Cache maintenance and other such activities

I started placing caches since 2003 and of course some of them are more exposed to muggles or forestry activities and weather than others. Some years ago I had caches up to 300 km from home for various reasons but now I think the farthest one from home is about 100 km away, but as that is the most visited (1259 finds at the last count) I am trying to keep it alive. It is also in the most muggle intensive place imaginable Upptaåget #13 – Uppsala so the maintenance needs are quite high. Recently a cacher reported that the plastic bag and log needed replacing. I know that a couple of years ago someone placed a second ”cache” at the location as they couldn’t find the one I had placed. I replaced the missing cache with a new green PETling but couldn’t find the temporary cache. The temporary cache is still there but it needs removing. That sounds like a new trip to Uppsala with the hope that I can find it so I can remove it. That’s for the near future but what have I done in the near past?

This week I have been busy as I have replaced a couple of caches that were muggled and discovered that at Hemlingby Trail #8 – Perspective (now disabled) the construction at GZ has disappeared and it wasn’t a small item! A new home will be needed to be found for my cache, which in itself was quite special.

Perspective’s hiding spot has gone

Another form of maintenance is needed for my caches with padlocks on them. I don’t know if the padlocks are just bad or if people enjoy altering the code after logging their find. Today I had to reset a padlock code Hemlingby Trail #9 – Numbers and as you can guess that means a brute force attack by starting at 0000 and working upwards towards 9999. My fingers are sore from rotating the number rings on the lock and I was lucky to only need to get to 5137 before the lock opened.

Cache, the cracked code lock and sweets found next to the cache

I had to check a letterbox cache Hemlingby Trail #15 – ATM were it was reported that there were some occupants in the birdbox housing the cache that the cacher didn’t want to remove, so could I please do it? I knew roughly what to expect so had gloves and a plastic bag with me as well as full body armour! A wasp’s nest is not something to be played with. Luckily, I saw no wasps flying round the birdbox and when I carefully opened it I was relieved to find an old empty wasp’s nest. Had it been occupied I may have been tempted to leave it well alone as it was rather large.

A big wasp’s nest

Wasp’s nest removed

I then moved on to another of my caches Hemlingby Trail #12 – Pinball Wizard where it was reported that the cache was missing. I won’t go in to details as it’s a gadget cache and I don’t want to spoil the fun. The cache was still there but the mechanism had got a little rusty. After some work all is functioning again.

Hemlingby Trail #4 – Jannes fäbod had been muggled and only the lid of the old container remained. A new container is in place and I hope that it lives a lot longer.

Jannes fäbod, new container and remains of old one

I have been forced to archive a cache that is on Limön a small island close to Gävle. It was a multicache but someone decided to vandalise the sign that gave clues to the final location. I wondered if I could convert the cache to a trad but today I heard that there will not be any boat traffic subsidized by the local council to the island next year. A trip was very cheap at 50 SEK return. Apparently the subsidy was 600 SEK/traveller so I can understand why it is disappearing. No doubt the other caches I have on the island will be archived in due course as I have no means of getting to the island any longer.

So all in all an intesnive week but it feels satisfying to have revived a number of flagging caches and hopefully can fix a fitting location/container for Perspective.

Kommunjakt (borough hunt)

It started before the pandemic, of that I am sure. My geocaching activities started to slow down both in terms of numbers found but also how often I made the effort to get out and look for them. Of course, I had excuses, none of which were really valid. If I had wanted to go geocaching there was nothing to stop me, not even a global pandemic!

Until 2020 I had a geograpic specific target to ”find at least one cache in a new country”. That got changed for 2021 to be ”find caches in 10 new boroughs (kommuner) in Sweden” as international flying was difficult and something I was actually pleased to avoid after 40+ years of international business travel.

Even so the planned travel activity for 2021 didn’t happen – until now! I should perhaps have made the trip during the heat wave in June but I waited until the continual downpours we had and are having now. We were lucky, I chose a day where we were able to drive away from the rain all the time, so while the neighbours were paddling along flooded street in Gävle we were enjoying good weather.

The route was pretty much fixed, all that was uncertain was if I would do the 950 km journey as a solo day trip or if I would take two days with an overnight stop somewhere if my partner wanted to come with me. She did, even though geocaching is not her thing. Of course, that added several hours to the trip as ”sightseeing” came into the equation.

