Adventures of a Bolas Heathen

Me with one of the caches in the series to the south of Stafford

This morning I had to pop into Stafford to pay some cheques in at the bank so decided to clear up all the new caches around the town while I was there. This involved 9 caches in total, so it should not take too long.

The first cache was on the way (well, on a scenic version of the way with a bit of a diversion from my normal route to Stafford ;)). A nice quick find was had and I was soon parking up in Stafford.

After I’d finished at the bank and grabbed myself a free coffee from Starbucks courtesy of a voucher we got from a Starbucks in London last weekend, I went off to find the only other town centre cache. This was a quick find and a very audacious hide in plain sight on a bench in the middle of a roundabout that must get used by muggles all the time.

Very wet and cloudy views to the south from one of the caches

The remaining caches were all to the south of the town and nothing presented a problem apart from the last one. I’ll copy my log for the cache below, which explains things:

I won’t embarrass myself and say how long it took me to find this one.

Oh, go on then… it took me quite some time and two visits!

I’d arrived at dinnertime and the car park was really busy with people arriving with children to have dinner at the pub very near to GZ. My GPSr was actually pointing a short way up the bank towards the roundabout at the motorway junction so after a quick prod around in the car park I drove round to there.

Nowhere sensible to hide a cache up there and nowhere safe to park either. The cache MUST be in the car park somewhere. I returned but even more people were hanging around in the car park and it was near on impossible to search as a lone male very close to parked cars. The last thing I wanted was someone spotting me and thinking I may be about to break into a car.

I reluctantly gave up the search and walked away muttering something about people hiding caches in busy car parks in lots of (e)vil, right by where people park their cars.

After I’d done the next cache, I decided to check the cache page for this one on my iPhone and spotted a picture from the FTF’s log. This confirmed exactly where I should be searching so I decided to return for one last look.

This time I went right to the correct GZ and looked slightly away from the corner and spotted the cache – phew!

I returned home felling pretty happy with myself for clearing up all the caches in the town and surrounding area. This was shortlived though as I was sat eating some dinner when in came two new cache notifications and both for caches to extend the series I’d just thought I’d completed to the south of Stafford.

Oh well, at least I’ll have some caches to find the next time I have to go to Stafford :).

p.s. the (e)vil I refer to in my log above is the ROT13 of ivy with an extra e added to perfectly describe the hide. It’s the UK equivalent of a Lamp Post Cache (in that it’s a boring and un-imaginative hide) and not a fun hide as there are a lot of possibilities to check to get the cache found.