Down in the Dumps

As I was on holiday today, I got up quite early and decided I'd try to do three caches around where I work in Westhoughton. The schoolkids round here were on half-term holiday and so most of them would be still in bed whilst I was lurking about and I didn't want to meet any of the local muggles who might know me and wonder what on earth I was doing. I got all my stuff together and set off with high hopes of three or four quick, clean cache and dashes. It didn't work out that way ...

As I drove to Westhoughton the mist got thicker and thicker and visibility was down to a few hundred metres. The first cache I went to was the Water Tower, high on the hill outside the main town. I found GZ (ground zero) without much trouble along a footpath at the end of the road. And I found the numbers mentioned in the clue, but could I find the cache?

After ten minutes of feeling around in the vegetation and wondering how many dogs (or people) had relieved themselves on it, I gave up quite disgruntled. It should have so obvious and easy - maybe it's been muggled I thought as I stropped back to the car with surprisingly filthy hands. When I got back top the car I read the logs of previous visitors - oh dear, it's not been found on the last two occasions. I should have spotted that before I set off, because I make a point of checking a cache has been found fairly recently before attempting it myself.

Not a good start. Nevermind, on to the next cache a little further down the same road. Before setting off I read the logs this time - oh no, its a muddy one and I hate muddy ones! I took a look at the start of the path which was up a few steps. Yes, and then it started to get muddy. A lady was walking her dogs in the area I needed to go and she was already looking at me rather strangely. 'Perhaps I'll not bother with this one today' I thought as I sloped off back to the car.

The last cache I attempted was on a main road, in full view of all the passing traffic at Hall Lee Bank Park in Westhoughton. I hate being watched as I root around for a cache and this one was going to be like being in an aquarium. I parked in a layby area across the road and just as I had pulled up, another car stopped on the main road just a few metres away from the cache. 'What an idiot parking there' I thought - 'Some people are just too lazy to walk any distance and park in a reasonable place'.

The car was parked in a dip in a particularly narrow spot on the main road, and would cause the traffic problems. I know, because I come this way to work every day. And sure enough, not long after the car had been parked, when a lorry had to stop to get round it, and the traffic built up behind him.

By now I had got out of the car and crossed the road, and was walking past the other car. 'Why doesn't he move it' I thought - but he didn't. He seemed oblivious to the problem it had/would cause. It made me remember being fined by the police for parking at Lymm Dam just on the edge of the double yellow lines on the main road past the dam. I wasn't parked illegally, but the copper said I was parked in an inconvenient place for other road users. 'So why don't the double yellow lines go along the whole road then' I enquired - no answer was forthcoming. I felt I had fallen victim to the police parking quota system - got to get so many in a day etc. Anyway, this bloke deserved to get fined 100 times more than I did. The road I was on wasn't even busy.


I walked up to GZ at the entrance gates to the park and turned back to look at the car. A bloke got out with a young lad, presumably his son. Around his neck he had an expensive looking camera and maybe something else. Was it a GPS I thought - I wonder if he's here for the same reason as me? If he was, he'd be the first fellow cacher I'd have met on a mission. I walked on past the cache and up the road trying to be nonchalent. The bloke took a few photos from the road and then walked into the entrance to Hall Lee Bank Park. He didn't seem to pay GZ any attention - either he was a very good geocacher with lots of experience, or he wasn't one at all.

The latter seems more likely now as off they went into the park taking photographs and not looking back at all. I made a mental note to check the geocaching.com website later to see if anyone recorded a visit here today. When they had more or less disappeared from sight, I approached GZ and rooted around in the vegetation. I went up to two metres from where someone had said the cache was, but I couldn't find it. By now I wondering about dogs again.

I was well and truly down in the dumps - three DNF's one after another. 'I'm going home for a nice warm shower and a cup of tea' I thought. There were two other caches I could have tried today whilst I was in this area - but I just could not be bothered and so I went home grumpy and grubby. 'And I'm not going to record this expedition in the logs' I decided.

DNF DNF DNF !!!

P.S. No-one recorded a visit at Hall Lee Bank today either.