Our route

The plan was to find caches in the boroughs of: Sollefteå, Ragunda, Krokom, Åre and Berg. Sollefteå is in Västernorrland and the other four in Jämtland. Of course I had run a couple of Pocket Queries and chosen caches close to the route and with plenty of favourite points.

Some of the photos below are spoilers so be aware of that.

Just rotate to open!

It couldn’t have started better. The first find in Sollefteå was Skoogstokig #Snurrigt. I had no idea what to expect but once on site it was obvious what I needed to do.

If I was doing a solo trip I would have turned round and headed towards Bispgården and tried to find a few more caches from the same CO. Instead we cariied on into Sollefteå where we had a wander around and a picnic close to Strandpromenaden #11 – Nipstadsfisket. There are still quite a few older buildings in Sollefteå and it’s always great to see the old neon signs.

Old neon sign in Sollefteå

The next stop was in Ragunda or to be more precise, in the vicinity of Bispgården. For me that is the home of the Thai Pavillion which I visited many years ago before geocaching was invented!

Here I made the aquaintance of Roffe Skoogstokig #Peek a Boom.

ROFFE !!

It was so much fun pulling his tail I did it several times.

After that it was time to log a find at one of my favourite types of cache container – a bird box. This was better than the average bird box though. Skoogstokig # En holk. I can see that I need to upgrade my artwork on the bird box caches I use.

A pretty neat bird box

Another sign cache was Skoogstokig #9 MMMMM which was a fine piece of engineering.

“Twist and shout” to open

I would have stayed in the area to find more of the CO’s cacher but we were behind schedule so we continued on even though we spent a huge amount of time visiting Wildhussens werk which is a Virtual and as a person interested in geology a fantastic place to stop.

Hole through the rock formed in the ice age

A walk down the dead falls

I always try to stop at Challenge caches Challenge #147 – Alla kommuner i 5 län even though they are often just a PET hanging in a tree. Sometimes there could be something else of interest nearby. Never heard of this company before though.

What do Hallströms do?

I was looking forward to visiting Gamla lanthandeln in Krokom but this was the one day this summer that they closed early so we didn’t get to see the inside and therefore no smiley.

Old country shop in Krokom

Another couple of easy caches were logged before we drove on to Mattmar in Åre Mattmars Kyrka.

Mattmar church bell tower

From there we turned south and headed towards Åsarna where we had booked a room for the night.

In Svenstavik we found E 1194 – Loket som försvann after a few turns around the hiding place.

Buffers in Svenstavik

Here I won’t give a spoiler as this was an cunning hide but not impossible to find. E1194 is actually in Gävle, at the railway museum that is presently closed (still) but due to reopen in a couple of years time.

The evening ended with ordering a pizza and being given an extra one as the baker had made a mistake. Both tasted great!

After a good nights sleep we headed home. No geocaching was planned but we stopped at a few caches on the way.

One cache of note was Macken and the experience was enhanced by a period Cadillac arriving at the same time as us.

Old petrol station

In Bollnäs we decided to make a detour to Söderhamn as there was a cache there that I needed to find to fill an irritating gap in the Jasmer calendar. Stadsparken was nothing special other than when it was placed. It was easier to retrieve than Blåkulla which was placed on the same date.

3-D printed container

The cache was retrieved at around 4 pm on a Friday. The weekend traffic was intense which was great as no-one bothered about me climbing up a post at the side of the road!

England 221024 – 221031 Part II

This is the second short posting. They are short as I didn’t take too many photos this time.

WGW
Another abbreviation. Saturday was spent geocaching with with my other brother and his wife. They are the active geocachers known as zelger. WGW stands for Westridge Green Wander as the trail is located close to Westridge Green which is just to the west of Reading. My brother arranges geocaching days out for a group of geocachers and they have done most of the trails in the area. This one had been put to one side as parking for several cars, which was their usual need, wasn’t available. We were just using one car so parking wasn’t a problem.

