Geocaching diaries : Hunting for hidey-holes !

After our first successful attempt at hiding geocaches in our local neighbourhood and the excitement of seeing people logging their finds online, proving that they had actually gone out to find them, I decided that I wanted to go and place some more. I still had a couple of small plastic tubs that I'd set aside for exactly this purpose so we filled them up with logbooks and swaps and headed off to some likely hiding places.

Our first stop was a big park on the other side of town.

We'd brought some odds and ends of crispbread packets to feed the ducks - there are always loads here.

And they always seem to be ravenous ! This time, we had various breeds of ducks and geese, as well as lots of swooping seagulls.

It was lovely to see the first signs of spring putting in an appearance. We spotted catkins.

Pussy willow buds.

And even the first signs of blossom. It's crazy to think that everything is suddenly bursting into life but just last week, we had snow on the ground.

 We wandered around the park looking for the best place to hide the cache and decided on this multi-trunk tree. We popped the cache in the middle and covered it up with leaves and twigs.

The little stone structure on the left is where there used to be a geocache a couple of years ago, but it got trashed and was archived. I wonder if mine will last any longer ! As we headed for home, the sky was getting darker and darker and we got caught in a torrential downpour at the end of our road. Luckily, Juliette is like me and doesn't mind getting wet so we pulled up our hoods, laughed our heads off then got straight into our onesies when we got inside !

We have a park just next to our house and I've always wanted to place a geocache there too, but again, the last one to be hidden there got trashed in a very short space of time. I decided it would have to be down the far end of the park away from the play areas and a geocache up in the trees rather than on ground level might have better odds of survival. I found a couple of clear plastic Christmas tree baubles in the cupboard and, even if they're not very sturdy, decided to use them, adding a loop to hang them off trees.

I headed to the park and discovered it was shut, for some unexplained reason. I was on a mission though, so I decided to hide it from outside the park. By placing it under a bush just next to the railings, people will be able to find it even outside of the park's opening hours and it also shouldn't be disturbed by the gardeners.

It's on a main road but just next to a bus stop so at least you can pretend to be waiting for a bus as you wait for a clear bit of road with no people wandering about !

For the second small cache, I knew where I wanted to hide it - a new statue representing a giant watering can, which fits in nicely with the giant chair cache that I hid earlier in the week.

I had no idea for a specific hiding place though so I was delighted to discover this hollow wall on the edge of the car park. It's as if it was put there just for the purpose !

It's great fun seeing people logging their finds and I love all the comments saying that they are discovering new places of interest and beautiful walks that they didn't know about. That is what I always think of as the best part of geocaching.