Off Broadway - GC28A3A

I found this one whilst out with Sarah on an afternoon's shopping and caching in the Urmston area. After a successful find at the nearby 'Nature Reserve' cache we headed for the Trafford centre as indicated in the description only to realise we didn't need to go that far. We turned around and parked just 'Off Broadway' and then crossed the road into the woodland area. After walking through a small cutting in the trees and looking for the item mentioned in the clue, we still hadn't found it after ten minutes. It was time to broaden the search and so I walked round a large area of trees looking for the hint, whilst Sarah searched intensively in the first spot.

I eventually came back round to the first cutting where we had started and so I looked to the left of it. In a few minutes I had found the item mentioned in the hint and the cache location was revealed by a small telltale pile of sticks. The container was great, very neat and compact - I've only seen one of these a couple of times before. Sarah did the admin whilst I took a few pictures and then we were off to Asda to finish off the shopping.

Nature Reserve - GC1QW22

This was my second visit here, the first time I came after 7.30pm only to find the whole place locked up. This time I was with Sarah doing a bit of cache and shopping in the Urmston area. I didn't need to use the GPSr to get to the car park for the Nature Reserve as I could remember where it was from last time I was here. However, it was now 6.15pm and as the car park would be locked at 7pm we debated whether we should park inside or not. We decided it would be OK as the GPSr said the cache was only 0.21 miles away.

One of the reasons for doing this cache was that I am now into birdwatching, and I thought this would be a good place to do it as well as geocaching. I took some binoculars and a camera, hoping to see something new, but unfortunately there was very little about - it was one of the hottest days of the year so far and the heat had probably got to the birds so they were staying cool in the shade. We walked a little way past GZ without realizing it and so had to backtrack to find the item mentioned in the hint. Sarah was first to spot it and the ingenious container holding the log. She did the admin whilst I took some photos and then we were on our way for quick circular route back to the car.

On the way back the Chiffchaffs were very vociferous and we did see a Great Tit fly in front of us and a cormorant on the Ship Canal. But apart from a crow, and a few magpies and a blackbird there was not much else to see. Perhaps we'll come back for a longer walk on a cooler day, because this is a great little place.

Urmston Greenery - GC254AC

I found this one after a quick visit to the Trafford Centre to get my glasses fixed and buy a birdwatching magazine. The park looks beautiful at this time of year, with the trees starting to leaf and the rhododendrons in bloom. It was quite a sentimental journey for me as this is the closest park to where my father used to live in Davyhulme before he died. We often went with his grandchildren to the playground here when they were young.

After signing the log out of the gaze of some local youths, I returned the cache to it's hiding place. Hope I didn't re-hide it too well!  Then I took a few pictures of the park on my mobile phone, breathed a sentimental sigh and returned to the car.

Doffcocker Lodge - GC135VC

I wanted a memorable cache for my 200th find and as I'd been told Doffcocker Lodge was good for bird watching, sarahjones65 and I decided to make it this one. We came in the car from the 'Red Rose Forest' cache at Rumworth Lodge, where we hadn't seen any birds other than a few Mallards and Black-headed Gulls. After parking in a nearby housing estate we were quickly walking through an entrance gate and down to the Lodge.

Soon we could see that the main lodge was split in two by a causeway, and I remembered that someone had told me that this was a good place from which to photograph ducks and other water fowl. Unfortunately not today, there was very little here except for the odd Coot and Mallard. So we continued along the circular route around the Lodge to find the cache. As we approached GZ the muggle count suddenly increased, and although I spotted a likely place, we had to walk past it to avoid suspicion. As I had my camera out it just looked as if I was taking pictures of the ducks and geese. When everyone had gone, we snook back to GZ and had soon found the large cache container under a tell-tale pile of newly-laid sticks, just where I had guessed it would be.

The contents of the cache were a little damp, but Sarah managed to sign the log whilst I took some pictures of a nesting coot which started its alarm call the minute I approached. Then we walked round the rest of the Lodge to get back to the car and on the way saw Canada Geese, Snow Geese, Mallards, Black-headed Gulls, Mute Swans, Moorhens and (my favourite) Great Crested Grebes. A great place to come back to later in the year.

Red Rose Forest - GC1694J

Out for a quick one with sarahjones65, we drove down the cobbled Lock Lane from Hunger Hill and had our bones shaken up quite a bit, not to mention our car. Turning right at the bottom we entered the very 'posh and expensive' looking area of Lostock and soon found our way to Ladybridge Football club. At this point we parked in the club car park and made our way to the public footpath a little further down the road.

Walking along the gravel path, it soon diverged and so I took the high road whilst Sarah took the low. It wasn't long before we were at GZ and looking for the cache. Unfortunately, our GPSr made the location about 50 feet away from where we actually found it, and that's the second time it's been so far out in week - I need to check that I haven't messed up the GPSr settings somehow and that's why my normally quite good readings have recently been wrong.