WGW trail before our visit

The trail was characterised by being mostly on tree edged paths between fields with dozens of pheasants flyng around or sitting on the nearby fields. Most of the caches were film canisters stuck in logs placed on the ground. Water is the enemy of caches placed on the ground of course so quite a few of the log strips were damp. The trail ended with a Wherigo with codes being found in the trads along the route. Of course I forget to note any codes so we didn’t get to find the Wherigo

Team Zelger logging a WGW cache

WGW path

WGW Log – literally

WGW Holly berries

We were pleased that we were able to find all the caches on the trail. The story would be slightly different in the afternoon.

WGW trail after our visit

One of many large trees on the trail

The pub we ate lunch in

YAB
After a great lunch at the local hostelry we decided to do the YAB trail. There are two trails close to each other and zelger had done one of them and a couple of the caches we were to visit today. In this case YAB is Yattendon to Ashampstead and Back.

YAB trail before our visit

Again, we were on wooded paths between fields although there were a couple of small woods on this trail and a couple of multis to break the trend of just trads. One cache was definitely gone and is now disabled and I suspect that the second multi has also lost it’s container. We didn’t find the first mult which was a shame and I didn’t find the final trad YAB #12 The Sports Field. Zelger had gone back to the car as they found this on their previous outing so I was a bit naffed at that. Nonetheless nineteen finds out of 23 is quite OK.

YAB trail cache logged by zelger

YAB trail after our visit

Staines Moor
As I was flying home from Gatwick airport we planned to do two trails at Staines which is on the way to the airport. As it turned out the time taken to go round the first trail was far longer than expected due to the problems we had finding the caches so the second trail was not attempted.
Staines Moor 16 was close to where we parked the car so we started with that one. The multi Staines Moor 2 was based ona lovely mural under the railway fun but we didn’t find the cache. The next multi Staines Moor 3a – Trident was based on a commemorative plaque for an air accident that we both remember.

Commemorative plaque for 1972 Trident crash

I suspect that five years of growing vegetation was the main reason we didn’t do so well. The undergrowth was thick with brambles which are no fun to force your way through.

Staines Moor cache logged by zelger

At least we discovered that there had been an old railway running along the edge of the western side of the moor, parallel to the current M25 motorway.

Staines and West Drayton Railway bridge. No cache though.

Staines and West Drayton Railway information board

After returning to the car and arriving at the oub for lunch an hour later than planned we checked the status of our morning out. Of the fifteen caches we attempted seven were DNF’s. It doesn’t happen so often that a trail is so unsuccessful but it does happen.

Staines Moor trail after our visit

Due to time restraints I left after lunch for the airport and my brother returned home.

England 221024 – 221031

Geocaching is also about statistics!

This is the first of two short posts about my trip to England in October. It was pretty much exactly four years after my previous visit and with no other flights anywhere in between. It was my seventeen hundred and ninety first flight and I have been flying an average of forty one flights a year since I first flew. So what happened in 2018? I retired, but expected to spend a lot of time visiting parts of the world I hadn’t been to. Plans and reality don’t always match. I was also going to do a lot of geocaching when retired. What happened? Well apart from three finds just across the border into Norway, which doesn’t really count, all my caching has been in Sweden until this trip. Prior to that 46,3% of my finds were outside Sweden!

So, I have completed the various geocaching matrices and am finding it difficult to set interesting targets. Do I want to increase the number of times I have filled the D/T matrix? Well yes, but it’s not a priority even though I see I have found 59 of the 81 combinations. I think that my geocaching activity over the past fours years indicates that I am plodding along or even getting tired of geocaching. I’m down from 74 caching days in 2018 to half that last year and this year. Time for reflection.

The light on this darkening situation was of course my trip to England. It’s primary reason was to visit family and friends.
I was also able to reaquaint myself with the motorway traffic in England. It used to be tough, but now I find it horrendous. Three lane motorways with a safety hard shoulder have now become four lane motorways with small laybys eftery mile or so. If you break down make sure you do it at the right spot. Yeah right. I started off with a six hour drive north from Gatwick when I arrived, the last couple of hours in the dark and in pouring rain. My day started with me leaving home at 7 am and getting to the hotel at around 8 pm. A long day.

