Today we found our first cache. It was just about the nearest one to my home in Tyldesley, Manchester. My wife Sarah and I set off on foot just as it started to rain. We had planned to do two caches but I'm afraid rain stopped play.
It took a while to get used to the GPSr unit - I've got a Garmin eTrex HCx with the Great Britain TopoMap and City Navigator Europe maps installed. So many menu pages and buttons, but we knew approximately where the cache was from the description at geocaching.com.
So off we headed to the grounds of what was formerly Astley Hospital. On the way we came across a real surprise - a house with a moat around it! I've lived here for 25 years but never walked or ridden along these footpaths before. This really made me think about what this newfound activity was going to do in terms of take me places on my doorstep that I don't even know exist.
After getting to the right area we had a look round for likely places to hide something. There was a main road, a wall around the grounds and lots of trees. The description had mentioned a wall, so we used the GPSr to find a location close to it. No luck! At this point we didn't know how accurate the GPSr would be and it took a while of walking around until we could get the N and W bearings moving in the right direction.
Eventually we got to the exact location - it was in the middle of some trees with a tall wall at the back of them. We had another look around - still no luck. We decided to use the clue, so Sarah decyphered it whilst I continued to look around. This gave us a better idea of where to look, and shortly we succeeded! It was a really good feeling to find our first cache.
Check out this cache here: Nostalgia Trip - A Nice Cup of Tea at geocaching.com
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