After seeking (and finding, surprisingly) the 2026-09-13 51 -1 geohashpoint down in the Brook Hill nature reserve, the
geohound and I came to try to find this cache, too. After finding the correct way into the nature reserve (access from Verinia Court now being disallowed, apparently) we quickly found
the relevant board and, after pushing some plants aside, found the requisite six digit number.
A short walk later we found a solid candidate hiding spot that matched the hint, but an extended search in and around it yielded nothing. Possibly my geosense is off this morning (in my
defence, I got stung in the crotch by a wasp about 20 minutes ago!) or maybe this cache is missing. Either way, a DNF from the pupper and I today.
I woke early after a series of nightmares about having to move house yet again (I’ve done that a
lot, this year, on account of the flood that rendered my house uninhabitable in February), except this
time the house we moved into was occupied by some kind of bear-like monster that chased me around the place.
Anyway: having woken up I decided to take the dog out for a walk, and I noticed that the hashpoint up here in Woodstock might be accessible. The maps show it as being not in
the nature reserve but in what could be the gardens of the nearby houses, so this might all come to naught.
Expedition
The dog and I parked at Union Street Car Park and set out on our walk. I’d originally anticipated entering the nature reserve via a footpath marked from Brook Hill, but when we got
there I discovered a “danger – no entry” sign. I decided to ignore it – it was probably there back from when this valley flooded, and wasn’t relevant any more. Tempting fate, I moved to
walk past it, snapping a photo of the sign on the way.
This is all I managed to capture of the sign, though, because something distracted me…
That’s when I noticed the wasps. Lots of them, buzzing around a nearby tree. Probably their nest was nearby and they were coming over to investigate me and decide whether or not I was a
threat (I don’t think they were the reason for the danger sign!). In any case, this is where the next problem began: I have a hole in the crotch of the trousers I’m wearing.
It’s not a big hole, but it turns out that it didn’t need to be.
It turns out that a wasp had managed to fly up inside the groin area of my trousers and I didn’t notice until… it got partially-squished between the sensitive parts on the
inside of my inner thigh… and the even-more-sensitive parts next to them! I became aware of a sharp stinging sensation, and then another, and it quickly became a burning sensation as I
swatted at my legs to try to liberate, or else kill, the monster. Meanwhile, all of the wasp’s friends were now heading my way, providing reinforcements for their companion.
So I ran.
The doggo had a great time and couldn’t tell what I was complaining about.
The dog and I had to sprint deep into the woods before we were sure that none of the little bastards were still following us. I’d been working on adrenaline (and the dog had been
working on her general desire to run around and be crazy), and hadn’t noticed until I was able to slow down quite how unpleasant my sore and swollen parts were as they rubbed against
one another. Ugh.
Do not recommend.
We regrouped by a stream and found our bearings. We’d come some way from our intended course, but I plotted a series of paths that would take us close, and the pupper and I
bravely pressed on.
Refilling the tanks.
Soon we were close to the hashpoint and I observed to my delight that it lay in what seemed to be a no-mans-land; a deeply-overgrown patch between the nature reserve and the nearby
housing estate. The undergrowth would be too much for the doggo’s little legs, so I left her behind and pushed on alone for the final hundred metres, stomping through swampy conditions
and brambles as I approached the coordinates.
The hashpoint is somewhere near the centre of this image, next to a tree.
After some stomping around, Geohashdroid was able to draw a small circle of uncertainty within which the hashpoint clearly lay.
I can’t manage a silly grin. Will a silly grimace do?
I hacked my way back to the dog (who was happily living her best life, pretending to be a wild wolf, living in the forest) and we made our way home via an attempt at a nearby geocache and checking and updating some OpenBenches data.
Proof, thanks to Geohashdroid.
A success, but not one without a significant amount of pain. I can’t believe I’m saying this but: from personal experience, I do not recommend using your genitals to crush
wasps.
Tracklog
My primary GPSr’s been missing since… my house flood, I think. But I was able to use the fitness tracker in my watch for a decent GPS tracklog.
Quick check while I was passing, as nobody’s logged this cache during our stupidly-hot July or August (and I don’t blame them: it’s been horrible outdoors!). Anyway: the cache is fine
and healthy and looking forward to its next visitor!
Despite immediately honing in on exactly the right host, it still took me an embarrassingly long time to find this cache. This, despite having found – and even hidden – cache contsibers
of exactly this type before!
My usual technique for lazily finding them, which involves swooping my phone through likely hiding spots with the camera in ‘selfie’ mode, as a mirror, somehow didn’t help me spot this
one and it took until I bothered to crouch down (in the rain, in my already-wet trousers) and felt around free host before I reached it!
Found the grave, but this is now the second offset I’ve found here that’s asked me to double-back on my walk.
Nope! I’m just going to save the calculated coordinates for the next time I’m in the area! Looking forward to returning!
Found the clues and solved the coordinates, but I’ve JUST walked past the final location a while ago and don’t feel like doubling back today!
