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!