end of the trail, the wind was very strong and cold after the shelter of the valley below, by this time the GE's decided it was time to go to the play area back near the car park.

A lovely walk and dry weather made it an enjoyable afternoon, and hopefully get the GE's back into caching with me ... fingers crossed!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Busy, Busy, Busy!

It's been a very busy week, not only at work, but caching and Munzee hunting too!

The caching trip around Brewood was amazing and very tiring, 12 miles approximately were covered, 40 caches and a bunch of Munzee thrown in for good measure. The company was fantastic, couldn't ask for a better day, apart from my legs, they were almost dropping off!

During the week I spent several nights deploying Munzee around Uffmoor Wood, Halesowen, 28 in total, then Team Munzee had organised a Munzee Double Points Weekend, and during this time I had covered Sutton Park (with -Ako-), Dartmouth Park, Merrions Wood, Warrens Hall Nature Reserve, and the Trees & Silver series, bagging 188 Munzee in total, and my legs survived.

There's a group meeting for the West Mids Geocaching on Friday night this week to do 3 new FMF (Fungimanforager) caches, so I'm looking forward to attending that now. If you have never attempted FMF caches, shame on you, get out there and do some, you will not be disappointed!

Where Have I Been?

Good question. Where HAVE I been?

Not long after my last post a friend of mine, who was also into geocaching, told me about a new game that was still in its infancy and did not have many people playing it around the world. The game was Munzee.

My friend told me that all I needed to play was a smartphone and to open an account on the website, www.munzee.com. Since then I have been capturing, deploying and setting up the First UK Munzee Meet (1UKMM) in November, and getting myself into the top 50 players in the world, currently I am in 36th position!

Don't begin to think that I have stopped caching, I haven't, I have just stepped down a notch on getting out to do them, and along with my family and work, it has been very difficult lately trying to do both.

Most of my caching now seems to be done with several other friends as a group, either a night cache or during a weekend camping, and tomorrow quite a few of us are off to do a series at 6am!

Yes, I know, I've mentioned Geocaching and Munzee in the same place, and now, in the same sentence, well it is my blog and I can do what I want! :oP

Check out my munzee website for more information: www.munzee.info

A Good Meet Followed By Total Frustration

Tuesday night was Brummie Meet 8: The One That's Late, held at Bennetts, Bennetts Hill in Birmingham. It was a good night having a chat with old and new cachers, swapping ideas, tips and TB's. A big 'Thank you' to Dave Higginson (AKA Strangler) for organising the meeting.

At the end of the meet, I decided to give RR Camo in Woodgate Valley a go due to there being so many DNF's since it was published at the beginning of the month.

The first three, RR Stick, RR Brick and RR Chocolate I managed to find without much difficulty, then when I attempted RR Log, I had no joy, so off I went to the one everyone is chatting about, RR Camo.

Arriving at the GZ all was quiet and there was a bit of light from the almost half moon providing some light in the trees. GPS was not too bad until entering the trees, then it just froze.

Now, everyone who has attempted this one so far has entered DNF on the GC website, I was determined not to! Tree after tree, bush after bush, blade of grass after blade of grass, no joy. I even tried to think 'outside the box' by checking anything that resembled a tree, still no joy.

Time was dragging on, so it was time to admit defeat after several hours and join the DNF Crew on this one!

The Lord will return!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Crobba's Severn Micro Mayhem: GC2R5PA

Last night Geohatter came up trumps and published this little series, Crobba's Severn Micro Mayhem: GC2R5PA, placed along the river Severn in Stourport-upon-Severn.

My daughter was appearing in the school Spring Show, and by the time I got home after, the series had been published for nearly 2 hours, meant that the regular FTFers were probably out claiming.

The evening slowly went by and I kept checking the logs and noticed on the Facebook caching group for West Midlands, Basketcase Crew was asking if anyone was interested in going, then changed their mind, so eventually by 23:30hrs I made the decision to attempt FTF on the series.

I had decided to start at the north end of the series and hop from one to the next by car, as most of them were within 300yrds of the road.

The first was No. 4, and after realising 'where' I needed to be, soon had the cache in hand. Next it was a quick jog in the rain to No. 3, and a quick find, then back to the car. After attempting to drive to No. 5, and failing, I then drove to the south end of the series, No. 9.

The car was quickly parked and I ran over to where the GPS was pointing, for No. 9, and couldn't believe I literally put my hand on the cache immediately. At this rate of finding the caches, I'll be finished in no time, but that was going to be proved to be the opposite later on, so back to the car and onto No. 8.

A short drive followed by a quick walk down to the cache area and No. 8 was soon in hand. Great, a nice quick series and so far FTF on each, back to the car we go for No. 7, sounds like a perfume.

