93 out of 109

Saturday’s planned greenlaning was scrubbed so I found myself with a day pass & I thought, “Chiltern Hundreds!”. A short while later, after loading the relevant PQs onto my GPS, I was off. The major section I had left to do was the Chartridge Ring which started at number 83 and finished at number 109. (As I think I mentioned before, Dr Solly’s Chiltern Hundreds actually comprises 109 caches plus the bonus). I parked up at the Chartridge Reading Rooms – which as far as I can ascertain is the only safe place to park on this series – and set off.

The first few caches were pretty straightforward, I was pleased to find them though; there is nothing more disheartening than scoring a DNF on the first cache of the day.

By one cache, I found a gate which was not attached to a fence at either end. At least the land owner hadn’t bothered to padlock it.

Today I was reminded that the good Doctor is fond of climbing trees, or at least fond of making other cachers do some climbing to retrieve caches. Today I did more tree-climbing than on the rest of the CH100 combined. At another cache, although I had spotted the container from afar, I had to reach for it without being able to see it at the same time which resulted in me grabbing a huge slug. At least I have the correct accreditation.

After that, a walk along a lane called Herbert’s Hole via the interestingly named Little Hundridge Lane.

From CH098 the route doubled back in a Westerly direction along a tarmac lane, even so I encountered no more than a couple of cars and it was a simple process to pick off the caches as I walked up the gentle incline. Before I knew it, I had found and passed  cache number 100. I soon had to turn off the lane in order to pick up CH104, off a lane running alongside the Chartridge Park Golf Club. Now, not many people know this: I was a golf-orphan when I was younger. I found it amusing to listen to the Pringle-clad twits as they tried to decide whether to use a Spade mashie or a Mashie niblick. They were soon left behind as I retraced my steps down to Pednor Bottom. I had already had to deal with several non-caching folk, waiting until they had gone before grabbing the cache, etc. By the time I had found CH108 I was following a bunch of these walkers with a very barky (is that even a word?) dog. I gave the group a head start before climbing the hill towards the last cache of the series.

If you know the area covered by this series you will know that many of the paths choose to ignore contours. If the path wants to go straight up a steep hill then that is what it does. This particular one was so steep they (The Council?) had built in a series of steps.

Even with that it was a big push to the top and I was glad to be able to stop at a stile where the aforementioned walkers had halted to watch the Red Kites soaring magnificently above us. At this point I decided to stop for lunch so I picked a spot in the lee of a hedge and admired the view while I munched my sandwiches.

After lunch I set off once more, passing the walkers who by now were stopped for their lunch, and made my way to the final cache – CH109. This was an easy find, so after signing the log I made my way back to my Freelander.

I knew that there was a short run of caches I had missed out before (I think one or two were missing last time I was here) so I relocated the car to another familiar parking spot before setting off to find them via Captain’s Wood and CH033.

I was keen to get this one as I had DNFd it many months previously. Having read the recent logs it was now evident that the cache was nowhere near the published coordinates so I searched a radius of about 20 Metres from the coords. I was considering calling it a day when I spotted something which tallied with the hint item on the cache page. At first I couldn’t find anything. Just then, I moved a dead tree branch and heard the distinctive sound of wood striking hard plastic. Yay! It was the cache!

After that it was off through the woods to pick up the final 3 planned for today’s trip. Two of the three were found without drama, however one which already had several DNF logs proved to be a problem. I even went so far as to burrow on all fours into a hedge to check all around GZ but to no avail. All I found were the crusts of someone’s sandwiches. Nice. Later on, when I was logging my results, I saw that another cacher had apparently found the missing cache the very same day. Hmmm.

Anyway, after that one I successfully found CH078 – my last of the day, then it was back to the Freely and home.

Summary for today – 28 finds and 3 DNFs. As to the Chiltern Hundreds, I have found 93 and DNFd 16. What is slightly annoying is that for 20 of my finds the bonus code is missing. I need to get that fixed so that I can go for the bonus cache.