After signing the rather soggy log, we took the Russian badge from St. Petersburg badge and left a cute little Garfied the Travel Gnome geocoin. Sarah wanted to carry on further up the path but we didn't have time today, and so we'll mark it as one to come back to in the summer and do a spot of birdwatching on Rumworth Lodge. A great place.

No.15 - The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal - GC19FMR

This was a quick revisit to a cache that I wasn't sure if I'd done already. When I got there it all looked very familiar and I even found one of my own calling cards still in the container. I couldn't resist taking the cute little trackable Travel Gnome to move on somewhere nice, but I haven't logged this one as another find.

No.13 - The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal - GC19AV3

After using an old copy of a cache list on my PDA and wasting my time looking for No. 14 in this series (which has obviously gone now), I headed up and along the canal for this one, only to find that in my grumpiness I had set off the wrong way. The hint mentioned that the cache was at the end of the canal, and I was heading to the wrong end at first. I actually think I was technically 'right' as the cache location isn't actually at the 'end' of the canal, it's just where the canal has become blocked by reeds and other rubbish. The line of the canal carries on to Bury even though it's no longer navigable everywhere.

Nevermind, it was a beautiful day and so the walk was very pleasant and, after changing direction, I soon came to a row of houses and other buildings on the canal bank. In the distance I could see where the canal had become blocked and there were some swans sitting on the vegetation that had filled it. As I walked past the last building I quickly found the cache, but there was no pen or pencil in it and so I couldn't sign the log today. Instead I took a picture of the cache to prove I'd been there and then went on to take some pictures of the swans, who had built a nest in the reed beds and rubbish!
I may return to sign the brand spanking new log that's been put there, just to get my name on first!

Spider Bridge - GC108E1

I found this one after about 20 minutes of searching in the wrong place. There was very little tree cover and I was getting a fairly good reading, but after having no luck I decided to check the hint and spoiler picture - I must say it looked nothing like that today! There was very little greenery about and the area seems to have been cleared and thinned in many places.

Anyway, after locating the items mentioned in the hint I found the 'spider bridge' quite quickly. I made the coordinates to be nearly 50ft away from where my GPSr said it should be. Here's what I made GZ to be if anyone's interested: N53 33.469 W002 22.889. There were quite a few muggles around to day as it was a beautiful day, but I just pretended to be interested in the flora and fauna as I rummidged around in the undergrowth. I did nearly give up, but thankfully persevered for that 'one last look'.

Our First Foray - GC22J1W

This was to be the fourth and final cache of the day for Sarah and me whilst out on our 'fireplace shopping and caching' mission (bet that's a first!). We'd just come from a shop in Seymore Grove and after realising the cache was located at a busy crossroads, we decided to park in the MetroLink station car park a little way up Edge Lane.

We walked back down to the crossroads to look for the cache and could soon see the item mentioned in the hint. After a quick look round we weren't at all sure the cache was there, but due to the traffic lights cars were stopping on the road very close to us and so we found it hard to have a good look. Eventually Sarah did locate the cache when the lights turned green and the cars starting moving. She got it out with a stick and signed the log, and then I stood in the way of the onlooking traffic as she put it back.

With the excitement over, I took a few piccies of some nice buildings and the canal stretching off towards Manchester United's football ground at Old Trafford in the distance and then we headed for home.

John Leigh - GC1BN4J

On our third cache out in Altrincham today we had a couple of problems - first of all we used the coordinates at the top of the page before spotting the change lower down in the logs. Luckily I had downloaded the logs to my PDA phone or else we would have been stumped at this point. Hopefully the cache owner can have this changed to avoid confusion for others.

With the new coordinates in the GPSr we had no problem finding the first cache in this lovely park. Secondly, we couldn't find the final cache but did find a page from the log book. It had the owner's geocaching name on it and the name of the cache. However, we couldn't find any other remains of the cache, so it may well have gone missing.

During our hunt to find the second cache we were frequently seen by muggles, including a pair of pensioners sitting on a bench directly facing the cache. After a quick look round GZ we decided to wait until they left before having a more thorough examination of the area. One of the park gardeners who was cutting the grass even came over to us and asked if were alright.

I decided to explain what we were doing and a little bit about geocaching at this point. She told me that she'd seen others doing similar things in these bushes and had wondered if they were doing something suspicious like hiding a dead body! I told her it was just a bit of fun and was nothing to do with drugs or crime and she left us to carry happily reassured (I hope)
.

A maintenance visit would be useful to check if the cache is still there and we just missed it - but we did have a good look through the leaf litter and in some of the other bushes. In spite of all this we're going to log it as a find, even though we didn't actually sign the logbook or find the container - I can send a picture of the log book paper with the owner's name and writing on it if required.

