Muirshiel by Night

After tackling the night cache in Spier's Old School Grounds the kids have been begging to do another one. So seeing as it was the start of their school holidays we reckoned it'd be fine for them to have a late license tonight and headed off at about 9pm to tackle Leap Night - Werechicken's Dare!. By 10pm we had reached the Muirshiel visitors centre, shaken, rattled and rolled after a very bumpy drive. No wonder the place was deserted, noone in there right mind would come up here... except us cachers! Mrs SC wants to know why on earth they have speed bumps as there was no way anyone would go faster than about 2 MPH for fear of wrecking their car.

After their enthusiasm and excitement the kids then decided they didn't want to do it after all as it was too dark and scary. After some persuasion we set off with new high powered LED torches and soon found the starting point. We were expecting this to be another crawl through the undergrowth (like Spier's) but instead we found ourselves on a nicely maintained forest path (pity the road wasn't this well maintained!!).

I'm not sure if it was just down to having better torches this week but we found this trail much easier to follow and less of a challenge and were surprised to reach the final GZ fairly quickly.

Super Kid continued on her lucky streak by finding the cache but she let her big sister Super Girlie open it. The box was stuffed to the gunnels with swag so they made a swap each leaving a parrot and a toy tree. We also launched another new TB on his travels, good luck Sailor Sydney!

We then took our time wandering back down to the car as we weren't looking forward to the bumpy drive back down to Lochwinnoch. On the way we noticed that there wasn't any sound in the woods tonight, no animals or birds at all... maybe the Werechicken had eaten them all!!

As Easy As....

I really hate puzzle caches with a vengeance, but for some reason I find myself desperately trying to solve them. A couple of weeks ago a new one As Easy As.... was published by one of our Geo-buddies Chenks and after avoiding it for as long as I could I eventually had a look a few days ago. For the next couple of days I racked my brain for the answer.

Finally when the answer came it turned out to be so easy that the kids could even solve it!

Tonight we decided to head out on our bikes as it was nice and sunny and although we were actually heading to a local play park we ended up visiting the coordinates of the cache too. The cache itself was found by Super Kid (5) and she was thrilled to find a bike bell in the swaps. This was the first time she'd been out on her bike without stabilisers on and completely amazed us by cycling all the way from our house in Lawthorn to the cache and back. What a superstar!! Luckily I had my bike toolkit with me so managed to use the screw driver in that to fit it to her bike at the GZ. Ting ting ting she went all the way home!!

I can't really tell you much more about this one as it is a puzzle cache after all but we had a lovely cycle and decided it should get a favourite point if for no other reason than the lovely path it is located on.

Spier's at Night

We've been wanting to try a night cache trail for a while now after watching a video of one on YouTube so when we saw that Amazo had set one out in Spier's Old School Ground near Beith we just had to have a go. The cache is called Leap Night - The Ghost of Spiers, but we didn't tell the kids that or they wouldn't have got out of the car!

We'd already been out for a few hours and had collected five caches already before going for a curry whilst waiting for it to get dark. When we got to Spier's it was dark, very dark but there were four of us and we had four torches so we thought this would be easy. Oh how wrong!!

Night caches are simply trails through an area which can be followed using a torch at night. A series of tiny reflectors are pinned to trees which mark the way to go. Once at the first tree you shine your torch around and look for the next reflector shining back at you, walk to it and then repeat. When you reach a tree with two reflectors or whatever code the cache owner has set you then hunt for the cache.

We managed to pick up the trail easily enough which starts right at the entrance to the park but after a couple more reflectors were were up to our waists in undergrowth and fallen branches. I'm sure there would have been easy routes around all this but in the pitch darkness it's hard to pick out easy routes so we ended up just ploughing through it all in a straight line.

After a while we reached a nice little circular garden but at this point despite hunting we just couldn't see any more reflectors. We were ready to give up when Super Girlie said she could see one way off in the woods. We looked where she was pointing but couldn't see a thing but let her guide us and sure enough there it was.

