Plateau Outlook - GC14WWH

This was a great multi-cache but oh how close were we to messing it up. Sarahjones65 had put the coordinates into the GPSr back at our soon to be scrapped caravan at Plas Coch. We knew the car park at Llangoed quite well having been here before several times in our pre-geocaching days and so, after eating lunch there, Sarah and I set off with CathyMay for the first location. This apparently took us to a house in the village with a Welsh name which we tried to use to calculate the answer. The result was silly and so we knew it couldn't be right - time to recheck the coordinates. Sure enough two of the digits had been transposed and, after correcting them, we then headed off in completely the opposite direction towards the start of a woodland trail where we found the answer to the first stage.

The next location was fine but when we got to doing the third stage we all got a feeling of deja vu. After walking up quite a steep hill and stopping at the location indicated by the GPSr, we realised that these coordinates were wrong too! Time to check ALL the coordinates. After doing this (the rest were actually OK) we decided to miss the third location out as it would have been a long way back to find it, and head for the next one. Fortunately we had the nouse to realise that we could guess the missing number as it could only realistically have been one of two possible numbers - however we were very lucky it was the one in this position in the coordinates.

Anyway, we found all the other places without too much trouble and ended up on top of the plateau to see the tremendous panoramic view of Puffin Island, The Great Orme and the mountains on the mainland - the sky was blue, the sun was shining, it was a fabulous spot and well worth the effort of getting there. On the way up we'd seen a buzzard and several swallows but no parrots. We didn't come across any really steep drops however and this caused some puzzlement.

Finding the final location had us wandering around the bushes for a while before realising we had to walk a fair way past the stile and down the lane. We were really pleased when we found the cache and, after doing the admin, skipped happily down the 'grey route' back to the car. We did consider looking for the clue that we'd missed on the way back, and even went a little way down the road towards it. Only then did we realise that we'd gone completely the wrong way between two of the stages, but thankfully it worked out OK in the end. We never did find that location as we turned back when we saw how far it was.

Motto - always double check your coordinates! (notice how I didn't say 'never let your wife be in charge of the GPSr'). Took the half-crown (couldn't resist) but had run out of things to leave - sorry.