A third visit to Apley Woods and a New Cache Placed by Isaac

I was wondering when the elusive #3 in the new 8 cache series around Apley Woods near Wellington would come out as all the rest had now been published. Mid-evening yesterday, along came the notification email so I dashed off out to try and get a FTF on it and also find the only other remaining one, #8 (we'd DNF's this yesterday with several other cachers).

I was soon parking up, just up the road from the new Hospice and wandered down the cycle-path and into the woods. GZ seemed to be just to the left of the path as I walked into the woods. I could hear some people in their back garden just the other side of the garden fence from where my GPSr was pointing so I knew I'd have to be stealthy.

A quick creep around the undergrowth there revealed nothing. The cache had no hint so all I knew was I was looking for a small box, probably the same cylindrical shape as the others in the series and almost certainly wrapped in a black plastic bag (like the others were).

I tried the other side of the path but still could not spot it, so I decided to head off to try and find #8 while I searched my mind for inspiration on where the new #3 cache could be.

Luckily #8 was a nice quick find with the new co-ordinates. We'd searched for this one yesterday but could not find it anywhere. It turns out the cache owner had a problem with the co-ordinates under the heavy tree cover and they were just under 200ft off where they should be.

Buoyed with my success, I returned to #3 and started to re-check all the places I'd already looked. No cache. I widened the search up to about 100ft into the woods but still no cache was to be found.

By this time, I was getting a bit frustrated as there were tons of places a small cache could be in such dense woods and I was wondering how good the co-ords on the cache page were (they turned out to be pretty good in the end).

I was literally about to give up when I thought I'd have one final check of a pile of sticks / small logs just by the path as I'd not looked properly there before. Still no cache, so I decided on one final sweep of trees coming back round to the path and low and behold, there the cache was, under leaf litter at the side of a tree I'm sure I'd already checked. I was FTF too. Phew!

I returned home very satisfied with myself as that was *so* nearly a DNF and a 4th trip to these lovely woods to finish off the series.

All in all, I've really enjoyed my 3 trips to the woods for the series. There have been a couple of frustrating moments, but this has been more than made up for with decent sized containers, well stocked caches and a lovely walk in a great place. Well done nozi parkers for placing them!

Meanwhile, Isaac has been wanting to place a new cache near his Grandparents in Blymhill for ages so as I knew he was off there after school yesterday, I sent him with a GPSr, camera and a well stocked ammo can.

As soon as he'd placed it, he phoned me with the co-ords so I could make a start on the cache page, while he was driven back home by his Grandpa. When he got back, we both finished off the cache page, double checked everything and hit the submit button. I wonder who will be FTF? ...