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Even though we really enjoyed our week away around the Fowey area and collecting the HALO caches there is nothing like getting back on our beloved Dartmoor

Whilst we were away it was great to see that a few new caches had been placed and some were still to be found on our return.  Red Roaming had been very busy placing 5, but 4 had still not been found!  We missed out by a few minutes on a FTF on Nuthatch but I recorded a FTF on Grass Moth, taking advantage of an unexpected no firing day.  A week later and the lack of any activity on I’m Watching drew us in that direction.  This has to be one of the wettest places on Dartmoor and even after we reached GZ there was still another hour’s searching to be done!  Even now, 3 weeks later, no-one else has ventured that way!

And then there was Goldcrest

3 weeks after it had been placed there was still no interest and so of course I had to go and visit!  Read the logs for a full account of what has occurred, but all I need to say here is that I still haven’t found it!

My thanks to Red Roaming for all of these caches which I highly recommend to others who like a trek into the remoter parts of Dartmoor.  IMHO every RR cache (found or not) is worth a dozen HALO caches!

We always knew that HALO would not be easy to organise into circular walks and that we were likely to end up with a difficult group of caches to finish on.  With hindsight we should have abandoned our ideal of “no c&ds” and just driven around the roads in the Blazey area to complete the series.  But no, I had to come up with another circular walk!  So we walked over 6.7 miles, almost all of it on roads, to attempt another 15 HALO caches to complete the series.

There was no real highlight of this final day, the Par Beach Nature Reserve being as good as it got!  One reasonable cache, Marshy Marshy, was found, and a stupid error on Feeding Ducks Again, led to a DNF.  Worse was to come with a DNF on HALO – St Feock and then it tipped it down with rain as we walked back to the car.  So a very disappointing end to the HALO series.

Our HALOed Thoughts!

To be fair, it has to be said that HALO did attract us to the area and although it certainly wasn’t “all about the numbers” for us, that certainly was an influence, and we did want to experience a “UK power trail”.

Had there only been HALO caches in the area, I think we would have been very disappointed.  By the very nature of a power trail, the hides have to be trivial and the caches very easy to find. Regrettably though, this also leads to some really sloppy caching.  No effort had been made to hide several of the caches, signatures were anywhere on the logs (not in the next available space) and when it came to logging the caches it got worse.

Almost nobody (our dartymoor being a notable exception) had bothered to make notes and right unique logs.  Logs, from some very experienced cachers were just copied and pasted (some apologised but still did it!) or the same couple of words in every log.  Almost no caches had been logged as needing maintenance, although many needed it, and worse of all, so many cachers did not log their DNFs, very obvious when you are following them around!

For the most part, the HALO route follows the Saints Way which is not the most interesting of routes, missing out many of the more interesting features of the area, like the Luxulyan Valley and the coastal path.  HALO does deviate on to the coastal path but of its 23 miles, 12.6 miles are on roads.  The caches are very repetitive, many being large plastic bottle with brightly coloured lids, but there is some variation and several hybrids for those with stamps.  Disappointingly, several caches have been hidden in or on dry stone walls.

Fortunately this area is full of attractions and a whole host of very interesting and scenic places are not far away.  The highlights for us were definitely the Luxulyan Valley, the coastal path, Fowey and Helman Tor, all of which are well worth visiting whether you are geocaching or not.  We carefully plotted circular walks to take in as many caches as we could and we increased the 121 of HALO to a total of 165, but increased our walking from 23 miles to 44.3 miles in doing so.

I think one of the local cachers summed up HALO for us.  When I indicated that I found it a little tedious, he replied “I know what you mean, but it has to be done”.  A bit like Ben Nevis, probably one of the least interesting walks I have even done, but it’s there and you have to do it!

Our final thoughts – yes, we were very pleased that we had come to this area, very pleased to have completed HALO (with only 2 DNFs) and very pleased to have visited the other local places of interest.  So a big thank you for those responsible for placing and maintaining HALO, I am sure that it will attract far more cachers still.  However, it is very clear to us, that for the vast majority who have attempted HALO it is “all about the numbers!”

Please leave any comments under the HALO Discussion Forum and not here

Today was the best forecast day of the week and so we reserved this for a walk along the coastal path west of Fowey.  We would have liked to have included the section immediately south-
west of Fowey but we didn’t think we would have enough time as that would add another couple of miles.