After a day in Harrogate I drove south to Barlborough to a hotel I had booked in March 2020 but couldn’t use because of the onslought of the pandemic. Initially, they refused to refund me for the unused nights but now they did which was pretty fair of them.
My non-geocaching brother and his son thought the walk I proposed would be good. They knew of the trail as it was on thier doorstep and had thought of doing it earlier but hadn’t got around to it.

S.C.B.L
One thing about trails in England is that they are usually circular, on public footpaths as there is no general public access to land and a pub is often located nearby which is useful for food drink and toilets! In this case the trail was linear as it followed a section of disused railway line. We took one car to the end of the trail and parked it outside a pub (check) then got a lift to the start of the trail some kilometers to the east. S.C:B.L stands for Seymour Clowne Branch Line. When active it supported the coal mine and gas works in Clowne which no longer exist.

S.C.B.L. trail before our visit

With me I had my youngest brother and my nephew who as a teenager had plenty of energy and was very active att hunting for the caches. A couple of caches of note were a 3D-printed container and one fixed underneath a piece of Astroturf. Sneaky!

Astroturf camo for a petling

The series of thirty caches netted us 23 finds and seven DNF’s, some of which I admit were NDA’s due to verious reasons. The seven km long trail took us most of the day but as I said there was a pub at the end!

S.c.B.L trail after our visit

The following day was a non-geocaching day but we took a trip out to Curbar Edge in the nearby Pennines, a place I know from my student days. Luckily we ended up standing on a cache. Nice

Afternon view from Curbar Edge

Our find on Curbar Edge.

The next day, Friday, took me further south to Wokingham where I met up with my geocaching brother of team ”zelger”. More on that in the next post.

Salstaleden

Skyttorp station and Vattholma station, like all the other stations between Gävle and Knivsta are known to me from my Upptåg cache series. Only 2 of them are still active, one in Gävle and one in Uppsala. Furthermore Upptåget is now Mälartåg. How things change with time.

Anyway, I have been planning to visit Skyttorp and Vattholma again. The previous visit to the area in July 2021 was to do the Zoo-PT-2 and a number of ESE caches. I noted that there was a new trail between the two places called Salstaleden and put that on my Todo list. It’s only taken me a year to get around to putting my plan into action.

The plan was to take the train (Upptåget of course) from Skutskär, as the parking there is free unlike in Gävle, to Skyttorp then walk the Salstaleden and then jump on a train back to Skutskär from Vattholma. Of course things never follow my first plan. I had visited Uppsala a month ago and discovered that my cache Upptåget #13 – Uppsala needed maintenance. The petling was gone but some kind cacher had put a plastic baggie there and many finds have been logged with the cache in that condition. So plan B was to take the train from Vattholma to Uppsala then back to Skutskär. As I had a 24 hr ticket I could travel over the whole region for the same price. I will use that possibility in the future.

Salstaleden #1 – Skyttorp station was obviously going to be a nano and it was quickly located in the first place I looked. To my help on the trail I had read most of the logs from those who had previously done the Salstaleden caches and noted that there were quite a few nanos.

Skyttorp station

Salstaleden signs

From there I walked past the museum of old excavators wondering if it was worth a visit sometime and on to the second cache in the series. Another nano but on a park bench that was decorated.

Ferns creators

Salstleden 2 ferns

At the third cache I noted that the adjacent hedge was nicely clipped, and I know it was just done a few days previously.Geolog

The only thing of note here was the GPS receiver on the roof of the nearby school.

GPS receiver on roof

The real start of the Salstaleden was Salstaleden #4 – Ut i naturen vid Åsby. Here the cache was placed in the frame of the notice board. Something I saw in many places in Nelson, New Zealand but also a couple in Uppsala. The latter presumably gave the CO the idea of doing the same here.

Information about Salstaleden

Up on to the esker

At Salstaleden #5 – Rullstensåsen I had to do a little maintenance to the sign showing the area. It had been vandalised and was laying on the ground some meters away from where it should be.

Historic remains

Broken information sign about the esker

The next stop was at the bridge over Fyrisån. As there was a table and benches here I decided it was time for coffee, water and a sandwich. Before I had my break I hunted for Salstadalen #6 – Gröna dalen which I expected to find under the bridge. It wasn’t and once found the hint made sense.

