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.