We managed to turn this into a circular walk, out and north on the coastal path, back and east on the Saints Way. Unfortunately the HALO route doesn’t keep to the Saints Way but also follows some of the coastal path, so our return route had a long stretch without any caches.

We parked at Coombe Farm and walked south-west to pick up the coastal path and also a couple of caches on the way.  This route takes you past Polridmouth one of the many places that inspired Daphne du Maurier when writing her novel ‘Rebecca’.  The series of ponds were built as decoys for Fowey harbour during the Second World War.

We continued south-west to Gribbin Tower where there were superb views in all directions and then headed north to Polkerris picking up some very nice caches on the way and awarding a couple of favourites.  The HALO route joins the coastal path at Polkerris and we continued north to Polmear.

Our biggest disappointment of our trip so far came on this stretch of the coastal path as we failed to find HALO – St Crida, our first HALO DNF!  Initially I almost walked over the cliff edge following the GPS before I realised that the cache was directly beneath me.  However, having studied the description, hint and previous logs we just couldn’t find it.  A real shame as this was undoubtedly the best location (and probably hide) of any of the HALO caches and one that would have deserved a favourite!

We turned around at Polmear, returning to Polkerris on the Saints Way and then continued along this route back to Fowey picking up HALO caches on the way.  Regretfully, a few of these caches had been placed in dry stone walls and one had even been hidden using stones that had originally come from the wall!

This was by far the most enjoyable day of our trip so far, the weather and scenery being excellent along the coastal path.  In total we took 8 hours 40 minutes to walk our 10 miles and to find and log 25 caches of which 15 were HALO caches.

We always knew that apart from the northern loop, HALO did not lend itself to circular walks and that ideally two cars would be necessary, one at each end of a section.  We didn’t have that luxury so we arranged for a taxi to take us to Fowey so that we could walk back. Unfortunately we arranged to be dropped off west of Fowey right by a cache, only to discover that it was of unknown type, for which we hadn’t prepared! The next cache we discovered was missing and had been disabled, so we got the day off to a bad start.

We eventually arrived in Fowey to start this section of HALO, but of course these were urban micro type caches, which we don’t normally favour.  However, looking back over the day, these were probably the highlight of the day! No, the highlight of the day was undoubtedly our visit to Pinky Murphy’s located on North Street as you leave Fowey.  This is a delightful, eclectic, dog-friendly, internet café which might seem more appropriate in a city but which we really liked and which provided us with hot chocolate and cake.

Fowey is a lovely town and has a charming mix of back street alleys and little lanes with numerous interesting shops and eating places and probably our favourite Cornish town.  The required route took us down several of these alleys and lanes and the various HALO caches we found were all well placed in interesting spots.

On leaving Fowey we made a big mistake which cost us time and energy.  Thinking we could get off the main road we chose a parallel footpath which took us onto the private dock road and we found ourselves under the next cache and had to retrace our steps to get back on track.

There is very little of interest to relate about this stretch of HALO except that it consists of 49 caches on a route of 8.4 miles, only 2.4 miles of which are off road.  However, we managed to walk 11.3 miles taking us 10 hours 20 minutes to find and log those 49 HALO caches, plus just one other cache.  We did really want to find the Sawmills cache, but didn’t spot how to get there and we were way behind schedule anyway.  In fact we found the last cache in total darkness with the light of our torch, which we then used to return to the car parked at Lanlivery.

To avoid you embarrassment, I’ll start off with a very useful tip – its pronounced Luck-silly-un.  Fortunately we had this from a taxi driver early on which certainly helped!

The weather forecast forced us to change our plans for Day 2 and we opted for a shorter walk so as to not to be too far from the car should the worse occur.  We decided to visit the Luxulyan Valley first and then to take in some more of the HALO series later.

The Luxulyan Valley was certainly the find of the week and somewhere we would never have found without the excellent Luxulyan Valley series of caches.  We originally had no intention of bothering with the Earth Cache as well, but as soon as we saw the area, it became a must to do!