Green valley – Gröna dalen

Coffee break in green valley

The trads on the trail were broken by a myst which was simple to solve and made additional use of the passage counter that was placed across the trail. The two green boxes didn’t warrant a photo. At both the myst Salstaleden #8 – Hur många har passerat här? and the previous cache I replaced the screw caps on the petlings as they had been reported as being gnawed on by some animal.

Meadowsweet – Filipendula ulmaria – älggräs

Hole path – hålväg

I expected to find the rest of the caches on the trail in good order at accurate coordinates but hade a DNF on Salstaleden #10 – Ekstubben despite a 25 minute long search. Luckily perhaps, I gave up when half a dozen muggles turned up on the scene.

Salstaleden #10 view to the east

Salstaleden #10 view to the west

Salstaleden #12 view to the east

Not wanting to have them on my heels all the way, I speeded up until I reached Salsta Slott logging another four caches on the way and stinging myself on nettles whilst retrieving the screw top off one of the petlings that I had dropped – in the only nettles I saw all day!

Salstaleden #12 – unknown flowers

First sign of daily life

Salsta slott

The cache after Salsta Slott was the largest container of the day and that was just a small. Gone are the days of finding regular and large caches all day long.

The trail along the top of the esker had disappeared and just continued along gravel roads. Salstaleden #17 – Information om Salstaleden turned out to be my last find of the day. Between that and the next cache I noticed a northbound train approaching which made me check when my train to Uppsala would leave Vattholma. In 11 minutes! A quick check on Google Maps and I saw I had 800 meters to the station and the estimated time to get there was 11 minutes! The next train was an hour later so I quickly made the executive decision that I had to get on the train. If I missed it then I had plenty of time to find the caches I was now rapidly passing by.

As the train pulled into the station I was still on the road but made a dash over the ditch, over a fence, across the car park and another fence, up the embankment and another fence just in time to hit the door button before the conductor waved the train off. I was still catching my breath and wiping off the sweat thirteen minutes later as we rolled into Uppsala Station.

I sauntered my way over from platform 5 to platform 8. It’s a shame they don’t have a platform 9 ¾ even though it seems like that at times as the next platform over is for the Uppsala – Lenna narrow gauge railway! Steam trains and very Harry Potter. There is traffice most days of the week during the summer but not on Tuesdays and you can guess which day I was on the station.

After replacing the baggie with a petling I continued on down the platform to a small square with a big blue sculpture in the middle called ”Silent Water” where I had my second break of the day before catching the next train back home.

Modern building close to Upptåget #13

Celebration Event and Julottor

Geocaching in winter is always a little more challenging than during the rest of the year due to the presence of snow. Caches close to the ground are difficult to detect and often if the snow is deep it’s hard work wading through it.

However, events are simpler to prepare or attend and what could be better than a Celebration event just a few hundred metres away from my home? Pulkaåkning och korvgrillning – Celebration Event. It was well visited with attendees from as far away as Gothenburg! As the name suggested downhill tobogganing was expected even if some of the toboggans were rather exotic.

Reindeer toboggan

In addition to the well wrapped-up attendees food was on the menu. Some were happy to eat grilled sausages but others had special hamburgers on their menu!

Celebration Event participants

Gluggfan’s hamburger

Yesterday, (Saturday) the weather forecast for Sunday showed sun and temperatures a few degrees below zero to be followed on Monday with a snowstorm, galeforce winds and up to 30 cm of snow. That gave me the impetus to get out and hunt for a group of caches all with the same theme but placed over a period of several years, Every year since 2015 cgocgo has placed a cache called ”Julotta 20xx”. I have found a couple of them but five were still on my list.

There was virtually no snow in Gävle so I expected that there could be a little more around Rosenbergstugan where Julotta 2020 was placed but not enough to be a problem. The rest of the caches were placed along Militärvägen (I need to find out where it’s name originated) which is usually not ploughed during the winter but not expected to be an issue.

We left road 272 towards Rosenbergstugan on a wide freshly cleared gravel road. When we arrived at the cottage, which is open to the public, we immediately saw that we would not be driving along Militärvägen as there was far too much snow there.

Dilema! Just do the cache at Rosenbergstugan or trudge through snow to the three northerly caches in the series. We chose the latter.

