Richmond Park

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Hidden On: 26 Sept 2001
Waypoint (Landmark): N000D4
Open Cache:  Personal use only
Cache type:  Normal
Cache size:   Normal

Difficulty:  (easy)
Terrain:  (easy)

Misc:

Comments:

Pictures from the Cache Camera

Many Thanks to everyone who visited the Richmond Park cache and logged their visits in the book and/or on the web site. Thanks for these nice pictures too :-)

I'm grateful to Pat Pritchard and her colleages at The Royal Parks office, based in Richmond Park, for posting the full camera to me. Sorry they are a bit blurred, and in some cases only part of the picture - I will scan them properly soon. The originals are much better - particularly that last one of the lad inside the tree.

Who is the pretty girl in top right ? :-) Recognise yourselves ? If so, please contact me, Robin, on gpss@compuserve.com or tel 01344 620775, and I'll put up the names, etc, after cross-referring to the log entries. These are not the order they appeared on the film, which started with several pictures of a black and white dog - someone shy ? :-)

There is now a new camera in the cache.

Found tree 2180 but no sign of the clue. Then on a third orbit of the trunk I spotted something deep inside a crack. Try as I may I couldn't retrieve it. In the end I managed to poke it right through enabling me to recover it from the inside!
Flushed with success I returned the clue to it's hide and keyed in the given numerals, to find the cache was 20 miles away!
Had to retrieve clue again and realised I hadn't paid attention the first time to the numeric format.
Oh dear....... no calculator, and for someone who has trouble adding two single digits together, that's bad news.
Finally made it to cache GZ and found two people sitting on the nearby seat doing a crossword!! Took a pic, but haven't uploaded in case it is considered a spoiler.
After chatting to them about the wonderful old oak tree and it's missing ident tag, they departed with teir dogs and I retrieved the box.
I noticed whilst replacing the cache and excavating, with bare hands, the leaf debris and other cover material, a rather peculiar smell due I think to canines raising their back legs in the area.
I'm glad I didn't bother to bring my sandwiches!!
Enjoyed this one on a relatively quiet day in the park and only some light rain.
TNLN. TFTC.

I found the tree but not cache to start with as I thought it was going to be a straight forward cache & not a multi I then rang a friend to have a look and he then txt me a fellow cachers number. I also had to ring the owner as I had no idea at what I was looking at. A very big thank you Robin for your help I found the cache quickly after that. TFTC

You ask "Who is the pretty girl in top right?". Well, had the photo been taken in the late 1970's, it could have been my eldest daughter! The resemblance is remarkable.

Came down here from Richmond Hill, round the north side of Sidmouth Wood and down to the Pen Ponds. This time I quickly found one of the tickets and transposed the information to my GPSr - after making adjustments for the relatively uncommon format :-).

There were more people round here than at Richmond Hill, so retrieving the final, and replacing it afterwards, required some stealth and synchronisation with the gaps. While signing the log I was several times accosted by enthusiastic doggles as I sat on the bench :-)

Thank you very much for recommissioning this cache, and let's hope it gets more visitors.

Took nothing and left nothing.

Rgds, Andy

Today Robin and June planted a new cache box in the same spot, and also several clue tickets in the same spot, so should all be OK again now. Many Thanks for telling us, and sorry it took a while to make the visit :-)

Thanks for trying Andy. This one was planted over 7 years ago and there were at least 3 clue tickets in different cracks but perhaps they have all gone missing - also maybe the cache itself. Another one for June and I to visit one sunny (winters?) day at the weekend - with a replacement. The list is on www.gpss.co.uk/geocache - with the more recently checked ones at the top of the list. Same applies to the Richmond Hill cache I guess.

Now well into my stride on my circuit of the park, and probably one third of the way round. I had failed to find the Richmond Hill NaviCache, but the much more recently planted "Parklife" GS cache was a doddle.

And here was another cache that hadn't been found since many years before (if I'm permitted to horribly mangle a well known phrase) geocaching was just a twinkle in my eye.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the first stage clue has gone. There are lots of vertical cracks to look in, but I was undisturbed in my search and gave it a fairly good going over. Unless it is cunningly concealed, it is no more.

I looked round at the number of trees that are within " a few minutes walk" and decided against the little execise of trying them all :-)

Rgds, Andy

Stumbled across the main box while hunting for another cache listed as being at eactly the same location. Box is pretty mouldy and the contents definately need replacing soonest...

I had a look for this cache after having found the Richmond Hill cache.

The label giving the coordinates of the main cache was found with ease and after entering them in my GPS and replacing the label I easily located tree 2138. However, after digging out the dead leaves, bits of old bark and some loose soil from under the root on the east side of the tree all I had was a cache-sized hole but without any cache. I didn't have much time before the park closed so couldn't do any further digging so there is a possibility that I missed it. Also, there were some newly-sprouted bulbs in the soil at the base of the tree so I didn't want to disturb those any further.

We had no success at the initial site. Spent hours searching for a 'cache' to no avail. We were tired. We needed a break. Our mental energies were zapped. "Let's regroup!" I suggested. We took ourselves to the closest bench and sat down to munch on some provisions (a couple of apples and a pork pie). We needed to reassess the situation. After reading the brief with a clearer head and fresh eyes, we noticed that we'd been barking up the wrong tree, searching for a cache, when we should have been searching for some coordinates. Our morale took a turn for the better and we trekked back to the original site with renewed viguor.
It didn't take long to find those coordinates. We quickly punched those numbers into our GPS and got a good fix on the location with some decent accuracy (23ft) - thanks in part to a beautiful sunny Surrey day. A distance of 0.23 of a mile was not a problem at this stage of the game and we hurried there eager to find that cache!
The hot sun beat down, but we took a diversion via a wooded glade which gave us some welcome shade.
We finally rendevouzed with the cache approx 1500 hours. Took a guide to Richmond Park, left a turbo racer.
We learnt a lot from this cache. I.e. ensure the instructions are well understood before embarking on a cache hunting expedition. A great cache and a fun day out.