After over 6 months of planning the 31 caches of the Skir Hill Trail have now been placed. The 3 bonus caches have already been published and the remaining 28 caches will be published at 6am on Good Friday.
Planning started on the series way back in September and I had agreement with the reviewer on all the locations and only had to place the caches, but then Remote was published. Not wishing to have two new major series published at the same time, I delayed the Skir Hill Trail. Unfortunately, December, January and February were awful months, so it was not until March that I could look at it again.
Skir Hill Trail is a roughly circular route that can be completed either clockwise or anti-clockwise. There is an outward bonus about halfway around, but the necessary information is available in both directions. There is an inward bonus and a final bonus, so lots of information to be gathered as you go. Each cache description states if there is bonus information available and for which bonus.
The trail terrain is more difficult than Dart’moor’s Double Dozen, there are less paths, more hills and more stream crossings. As usual with remote caches, most of them are fairly simple under-rock hides, but there are a few more difficult ones, as you will discover and I have tried a couple of new cache types.
This is not intended as a simple 5 mile stroll with 30 easy caches – but you knew that anyway! It’s a DD series, with no meaningful hints and no spoiler photos, so please allow all day if you wish to complete it. If possible, please do make some notes as I read with interest every single log, so the copy and paste log is a bit boring when you get it 31 times! This is the most complicated series I have put together, but hopefully it will all work. If you have any problems please call me on 01822 880260 or 07973 159510, but I won’t be giving any hints or clues.
The Outward Bonus and the Final Bonus both contain unactivated 2014 Dartmoor Geocoins as FTF prizes. Hopefully these will go to different geocachers. The Inward Bonus has an activated 2014 Dartmoor Geocoin which is NOT a FTF prize but is to be moved on as a normal geocoin. It is probably the only one of these coins to have been “released”.
A final mention must go to our reviewer Calluna Tib. Thank you so much for your help in publishing this series and for meeting the rather tough deadline I asked for. Many thanks indeed.
reb10 – I found the distance to be just right. Took just over five hours for a total of 7.1 miles and no really steep bits if done in the order given (apart from the road back to the carpark)
Overall a very enjoyable pass, although the lower even-numbers by the stream weren’t to my taste. Fiddly micros and difficult to reach with gorse, bogs and fences. Really enjoyed the rest of it though, and recommend it to others.
Thanks dartymoor, a very fair summary. I knew that 02 to 10 would not be to everybody’s taste but I do like to vary caches & hides as much as possible and a nice stream with trees provides many more opportunities than the open moor. At least they are near to Saddle Bridge if anybody wants to pop back to find the ones they missed.
Many thanks also for the unique set of logs, very enjoyable to read 😉
🙂 Congratulations to all who have attempted the Skir Hill Trail and to those with FTFs. The distribution of FTFs couldn’t have been better with no fewer than 6 cachers or groups of cachers getting a FTF 🙂
😛 Ochico – 11 FTFs (including Outward Bonus)
😛 dave59 – 10 FTFs
😛 just-jake – 5 FTFs
😛 Westwardho!, kidicarus & lambrettamod74 – 2 FTFs (including Inward Bonus)
😛 Mollys Maraunders – 1 FTF
😛 Dizzycacher – 1 FTF
😆 😆 😆 Westwardho! & kidicarus – FTF on the Final Bonus
😎 Special mention to the wanderingwillies who are the only cachers to have found all 31 caches and who managed it in one day taking approximately 9 hours.
Lambrettamod74 always writes excellent logs and Westwardho! and Kidicarus could find a needle in a haystack 😉
It will be interesting to see how many cachers manage to complete the walk in one day.
Maybe 31 caches is too many and expecting 31 unique logs, well i struggle finding interesting things to say on a trail of 15 caches.
It might be a case of taking a tent 😉 it will be a nice couple of days though 😀
Not only did Westwardho! kidicarus and lambrettamod74 visit my 31 caches yesterday (they didn’t find them all 😛 ) they found another 10 on the way and each of them wrote unique logs on every cache AND it tipped it down with rain most of the way! So it can easily be done and many thanks to them for their very interesting and amusing logs.
This is one of lambrettamod74’s “TFTC…Out with Who!….Kidicarus….my Ian and dodge ….no not another climb…my little legs are broken ….my backs killing me …Id get on dodge but he’s soaked ….on we go”
All her logs end with “on we go” 😛
Not a huge interest in the series so far, but I’m very pleased to note that the FTFs have been spread around 5 different caching groups and there are still 2 caches yet to be found 😆 . I’m always amazed at how easy my most difficult caches seem to be, and although they might hold cachers up for 20 minutes or so, almost everything has been found 😯 .
And yet I have still received comments about the lack of hints and spoilers, as though everybody has the right to find a cache instantly, just because they got to GZ 😮 ! There are enough trivial caches around and I have no intention of adding to them. I just wish I could make mine a bit more difficult 👿 !
Nice one, Dave. Looking forward to it. 😆