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“100 caches in one day”. Well, why not? That was the target that lured me out for a two hour drive to Cranborne and GC3EEXH. A “15 ish” mile circular walk on a pleasant day.
My normal walking range is 10-12 miles, but this looked quite flat on streetview and aerial maps so I thought I’d push it a little.
With some extra caches en route and two church multis, this should have put me at exactly 100 caches. As it turned out I only achieved 97, but it was enough for me not to be tempted by more on the way home.
The caches themselves were mostly micros, generally good coords and usually quick to find. I met another cacher at the first church micro, and met up with him later in the day.
It took me almost eight hours at a caching average of 2mph (3mph walk + searching time), totalling 15.52 miles with just a half hour of breaks.
Good bits!
– Lovely scenery. This bit of Dorset really is very pretty.
– Mostly off-road walking, and what is on-road is very quiet. (I met only one car apart from the busy main road crossings)
– Solitude. For two hours on each leg I saw nobody. I value quality time like this.
– A real get-your-teeth-into-it circular walk that gives a proper sense of achievement.
– Some historical bits – an iron age hill fort and lots of Barrows. Pretty churches and well kept arable fields. I felt an almost mystical tranquility at Penbury Knoll Fort (GC2BJD1)
– Incredibly, almost no mud! The footpaths were well tended and mostly well signed, well cut-back and easy going. After the HALO and Parracombe, this was nice!
– A personal best mileage, a personal best cache total and a good sense of achievement.
– No litter! Seriously, not even near the roads. It puts most Devon walks, including much of Dartmoor, to shame in this regard.The bad bits:
– A blister at 12 miles that grew and took five days to go down.
– An inability to walk for the next couple of days.
– Other cachers logging non-existent caches as “found”. There was one cache that had a very explicit clue: “In a hole in top of a post”. There was only one post at GZ and it had a big hole with some small pebbles in, but no cache. I logged as DNF but I was the first. There were several “TFTC” finds after mine then a week later another cacher reported the same as I did and added “Replaced cache, found”. This dented my faith in other cachers a bit that they were just pinging each one and made me question how many of the “I found all 100 caches!” brigade were totally truthful, or whether they wanted the round figure so much they stretched the truth. I firmly believe every DNF should be reported for the CO and other cacher’s sakes, so was a little disappointed that others found something that wasn’t there. I’m pretty sure this occured for at least one other on the route that I DNF’d. (And just in case anyone thinks it’s me being grumpy, I DNF’d one that the other cacher I met had found that day, so I’m quite happy to believe that was there and it was just me!)
– Some samey and difficult “Hidden in ivy” caches on the final quarter. Most of the caches were samey, being just film pots, often in hedges. Parracombe has similar density but the variety is much better there and keeps the interest.
– Damp logs. Probably 1/3 were damp, and half of those almost unsignable. Very wet year though, and the CCC is hardly alone in this.
– Not as flat as streetview suggested! I should’ve known – they don’t tend to build hill forts in flat areas!Recommended? Of course! My track is here; http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/oeu20VyhBQ0
Who needs a 100 caches in one day – I’ve just completed the World’s Shortest Power Trail and I was very satisfied with that 🙂
We managed just over 50 in one day on HALO and that was more than enough, we really couldn’t wait to get to the end. My own view is that the maximum for any trail should be an average of 4 per mile which doesn’t then completely ruin a good walk.
As you mention these trails cause really sloppy caching: copy & paste logs, logging as found caches you didn’t find, not logging your DNFs, not logging Needs Maintenance and not bothering to rehide caches. But as we all know “It’s all about the numbers!”
It was me Dave, I needed 100 in a day.
But it wasn’t particularly the number 100 or even the quality of the caches making up that 100. It was the challenge to prove to myself that I could actually do it. GH.
We too wanted to find 100 caches in a day to meet the challenge.
Challenges are set so that other cachers can enjoy meeting them. We have set several ourselves and hopefully they have been enjoyed by their finders
This is not everybodies idea of what caching is about but in our caching we like to indulge in a little bit of everything.
Some challenges are easy and so is this one. We found our 100 in under 3 hours and this included 2 DNFs.
Holy moly! You did a 15mile route in less than three hours AND found 100 caches?! That’s walking faster than 5mph! My average is 3.7 (according to Map My Walk anyway!) how on earth did you manage that?! Did you sprint between caches? 🙂
I’ll let Hobo confirm, but I don’t think this post refers to the CCC and I don’t believe they were walking 🙂
I like to take in the views, the smells, the wildlife, enjoy the company of my dog and get some nice good quality caches. Anything between 5 and 20 is just fine for me on a days walking. Each to their own. I have no desire to do 100 caches in a day. It might bump my tally up but when I sit back to reflect on those caches found I reckon my memories would be just one big blur.
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