After a walk of about 1km I looked at the map on my smartphone and saw that we had missed a turn off that we should have taken. After a further kilomer I recognised the place where Julotta 2016 was placed. I had found that in March 2017.

We were soon at Julotta 2017 and decided to have our coffe break perched on a couple of nearby boulders that were warmed by the sun.

Unusual trees in Julotta 2017

As expected the cache was a bit more decorated than a usual cache. Worth a favourite point for the artistic content! The next two caches were only a few hundred meters further on along the road but the snow was deeper and more effort was needed to wade through it. Luckily we quickly found Julotta 2021 and again it was something out of the ordinary and in keeping with the theme.

Julotta 2021

The final cache of the day was Julotta 2018 placed close to a running stream. The road there was unploughed and trees had fallen across it so driving up to the cache would not have been possible even with less snow.

Fallen tree

Julotta 2018

The walk back to where the car was parked was along road 272 which was slightlyshorter and much easier going. All in all a great day out. As forecasted the weather on Monday was atrocious so I was glad we had gone out caching on the Sunday.

Geocaching targets 2022

My geocaching targets for 2022 are a pretty close copy of those from last year as I suspect my travels will be limited again, partly by the aftermath of the pandemic and partly due to rising fuel costs. Time will tell. All pretty boring and I suspect I may not set any targets for 2023 as they don’t seem SMART anymore. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. They meet the criteria with some doubt in my mind as to Relevant.

My targets from 2021 are here and are virtually unchanged for this year.

– Update my blog at least once a month.
– Complete round 2 of the D/T matrix.
– Complete round 3 of the D/T matrix.
– Find caches in ten more Swedish counties
– BadgeGen – upgrade Ruby Badges to Sappphire
– “The Traditional Cacher” – Trads (380)
– “The Virtual Cacher” – Virtual (4)
– “The Environmental Cacher” – CITO (1)
– “The Large Cacher” – Large (6)
– Place 5 caches.
– Complete the alphabetic mystery owner challenge GC44FDK Questionable COs: A-Z Roll of Honour Challenge: Q or U or W=1. (This is seemingly a never ending story).

That’s it!

Results for 2021

In my posting 2021-01-27 I listed my geocaching targets for 2021 and I thought that they were rather banal and easy to achieve. However, things don’t always turn out as planned, although seldom seems a more appropriate word.

This is what I intended to do with the result at the end of 2021 in parentheses.
– Update my blog at least once a month. (six postings)
– Complete round 2 of the D/T matrix. (6 needed, 2 achieved)
– Complete round 3 of the D/T matrix. (10 needed, 2 achieved)
– Find caches in ten more Swedish counties, (five visited)
– BadgeGen – upgrade Ruby Badges to Sappphire
– “The Traditional Cacher” – Trads (747), (365 found)
– “The Mysterious Cacher” – Mysts (16), (42 found)
– “The Virtual Cacher” – Virtual (4), (0 found)
– “The Environmental Cacher” – CITO (1), (0 attended)
– “The Large Cacher” – Large (10), (four found)
– Place 5 caches, (3 placed)
– Complete the alphabetic mystery owner challenge GC44FDK Questionable COs: A-Z Roll of Honour Challenge: Q or U or W=1. (This is seemingly a never ending story), (None found).

One figure that isn’t a target but is in my statistics is the number of days I have been caching per year since I started in 2003.
Year     No of geocaching days
2003     36
2004     65
2005     84
2006     62
2007     59
2008     60
2009     48
2010   105
2011   110
2012   148
2013   135
2014   106
2015   108
2016     72
2017     74
2018     74
2019     55
2020     63
2021     35

In the early years there weren’t so many caches to find so there wasn’t much point in going out too often. Since I retired in 2018 I expected to do a lot of caching. The opposite has occured and 2021 was my worst year ever and that includes 2003 which gave me eight months of geocaching since I started.

However, I had fun on most of those 35 days I went out caching last year, and that is really what counts.
I won’t analyse what went wrong but maybe I can attribute some of it to the pandemic. Travelling abroad was not an option nor will be for the foreseable future, and with fuel now at astronomic prices road trips are a luxury.

So now I have a couple of days to decide what my geocaching targets will be for 2022.