As were were following the next section of the trail we managed to disturb some type of bird with a flurry of flapping wings as it tried to get away. I'm not sure which was more frightened, the bird or the screaming kids!

After many more reflectors which took us on a long winding trail around the park we discovered the glowing embers of a fire which gave off a nice smell and some welcome heat and shortly after that we reached the last reflectors and found the cache. Log signed, swaps made we decided to leave another new TB, good luck Punky Panda!

It was only then that we realised that we had no idea where abouts in the park we were. We had been following the reflectors we hadn't been using the GPS. We didn't even know in which direction the entrance to the park was.

In all I think this took us just over an hour but we did get stuck for a while at the circular garden. This turned out to be down to some missing reflectors which have now been replaced. We thoroughly enjoyed following the trail and even just being out in the woods at night was fun. We now can't wait to try Amazo's other night cache trail in Muirshiel Park.

Broadstone

After a detour in Barrmill to grab a couple of caches we finally made it to the first cache on our planned list for the evening. This was a cache named Emily of TKG at Broadstone castle but there was no sign of Emily nor Broadstone castle. It's located at the side of a quite country road but we parked a little too far along the road and had to backtrack on foot to reach the GZ. We then had to work out how to get into the cache is it was behind a wire fence. Once in we spotted the cache right away but the cache container was empty aside from the log. We remedied this by leaving a TB we've been carrying around for a while which has been too big to fit in any caches we've visited.

Mirryn's Arran View was next and Mrs SC and Super Girlie jumped out to find it while myself and Super Kid stayed in the car. Five minutes later they were still hunting so we got out to give them a hand and found it right away. Mrs SC wasn't best pleased! We launched a new TB on it's travels here too, good luck Flutterby Butterfly!

Our last target before going for dinner was Broadstone Kiln. This lies in a small strip of forest which has unfortunatley been used as a rubbish dump by some inconsiderate idiots (have they never heard of a council tip??). We entered the wood by crawling through the fence as we couldn't see another way in and found ourselves right in front of the old Limekilns. There were much much bigger than we'd imagined  and really quite impressive. We found the cache quite easily after a bit of a scramble but had to take care as there are very steep drops into the remains of the old limestone quarries.

Three more caches found (5 so far this evening) and we were getting hungry so we headed off to the Torranyard for a curry and a rest before coming back to attempt the night cache at Spier's Old School Grounds.

Barmill

After a lovely sunny Saturday we decided to head out for dinner and to bag a few caches too. Our plan was to visit some caches to the East of Beith, head to the Torranyard for a curry and then go back up to Beith to have a  try at Amazo's night cache in the Spier's Old School grounds.

On our way to Beith we found ourselves driving through Barrmill and Mrs SC (who was on the GPS) announced that we were about to drive right past a cache so we pulled over and headed off in search of it. This cache wasn't on our list for the evening so we knew nothing about it. We've driven through Barrmill hundreds of times but never knew there was a park.

The cache is located near to the Vale burn, thus the cache title It's Available but despite a good hunt I couldn't find it. Mrs SC had opted to direct the search from above whilst the kids had disappeared into the small playpark. I was ready to give up when the kids finally decided they wanted to come and help and wouldn't you know it they found the cache in 10 seconds flat. This is a nice little park but make sure you visit the hidden valley and follow the lovely nature trail which has been built through it with interesting homemade water features.

At the top of Ginger hill behind the park lay our next cache which again wasn't on the list for the evening. Deid Man's Plantin lies at the far side of a field which looking at the previous logs can get a bit muddy. On our visit however it was fine but it's quite lumpy underfoot due to the field being used for cows. The GZ is at the location a mass grave where 42 Cholera victims were buried in 1829. There's little evidence of this today aside for the trees which were apparently planted at the same time. Super Kid found this one and was pleased as punch.

This was an unplanned visit to this park which we knew nothing about but we really enjoyed it. The nature walk especially is lovely and the kids found it very interesting.

