Hampton Court

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Hidden On: 03 Oct 2001
Waypoint (Landmark): N000C8
Open Cache:  Unrestricted
Cache type:  Normal
Cache size:   Normal

Difficulty:  (easy)
Terrain:  (easy)

Misc:

Comments:

The "Hampton Court" Geocache is deep in the park behind Hampton Court Palace, not far from "The Medieval Oak", reputed to be over 1000 years old. Free parking is available in Bushy Park behind the large circular pond with the "Diana" statue. Bushy Park is worth a visit in it's own right, being a large London Park with wild deer and plenty of open space. There is a play area for children near public toilets. The car park is at N 51° 24.676' W 000° 20.047'

From the car park, go back south, past the large circular pond - which is a huge roundabout - and back through the main gate from Bushy Park to the A308 Hampton Court Road. The gates to Hampton Court Palace are on the opposite side of the road.

While in the grounds of the Palace you may wish to pay to go inside the building and formal gardens - and maybe see if you can get lost in the Hampton Court Maze :-) To reach the cache, walk to the left of the Palace and follow "The Long Water" east towards The Rick Pond and Home Park Golf Course. The Long Water is certainly long :-) You will see
The Medieval Oak towards your right, this end of the Golf Course.

Hampton Court Palace was built in the early 16th century by Cardinal Wolsey, who presented it to King Henry VIII (with all the ill-fated wives) in 1526. Henry VIII added the chapel and The Great Hall - although I understand that he had a bit of help from skilled craftsmen, since Henry's brick-laying skills were not too hot :-) In later years Sir Christopher Wren built extentions for King William III, such as The Fountain Court, and East and South Fronts.

We replaced the cache today by a new one, with new log book, with a summary of the logs below. Also, in the same inner plastic bag, is a printout of these logs. The new box is not as big as the original, and it is a tight squeeze, forcing in the log book. But there is still space for small swaps such as the yo-yo and whistle/flute. The box is in exactly the same place and I've taken care to hide it with a suitable bit of sound made by a dog.

Thanks Andy. It does sound as if this one may have gone, since your estimate of about 7ft must be about right. We must check it out early in 2010.

No luck with this one, I'm afraid. After a lovely walk over the snow covered ground my GPSr pointed me unequivocally at one particular tree. I reached up, but there was nothing there :-( There was another place it might have been, at a height of about 10 feet, and I would have made the effort to climb there if necessary, but "reach up" seemed to me to exclude actually climbing the tree.

If the cache was hidden at a height of about 7 feet then I suspect it has gone :-(

I did briefly check the trees to either side, just in case the co-ordinates were some way out, but had no luck there either.

Rgds, Andy

Thanks Robin :) Since Navicache obliged me to shrink the three photos so drastically before I could upload them, here's a link to search on Flickr to find all that I've uploaded from this cache hunt. Fantastic!

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=N000C8&w=all&s=int

Thanks for the logs Sandvika (Mudvika). Gave me a chuckle or two. Yes, those were green parakeets you saw, and this was the first place that we saw them, back in 2001 when that cache was first planted. Since then we've seen many more and the closest to Bracknell are to be found near Sunningdale, and in Coworth Park. You can park in the small road that branches right, off the A329 before you reach Blacknest, driving from Ascot. This is at the bottom of the hill where the road bends sharp left. There's a footpath on the left, near a muddy layby, and it takes you through a strip of trees into Coworth Park. Walk straight on, towards the posh houses with a moat, and with a polo field on the right. You will probably see the parakeets before you reach the houses and the pond on the left. Say hello to them from Robin :-)

Muggle find: Sarah, Sonia and Louise

  Photo 1

We made a meal of this cache. Well more of a Tudor banquet, actually. We started off with an easy Terracache in Bushy Park, over ice creams, then set off for this one.

Oh deer, oh deer, oh deer. Yes, Deer for the first course. There were loads of deer and we spent some time shooting them, but with 8GB of storage in my camera I could have shot them all day and still had space for more. After using zebra for crossing the road, which was a wild boar because we had to walk some distance away from the cache to escape from Bushy Park, we followed signs to Home Park. Oh good, only 300 metres! Then we had horse, well a pair of shires actually, then a very pregnant mare and a couple of other horses and we arrived at the park.

On the wrong side of the mile long lake.

And the gates to the palace gardens and the bridges were locked.

What a huge wild boar that was. So 2 miles down the lake and back, or 1 mile round the palace? 1 mile it was. Young sandvikans wanted to go into the maze, as if we did not have enough walking to do, but it was already closed, fortunately. So round we went and down the Thames Path. A way. A long way.

Oh deer, oh deer, oh deer. Yes, deer for the fifth course, then a golf course, then more deer. Then duck, geese, swans. The boys' moods were by now fowl because they had walked so far.

Penguin found the cache - it was out of his reach and yet he got it down with a stick. Clever chap! First to find? Nope! It had been found by muggles earlier in the day before us. What a surprise. Some more photo logs to be added.

After logging the cache, we Tudor Rose to our feet, Sharky sat on Heffalump's back to get the necessary height to return the cache, then it was more duck, goose, swan, more deer, more golf, then back round the palace, and back to Bushy Park, more deer, heron, yet more deer. By now, after walking 6.5 kilometres for this cache, the Marchpane desert was felt and we were off our sugar loaves.

Phew! Deer, or deer. Such a seemingly innocent cache, but this "stroll in the park" turned out to be a much greater effort than walking in Chobham Treacle!

As we returned to the car, I could have sworn I saw some green parakeets, but I must surely have been losing my marbles.

Thanks for the cache and the "stroll" ;) Team Sandvika

NC #33, Total #812

  Deer
  Oh Deer - Cache is on the other side!
  Quacked Up by the cache

I went and some caches with Sandvika and his boys but we ended up on the wrong side of the long water and so we had to walk through Hampton Court gardens to get to a some stairs leading to the park near the river. The gate to get in can be found N51.23.867 W000.20.017 then it was an easy stroll avoiding the golf balls. This was by far the longest time in trying to find a cache but the surroundings made up for it, this only took us 1hrs or so to get to. When we found the cache it looks like someone has found it by accident and replaced it. TFTC

Muggle find: David

  Photo 1
  Photo 2

Robin and June replaced this cache today, but in a better spot not so far from the original, back in 2001.

  June walking alongside a nice patch of water

As the Bushy Park cache was easy we walked on into Hampton Court to have a go at this one. As we got to within a few hundred yards of the waypoint we realised that we were the wrong side of Long Water - so had an extra mile walk to get to the correct side. We found the tree stump OK - but no sign of the box.