Nibbleberget

A record amount of rain in the middle of August (18th – over 100 mm in less than 2 hrs and 162 mm in 24 hrs) resulted in a flooded cellar and frantic activity to remove things, demolish flooring and walls followed by weeks of drying things out. Added to that I discovered a rotten kitchen window frame that I had to repair and the time needed for geocaching just wasn’t there. However, on 8th September we finally had a day off and drove over to Hedemora for some geocaching.

The goal was the trail on Nibbleberget as that combined walking and caching. There are over a thousand caches in the borough and I have been in Hedemora geocaching before but we needed to start somewhere.

We followed the red trail

We parked at the water tower and I rushed over to Vattentornet på Svedjan where I was careless and despite seeing the cache and even taking a photo of it I didn’t realise it was the cache so had my only DNF of the day. I’ll be back.

The geocaching trail more or less followed the red hiking trail around the hill so was around ten kilometers long.

Trail map

It started off with a climb up to the top of the hill Nibbleberget where a fantastic view over Hedemora was to be seen.

View of Hedemora from Nibbleberget

From there on the trail headed back down the hill for a short distance then followed the contour of the hill through varying woodland types that varied from quite overgrown areas to those that had recently been harvested.

Harvested area of forest

When we got to Motionsspår #17 I had to give it a favourite point as it was my find number 8300! Nice number! Somewhere around Motionsspår #19 I looked up, presumably standing at the bottom of the hill in the previous photo and had a great view of blue sky, clouds and pine trees.

Blue sky, clouds and pines

We started out just after noon and some four hours later of which perhaps 20 minutes was spent talking with a couple of local dog owners we met (Balder the little labrador and Rut the Podengo) we were back at the car and the days caching was over.

The caches on the hill before and after our visit

It won’t be long before I will return if for nothing else to grab the cache I DNF’d!

Bollnäs

It is seldom that I have the opportunity to visit Bollnäs but my partner was meeting up with a friend there so it was a great excuse for me to do some geocaching. It was another hot and sunny day and followed a hot and humid night so I was tired and not really bouncing with energy when I left the station and made my way to Bollnäs church. I had noted that there were a few Adventure Lab caches in Bollnäs and thought I would do one or perhaps more. I can’t really say I like them though. They are like multis with no cache at the end of the trail. I suppose that’s why people are starting to create ALC Bonus caches so there will be a real cache to find.

It was interesting to wander around the graveyard and visit a couple of gravestones associated with the ”ALC. Bollnäs kyrka”. My original intention was to drive up to Bolleberget nature reserve and hunt for the caches there. I had already found two on a previous short visit but wanted to walk over and around the hill. However, after completing the ALC I found the nearby Kämpens.

Bollnäs Hembygdsgård

followed by the ALC bonus Bollnäs kyrka and decided as it was time for coffee I found a bench outside the churchyard where I could eat and drink before doing anything else. I really didn’t feel like anything strenuous so I drove round the corner to Jag rullar which as most Swedes know is the Swedish translation of the latin word ”Volvo”.

Jag rullar!

The cache made me chuckle and was definitely worth all the favourite points it has. From there I carried on to S:t Lars kapell and Slottet i dalen with it’s creepy background history.

By now I was feeling the positive effects of the coffee and decided to drive up to Bolleberget and start the hunt knowing full well that I wouldn’t have time to do them all before we needed to leave for home.

I started with Till minne av Svampbob and wished I had been able to have seen Svampbob Fyrkant at the same location but archived three years ago. A little further along the trail I came across Lappgraven, both the grave and the cache.

Lappgraven

From there it was a short backtrack to where I had parked and STORA BOLLEBERGET #1#.

Kitty

Obviously the cache owner had spent some time creating the cache and the same applied to STORA BOLLEBERGET #12#. Unfortunately the cache was starting to fall apart so I messaged the CO and see that it is now temporarily disabled for maintenance.

Dasset

I only managed to get as far up the hill as STORA BOLLEBERGET #11# before getting a text to say it was time to leave for home.

View from STORA BOLLEBERGET #11#

The view made the walk worth it and as I could take another path down the hill I also found STORA BOLLEBERGET #10#.

I could have found all the caches on the hill if I had gone there directly but now I have another reason on visit Bollnäs. A further reason is to locate all the jigsaw based caches I am now busy solving.