Mothers Day in Dundonald

We've not been out caching much recently for various reasons. There were things on at the weekends, we've all been ill at different times and on top of that we sold the van so I had no transport to get out solo caching on Saturday mornings. All well again and a new car parked outside and we were good to go so at Mrs SC's suggestion (no nagging from me, honest...) we decided to head out for some caching after taking the dreaded mother in law out for lunch ;-)

After a quick scan of the maps Dundonald was picked (mostly at random) and off we set. First up was Back to the 80's.....Walls Come Tumbling Down! which is located just along the road at the Hillhouse Quarry. This was an easy one to find but the road was a bit scary (although the kids seemed oblivious to the danger). One cache down and a stern telling off later and we set off again.

Next came Auld Auchans View (GC239RK) which is located near the impressive ruins of Auchans House. This was another easy find and we decided this would be a great place to release our second travel bug Age of Aquarius. This bug was given to me for my 40th Birthday and is heading South. The "Auld" in the cache title and the "40th" are just a coincidence... I hope.

Back in the car and off we went again. We'll need to make a few more visits to Dundonald as we drove right past a few more caches but we were heading for the castle, the kids love castles (or is that me??). Our next cache was to be the puzzle cache at the castle itself and aptly named Dundonald Castle. This involved solving a number of clues the answers to which are to be found around the outside of the castle itself. Thankfully there were none which required entry to the castle as it is closed to the public until 1st April.

The kids loved this one solving all the puzzles themselves. After plugging the coords into the formula given we went in search of the cache itself. Upon reaching the GZ we had a chuckle as both the kids actually lifted the cache container and put it down again claiming the couldn't find it. Can't give too much more away but we liked the container a lot.

Puzzle cache done, we decided that as it was such a lovely day we'd head into the dark dingy woods to find the Teals Walk trail. This consists of five caches, each of which has part of the coordinates to a final bonus cache. On the way we noticed that we were passing a couple of other caches so we went looking for them too. These were both part of the Never Never Land series. Never Never Land III was first and it was pretty obvious someone was going to have to cross the river. Luckily there were a couple of fallen trees, unluckily it was me who had to cross them.

Never Never Land IV was next which we reached by crossing over a sodden playing field. This one was located at a footbridge and we spent a while looking under rocks, in the undergrowth and I even crawled under the bridge. We were ready to give up when I spotted something in full view and sent the kids to investigate. Sure enough it was the cache.

Teals Walk trail itself was a very well thought out series in a loop around the forest to the West of the castle. All but one of the caches were straightforward and the kids did most of the searching and finding. Along the route we found ourselves back at Auchans House which is at the Western end of the loop. Number four in the series took us a while to find and was only found through sheer perseverance and a bit of luck. The location isn't ideal and I think a fair bit of damage has been done by people turning over rocks in their hunt for the cache and not replacing them. Someone has also vandalised a tree to add an extra hint. This really isn't a good hide and there are loads of places nearby where the cache could have been hidden which would not have resulted in these problems. This is a great series but this stage really lets it down I'm afraid.

Five caches found and we plugged the collected figures together and came up with coordinates for the bonus cache. Oddly this was back the way we had come. After double and triple checking our figures it was decided that I would head back and get it and Mrs SC and the kids would head back to the car and pick me up at Auchans House. Half way back to the coords we'd calculated I had a feeling our figures were wrong and when I got there I found myself in the middle of bracken and hawthorn trees. I had a good look around but quickly came to the conclusion that I wasn't in the right place. So, tired and disappointed I headed back and met the rest of the Super Collectors at our rendevous point.

I'm really not sure how we got the figures wrong but looking at the numbers I think I've now worked out where the cache will be. The annoying thing is that if I'm right Mrs SC and the kids actually walked right past it on the way back to the car.

Teals Walk #1
Teals Walk #2
Teals Walk #3 
Teals Walk #4 
Teals Walk #5 

All in all a great day out with the full SC clan and a grand total of 10 caches found. The failure to find the final cache just means we have an excuse to go back to the Castle which we'll do after it opens for the season on the 1st April. Can't wait!