Now this is where finding the caches was going to prove to be more difficult than anticipated! After approaching the GZ to No. 7, GPS was starting to play around with the rain clouds overhead. I was hoping this would be another quick find, but no, no chance of that! Things were not smelling rosy anymore after a good 20-30 minutes of searching and getting wetter by the second. I did eventually find a discarded man-made item nearby to help me look, and the cache was soon found.

No. 6 was next, and this was proving a little more difficult to get as well. The rain had made everything very slippy, and the steep slopes were hard to manage, but with perseverance, I soon had the cache in hand.

My energy was now dwindling after struggling back up the hill, and I soon drove to No. 5, to obtain another quick find.

It was now getting very late/early, and there were still two caches to go, No. 1 & 2, I was tired and the thought of doing these two didn't appeal as they were probably the furthest ones from the road, which meant a longer hike.

I parked my car on the main road, as close to No. 1 as possible, I had decided to do the last two as it seemed a shame to not attempt them while I was here.

Eventually after a long walk, I reached No. 1 GZ, and searched every possible place I could think of and after 20 minutes, I went back to one of the places I first looked, and yes, as usual, it's always in the first place you looked! Now, No. 2, here I come for FTF for the whole series!

Even though my energy was diminishing, I ran to No. 2 and it was a glorious quick find and FTF! YES!

All in all, the series is a very enjoyable one, from cache and dash to scratch and search. A definite 'must do', night or day, on your own, with a group or with the kids, but beware the river is very close!

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Lord Bazil Barrington III

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

New iBlogger iPhone App Update - Version 2.0.1

Just released yesterday, Tuesday March 22, 2011, the new updated version of iBlogger, v2.0.1 for the iPhone updated to v4.3 OS, and costs £2.99 at the moment.

The previous version of iBlogger was very good, but limited to only publishing text to your blog, which is OK as long as you don't have any pictures to publish along with it, the new updated version now allows you to upload a picture along with your text. Now this is fine, but the drawback now is that you can only upload one image per publication, so it's back to using the desktop to add in those extra pictures. Sigh!

One little bug I have with the app, is that you can only publish and not upload to the blog for editing later, which is a shame, as I prefer to be able to edit/tweak the blog entry on my desktop before publication.

The app can only get better with each version. Hopefully!

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Lord Bazil Barrington III

The Dawning Of A New Cache

The past few weeks I have been pondering over a new cache and a way to hide/blend it into the surroundings, and after I had already done two unusual ones for my 'Three R's; Recycle, Reduce, Reuse' caches, I managed to complete a local cache, Gargantuan, and I felt I had to try and come up with something half as good again.

During the past week I have been trying to set up a multi cache with hopefully a bit of a difference, I won't let on at the moment what it is, but I hope the Bonus cache will be an eye opener!

Now, we received a polystyrene box at home the other day and I was about to throw it out when I suddenly thought, I can make use of this. So here goes ...

Here is a list of the things I needed;

• Plastic bottle with cap
• Polystyrene
• Cling film
• Pritt Stick
• Scissors
• Filler - I've used the wall filler type
• Water
• Scraper
• Spray paints for camouflage

First I had to glue two pieces of flat polystyrene together to make it thicker, it needs to be deeper than the cap and bottle neck. Next, while the glue dries, I cut the neck of the bottle off and trimmed it. Then I put a small piece of cling film over the base of the neck to stop any filler entering the cap/cache area.

Once the glue was dry on the polystyrene block, I scratched out the centre area to make a hollow, making sure the bottle neck with the cap on, was almost below the top edge. I then rolled some cling film into a sausage shape first, then wrapped it around the thread of the neck, keeping the lip below the thread clear to help secure it in the filler.

Once I had finished making a nice, odd shaped hollow, ensuring I didn't go through the other side, I mixed up a batch of filler with water, then the filler was slowly poured into the mould, just enough to sit the bottle neck slightly higher than the top. The bottle neck was then placed in and the remainder of the filler was then poured in up to the top level of the polystyrene.

Once the filler was set over night, the whole thing was carefully removed from the mould and left to dry out further.

When the filler was completely dry, the cling film around the thread was removed and the edge of the hole was chamfered to allow chubby fingers to open/close the cap.

Now it was down to the camouflaging, this will depend on where you wish to hide the cache as to what you use, for this one I sprayed all over with Matt black, then from a greater distance a couple of different browns to allow the black to show through, doing this made it look like a piece of broken Tarmac.

My cache is now completed and ready for hiding. You could disguise it further with some moss and dirt from the area it will be hidden to help blend it in better, or before spraying, smooth out the outside to make it look like a stone.

Hope you enjoy making your caches using this method as much as I have, and good luck in hiding it!

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Lord Bazil Barrington III