The Luxulyan Valley is probably the most fascinating area we have encountered since moving to the south-
west just over 3 years ago.  There’s no point in me writing too much here but to point you to this site which gives an excellent overview: Luxulyan Valley  The series of caches was brilliant and took us all around the Valley and the earth cache asked a few questions, both a real must for anybody visiting the area.

Having completed our walk around the Valley we took to the road to link up once again with HALO.  No roads this time, but some nice footpaths through a lovely area.  A total of 13 caches took us back to the car, only 8 of which were HALO, so not really a HALO day at all!  Just before we got back to the car we crossed the  Treffry viaduct, which carried the tramway high above the valley.  However, this amazing structure is also an aquaduct as it carries a leat below the tramway!

We then drove to the pub at Luxulyan where the bonus cache is for the Luxulyan Valley series.  However, we had two bonus letters missing so were unable to solve the bonus which will have to wait for our next visit to this lovely area.  In total we walked 7.3 miles, taking 6 hours 20 minutes to find and log our 21 caches, plus 1 earth cache and 1 DNF on the Luxulyan Valley series.

You may wonder why I am describing our HALO experience on the Dartmoor web site, but you can reach HALO in less than an hour from west Dartmoor.  In fact we started the day reasonably early, drove to our cottage at Chark Farm (picking up 5 c&ds on the way), dropped our stuff and still managed to start this northern loop of HALO just before midday.

We parked at Lanlivery and walked clockwise around the loop, which means we did the convenient Well2Well series before we started on HALO.

Almost all of these preliminary caches were a very easy to find mixture of mainly micros and small caches, which adequately served their purpose of linking east HALO with west HALO.

We started HALO with a couple of micros, but then cache after cache turned out to be plastic bottles in a variety of very easy hides running northwards for about 3kms.

Before we started HALO we had decided to abandon our normal caching strategy (which is to only look at the hint as a last resort) but immediately changed our mind as the hides were so easy that we needed at least some sort of challenge!

After we passed the half way mark and had found 28 caches, we took the opportunity of leaving HALO for the Butterfly Walk cache in the Breney Common Nature Reserve.  This cache is well worth the detour, the best cache of the day to date and a favourite awarded!  It’s a real shame that this cache has been here since 2007 but has far less finds than the HALO caches placed this year!

The best part of the HALO route was that past Helman Tor where once again we deviated from HALO for a climb to the top of the tor where we found the excellent Lone Tor cache and awarded another favorite.  After all, it felt like Dartmoor!

By the time we got back to the car at Lanlivery we were very tired and it was almost dark.  We had walked 9 miles, over half of it on roads, and had taken just under 7 hours to find, log and make notes on 47 caches.  With the 5 c&ds we found earlier we had found 52 caches for the day, and a new record for us!

Our thoughts for today: The northern HALO loop is a nice mix of quiet lanes and footpaths but the caches are very repetitive and the vast majority almost trivial to find, although they certainly do boost the numbers.  However, the 2 best caches were those we found when we diverted from HALO!

Judy and I (plus, of course, the Tigger hound) have managed to “escape” for a few days from the centre of Dartmoor and have decided to have a crack at the HALO series north of Fowey in Cornwall. We’ve watched several of these mega-loops appearing in the south-west and thought we would experience one first hand and share our thoughts using the blog.

It was immediately clear that more planning would be required for 120 caches than the normal loop of a dozen or so and our normal method of printing a page for each cache showing the last 10 logs would probably be a nightmare.  So the preparation included using an existing bookmark list for HALO, creating another one for an additional 50 or so nearby caches, creating a pocket query for each list, importing both of these to my Apple Mac, exporting the caches to MemoryMap (MM) on my PC, creating routes using MM to include all the caches over 5 separate walks (one for each day), exporting the caches to Excel and reordering them to match the 5 planned routes!  So quite simple then!

Whilst I was trying to get my head around all the technical stuff, Judy was doing the practical stuff like finding where we could stay – a self catering place which would take the Tigger hound.  Judy soon found Chark Country Holidays, located just west of Lostwithiel and ideally situated for HALO.

More to follow …

These are the details of the new land owner’s agreement negotiated with both the DNPA and our Groundspeak reviewers.  The covering paragraph in italics is the most important one from the reviewers’ point of view as it enables them to publish caches within SSSI’s without specific permission for each cache and this has been the main stumbling block throughout.

