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Following our early start yesterday, we decided on another today to pick up a few caches around Widecombe and Haytor which we had avoided for far too long.  We knew snow was forecast later in the day and overnight, but hadn’t expected the beautiful sunrise.

First we explored the three tors north of Bonehill: Bell Tor, Chinkwell Tor and Honeybag Tor, a range of tors we had never visited before and were amazed at the beautiful views in all directions.  These are well worth the visit if you have not been before.

Then we made our way to Haytor and couldn’t believe what we saw.  There were cars everywhere, not to mention ice-cream vans – was this January or July!  Evidently everybody had decided to get out on this delightful morning before the snow came.  We only just got one of the last parking places before grabbing a couple of caches.

Whilst I’ve spent all week putting together the two Dartmoor Challenge caches, muddypuddles has spent the week putting together a huge new series of caches right around Dartmoor.  Well he hasn’t placed them all yet, but 3 on Monday and a further 4 on Thursday, seems a pretty good start. Looks as though this series could end up with about 50 caches!

It’s Saturday morning and nobody has yet found the last 4 placed so we decided on an early start on the most glorious January day, certainly the best of the year so far.  We parked up on the road to Whiteworks and walked down towards Nunn’s Cross picking up two FTFs on the way, narrowly missed out on a third at South Hessary Tor, before shooting across to Babeny for another FTF.  A very good morning’s geocaching!

This week has been amazingly busy with my life dominated by the two Dartmoor Challenge caches.  Also I have desperately wanted to get right out deep into the moor to replace another cache which appears to have gone missing.  Weather-wise, the end of the week looked best after some terrible days earlier in the week and I targeted today for the maintenance trek and placing the challenge caches.

The challenge caches required a couple of maps to be drawn up which was hugely time consuming, plus the final drafting of the rules.  It seemed logical to place them fairly close to the cache I had to replace so with all preparations complete, I finally set off from Postbridge for a very wet walk.  The forecast was for showers, possibly snow and sleet and I got a mixture of everything. However, it was the wet underfoot that was the most challenging coming after several days of heavy rain.

But, the open moor is really where I want to be and after a trek of over 8 miles, taking me almost as far as Cut Hill and back I had replaced my missing cache and placed 2 new ones, including the Dartmoor Mega & Minor Challenge caches – mission accomplished!

Phil’s idea of the Dartmoor 365 Challenge kept returning to me over the weekend and today I have given it some serious thought.

The square miles idea just doesn’t work, they are not defined anywhere and would be impossible to check. So square kms then?  Noooooo there would be about a 1,000 of them! 4 sq km squares  make much more sense and there are about 250 of them.  Why not add two more challenges as well, one with 16 sq km squares and one with 64 sq km squares.  All the squares are based on the OS grid, are totally defined and each cache shows an OS grid reference – perfect.

Alas no, a quick exchange of emails with the reviewer and he objected to the large number of caches and said it was unachievable. So, back to the reviewer with the two smaller challenges and the idea of only caches placed from 2012 would count – so making it a level playing field for all.

Yes, we are in business, the reviewer approves the idea – surely it must be all plain sailing now!

Judy and I normally try to get out at least once a week with Tigger the dog to pick up a few caches and today it was a trip to Cockington.  It looked as though there were probably about 14 caches in a roundish walk of about 5 miles, including a puzzle cache we had already worked out.

The caches are all situated in the delightful Cockington Country Park but only the Heritage Way is shown on the OS map as a footpath, so it was a bit hit and miss as to what order to do the caches and we had to change our route a couple of times as we went around.

We ended the day with a tally of only 11 as one had gone missing, annoyingly stolen between us and the previous finder who we met later, a DNF on the renown Log-Ness Monster, but we did find the nearby King Kabouter cache, which is also very highly rated. We skipped the last cache as it was out of our way back to the car and it was already dark.

So, a very enjoyable day in the park and one which we would thoroughly recommend, but you had better like dogs as they are everywhere!

I’d had a short email exchange with Phil of Lympstone Bogtrotters and yesterday sent him a message: “Thanks for your email – but the web site needs more participation.  Can’t you post something controversial!”

He came back to me and said he didn’t do controversial, but today he sent me a huge wish list of things the web site could get involved with, including this: “And my personal Holy Grail, the setting up of a Dartmoor 365 Challenge – accessed via your profile with a gridded map of Dartmoor showing how many of the 365 square miles you’re cached in. (Similar to the DeLorme Challenge on the other side of the Pond)”.

So nothing controversial there then, Phil!

I’ve put it off for far too long (the weather has been dreadful for months), but I needed to get out to some remote spots to check on some missing and floating caches – yes floating according to the logs!  The main problem was Heads of the River Trek – Prison Leat which has been missing since the summer and attracted many DNFs.

I started out from Holming Beam and I have never seen the moor so wet! Checked on a couple more caches on the way out and eventually got to the Prison Leat.  Cache nowhere to be seen, so a replacement cache in a new location.  Next problem was crossing the Walkham which was very difficult and necessitated a long detour as the normal crossing point was impossible.

Eventually completed a walk of well over 8 miles in atrocious conditions underfoot, but replaced the missing cache, placed two new caches,  and found my two floating caches, which I also sorted out.  So despite the conditions – mission accomplished!

It’s not everyday that a cache gets placed less than a mile from your house, especially when you live in the middle of the moor.  So we set a new record for shortest time between publication and FTF of 50 minutes, which included 30 minutes before I even saw the notification and time to solve the puzzle! Thanks sukidee, but I didn’t need an “X”, maybe a “Z” next time please?

Well, not for long, just a day trip across the Tamar for some caches at Caradon Hill, which is on the edge of Bodmin Moor but only 12 miles from the western edge of Dartmoor. Now famous for its TV transmitters, 150 years ago it was the site of the largest copper mine in the UK. But today the attraction for us was a roughly circular walk of about 6 miles taking in some 15 caches. 9 of these caches were placed by the pensilva plodders, including 6 in the Caradon Challenge series.

Unfortunately we arrived a little late, having taken in 4 caches on the way, one of which we walked a long way to, and which should have been a cache & dash! Despite Judy’s map reading, she nearly took me up a bridleway, we eventually arrived and set off on what was a truly delightful walk. Because I had identified 15 caches, the circular walk envisaged by PP for their caches turned out to be a little zig-zagged. But this is now a lovely area, nothing like what it must have been 150 years ago, but the remains of the copper and tin mining are everywhere. We eventually found all 15 caches but the last bonus cache was found in the pitch black by the light of my torch.

I had hoped that we might move a little further north for another smaller series of caches, but that will certainly have to wait for another day now.

For Judy & I caching comes in two different flavours, those we do together with Tigger, sticking to footpaths wherever possible, and those I do alone!  Today was definitely a boys only day as I attempted to explore a new, most remote part of the south moor.  The motivation was the two new caches there and the chance to plant a couple of my own, including my first challenge cache.

My route took me from Whiteworks over Fox Tor, via Caters beam to Green Hill.  Not much on Green Hill so I wandered even further away to Fishlake Mire to place my first cache.  Another cache placed on Blacklane Brook and return to the car via Ducks’ Pool. A great day out on the very wet moor, with 2 finds and 2 places, but the weather was kind and I saw not another sole in a trek of 8 miles, almost all “off piste”.