Another Cache Barrier - GC1VRJ9

We parked in the Tesco car park and yeah, we can remember when this place was a car park too - a lot of Altrincham has changed since last we were here, especially all the 'Pay and Display' parking areas. It seems that you can't park for free anywhere now, so we went to buy sandwiches in Tesco to justify our use of the car park. And guess what, on our 'long way round' way back to the car we happened to find a cache on the bridge over the railway line. Wasn't that lucky!

Meet + Drink = Smiley - Where it all started... GC1K994

Sarah and I found this one whilst out on a combined mission looking for 'fireplaces and caches' in the Altrincham and Manchester area. A nice and easy find (the way we like 'em), this was our first of the day and a bit too early for a quick one in the Old Market Tavern. So after signing the log we just took some piccies of the lovely pub building, we sallied forth to the next location.

NICOLE'S CACHE - GC1ABWM

This was to be the seventh and final cache of the day for Sarah and me whilst out geocaching in the Borsdane Woods and Westhoughton areas. It was just a short walk up a very pleasant country path from Tom's Cache. To our right the golfers were out playing a round on Westhoughton Golf Course and in the distance was the familiar sight of theTV and radio mast at Winter Hill. The day had turned out to be quite beautiful with sunshine and a blue sky.

Finding the cache took a little longer than most today, and at first we went past it and looked in the wrong place for a few minutes. After checking the hint, we found it more or less right away and Sarah did the admin. On the way back I spotted a solitary skylark rising into the air and singing away - spring has definitely sprung. By the way, I think I've done all the children's caches now!

We took a little ray of sunshine keyring and left an NUT supermarket trolley coin keyring.

TOM'S CACHE - GC1ABWV

Sarah and I came to this cache from those in Borsdane Wood. I'd already done some caches near the golf course earlier in the month but had run out of time to get this one. So in a completing a very pleasant circular route back to the car, we decided to go for this one (and another).

I was quite surprised to see the lambs in the fields as we walked along the footpath - I always thought April was the lambing season. Anyway, there they were looking all cute and cuddly. We had to walk through a farm yard with beautiful horses in a stable and later realised this was a riding stables. As is common in places like this, there was a big dog barking which always makes me quite nervous, but it was thankfully on a very short chain.

As we approached ground zero we could see part of a grey brick railway bridge over a disused line - this seemed to be a good place to start looking. Within a few minutes we'd found the cache and Sarah signed the log whilst I took a few (more) photos. I scouted on up the path and could see Westhoughton Golf Course to the right, the church steeple in the town centre and Winter Hill in the distance. It was a very nice place and surprisingly rural and remote from the nearby towns.

Borsdane Woods No 4 - GC18HV8

This was the fifth and and final cache that Sarah and I found in Bordane Woods today. It was good to end on a find after the disappointment of No. 2 being a DNF (btw what happened to No.1 and No.3 - archived now I suppose). This cache was located at the northern entrance to the woods and would be a good place to start if approaching from this side. We found jack_the_lad's familiar black drill container fairly quickly and, although we don't collect as much stuff from caches nowadays, we couldn't resist taking the cute little Hodgeheg travel bug to move it on somewhere nice.

After signing the log we had a go at solving the puzzle for the nearby 'Tomorrow Never Pies' cache, but after checking out our calculated coordinates at www.geochecker.com and finding them to be incorrect, we decided to head for two caches in Westhoughton instead as they made a nice circular route back to the car.

Borsdane Woods No. 2 - GC18HTP

Like a few cachers before us, we had another DNF here too. Sarah and I had a good look around the area after finding what seemed like the obvious place but we couldn't any remnants of the cache anywhere. We hope it gets replaced because we'd like to come back in the summer.

Old Mill Stream - GCZD7V

This was the fourth find of the day for Sarah and me whilst resuming our joint geocaching missions in the lovely Borsdane Woods. Using the hint the cache was easily located and Sarah did the admin whilst I took a few pictures of the avenue of trees on the main pathway. This is a great place and must even better when the bluebells are blooming and the wild garlic is giving off that certain aroma. We hope to come back in the summer when the trees are in leaf.

Lone Ranger - GC200V9

This was the third find of the day whilst out geocaching in Borsdane Woods with Sarah. This location actually took us up and out for the woods for a short while and, with the cache title in mind, we had guessed where ground zero was from quite a way off.

Finding the container was straightforward and soon we'd signed the log and were heading back into the woods, which looked quite impressive from this vantage point. Another good place.

SPRING HAS SPRUNG - GCTX8R

This was the second of the day for Sarah and me on our geocaching foray into Borsdane Woods. We reached ground zero fairly quickly from the previous cache but there were so many places to look which matched the hint and description. Several dog-walking muggles passed by with puzzled looks as we scrabbled around in the leaf litter in amongst the fallen trees and newly sprouting daffodils.

There was also quite a lot of rubbish around this area and this made the hunt a little less appealing that it might have otherwise been - you never quite know what you're going to put your hand in. After broadening our search a little and almost giving up we eventually found it, and quite a large container too. A good place - shame the bluebells aren't out yet.