The DNPA guidelines are very similar to the old letterboxing ones and we should have no problems with them.  I asked them to add the dry stone wall rule as I have seen far too many damaged by caches.  However, damage is likely with caches placed near to a wall, so these should also be avoided or a very clear statement made in the description to say that the cache is not in the wall.

Please refer to the Geocaching Guidelines on the DNPA website (included below).  Please note that caches placed on common land within the National Park are permitted within SSSI areas without specific permission being required.  Dartmoor is home to a range of important species of ground-nesting birds and caches must be positioned so as not to disturb sensitive wildlife or placed within archaeological sites.  Caches placed on CROW access land may require landowner permission and you are advised to check with DNPA.

Geocaching Guidelines for Dartmoor:

• Geocaches may be placed on land where there is public access but not on the new access land that became available under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, unless you have the landowner’s permission.
• Geocaches should be placed away from archaeologically and ecologically sensitive sites.
• Ensure the cache container is clearly marked, stating that the content is harmless and giving the placer’s email address or other contact method. Only items that would be deemed safe and acceptable for an unaccompanied child to find should be placed in the cache.
• No cache may be placed in such a way as to risk damage or disturbance to a Scheduled Monument.
• No items of food or drink of any kind should be placed in the cache.
• Caches must not be buried, and holes must not be dug in order to place a cache.
• Please do not place caches within dry stone walls.
• Caches must not be hidden in animal holes or runs.
• Cache containers must not be placed inside a polythene bag. Grazing animals have been known to die after eating discarded polythene.
• Fences, walls and hedges should never be crossed (other than using a gate or stile) when placing or hunting for a cache.
• No caches should be of a commercial nature, either in location or content.
• Maintenance of the cache is the responsibility of the placer.
• When leaving the cache site after hiding a cache, there must be no visual sign of disturbance.
• Please do not bring geocaching into disrepute, never drive your car anywhere other than on public roads and always park legally.
• Always go properly equipped for the terrain and weather conditions, and follow normal practice for safety in the outdoors.

Dartmoor National Park Authority cannot accept any legal liability for any loss or injury suffered whilst you are engaged in geocaching.

Please leave any comments under the New Land Owner’s Agreement topic and not here

Judy and I had signed up weeks ago for The Forgetful Elephants’ Leaping into Leap Day event and Hobo & Miss’s Leaping on the Green event and then we made a late decision to also go to Exeter for Stuey’s Get Your Caching Fix on Day 366! event!  So it would be a very hectic day.  But not only that, last week I had contacted Kit & Buster to ask if they would mind if I placed some caches for their event – and I had done nothing about it!

So yesterday, Judy and I explored the area around the Cox Tor car park, to see what we could do.  I thought it probably needed 4 or 5 caches including some sort of bonus on an easy walk of about 2 miles.  The route was not difficult to plan, but placing caches was as I had to dodge 2 or 3 existing caches (including a puzzle cache with unknown coordinates) and I also wanted something interesting that would keep a group of cachers busy for an hour or two.  We eventually decided the locations for all of the caches including a couple which we thought a group might find interesting, plus a revived cache for Windy Post and a bonus cache.  Next, all the locations had to be checked with the reviewer,  5 cache descriptions submitted for a timed publication at 9pm today and the clues for the bonus cache calculated!

All that was achieved yesterday, so today all I had to do was to finalise the caches, insert the bonus information and go and place them in the agreed locations.  Easy!  And now an early night for that 6am start tomorrow and hopefully lots of fun!

There was I being really good and doing some maintenance on our rooms, when up rushes Judy to tell me that a cache has been published only a couple of miles away! By the time I looked another 2 had appeared and it was evident that muddypuddles had been at it again! So straight into the car and up to the Warren House Inn – and Judy thought we were going caching!

Before attempting the new caches, I realised that one had been placed very close to the Warren House Inn a week before and it still hadn’t been found – it really was a c&d!  So we found that one first and then set off for the other 3.

The first was at Soussons Down which we walked to from the pub, spotting this new Dartmoor Forest boundary stone on the corner of the forest.  We then drove and walked to the other two caches.

So, with 4 FTFs not a bad afternoon’s work, but little maintenance done on our rooms!