A=How many letters in the word underneath Knoxville?
B=A*2
C=Number of letters in place where “Beckett” came from.
D=C+1
E=F Number of letters in the word underneath Knoxville divided by 2
I should have worked out the likely location before I set out. Given that A must be a single digit number that can be doubled (B) to get a single digit number and halved (E, F) to get a
second, there’s only one possible value for those four clues! The other two C and D are related to one another as well, resulting in a grand total of only 9 possible pairs of
coordinates at which this cache could live (of which I’ll bet the “right” one stands out as the most-likely, even without making assumptions about the length of place names!). So yeah,
I’m kicking myself slightly for not solving this before I visited.
But I’m glad I visited anyway. The historical connection is interesting and I enjoyed learning about it.
Maybe I’ll come find the actual cache next time I’m in the area!
Like many before me, from the looks of things, I didn’t find the cache at the published coordinates but about 11 metres away at N 51° 34.086′, W 001° 26.441′. Possibly worth the CO
checking if those coordinates work better for them, too, during their next maintenance visit. TFTC!
A challenging but worthwhile find during a walk along and around the Ridgeway.
My initial attempt to collect the coordinates was way off because I misinterpreted some of the instructions and it yielded a point almost 2km away! My second attempt looked better,
giving a likely-looking spot… but the checksum was out by one!
I triple-checked all the sources and was still out! I was most-confident in my calculated latitude, so I permuted all possible one-point longitude changes that would satisfy the
checksum. This yielded two candidates: one a tenth of a minute out from my original calculation, and one a thousandth of a minute out.
The one that was a tenth of a minute out from my calculation “felt wrong”, being way off the path, so I merely glanced its way as I walked past to the other. The one that was a
thousandth of a minute – which equates to only around a metre! – looked better, and sure enough when I got there I found a multitude of likely hiding spots.
The hide itself was sneaky too: I had to go further from the path than I expected in order to “look back” and spot the cache – very tricky in the thickening undergrowth! But find it I
did, and duly signed the log before returning it to its snug little spot.
This morning I came up to explore the Ridgeway and escape from thinking about Life Stuff for a bit. (Although escaping from the rain wasn’t a possibility! It was real wet up here
today!)
I was wandering this path in a bit of a reverie when I spotted something unusual and thought it a good candidate for a geocache to hide, having momentarily forgotten that this was in
fact the reason I was on this particular footpath in the first place! But my geosense was solid, because when I took my phone out to check I discovered that, sure enough, I’d
stopped right alongside the hiding area.
The cache was an easy find and I appreciated the proper-sized container! The lid is slightly damaged and no longer makes a complete seal but so long as it’s properly returned to its
hiding place it doesn’t need any urgent attention.
Found cache contents first, some of which I was only able to identify thanks to the photo in the previous log. Cache container, minus lid, was found a reasonable distance away, but this
badly-damaged, nearly-destroyed cache is a goner, I feel.
It’s seen no owner maintenance in most of a decade and CO doesn’t seem to have even logged in to GCCOM for 6½ years ,and it’s clearly getting wrecked in between every single attempted
find. It should probably be put to rest.
A few attempts at hacking through the brambles to get near the hint location had me thinking that perhaps this was a wintertime only cache… before I realised that there was a different
route by which I might approach it. Soon I was directly atop the coordinates and immediately sighted what I was looking for.
Unfortunately the cache was in the open, wide open, with a damaged clasp for its lid and its contents strewn about. Possibly somebody had put something ill-advised into the container
and an animal had torn it open? Or else muggles, maybe?
Reassembled everything as best I could and returned it to its hiding place, but the cache container and contents would enjoy some maintenance.
A quick diversion before a hike up Gramp’s Hill and along the Ridgeway. After collecting the required information I pressed on to the cache, meeting some friendly ponies and horses on
the way.
The coordinates were spot on, which surprised me as the location didn’t seem to be accessible! But it is, just a little overgrown! TFTC!
After a walk out with the dog to claim the FTF on nearby GCBX0R7, I figured that I still had a little a few minutes
on my hands before the code I’d been writing for my day job finished deploying and testing itself, so I thought I’d try to go two-for-two with this, a second FTF!
Coordinate components A through D were easy to collect, but E posed us a problem: from the way it’s put forward in the cache description, the answer I came up with didn’t make any
sense! I double-checked A through D and, confident in them, mathematically inferred a range of possible values for E, but couldn’t find any way to conceivably get any of
them!1
She’s no good at the counting, but she’s a big fan of getting her nose in to investigate clue objects.
In any case: of the handful of possible values for E, only one made sense/pointed anywhere believable, and it fit the checksum so we set out. The cache was easy to find, and what an
excellent container! Amazing work! The container alone would have been worth a favourite point, if only I hadn’t been completely unable to parse that fifth coordinate component.
Signed log and returned the cache to its hiding place. Hoping the next cacher doesn’t get as confused as I did! TFTC!
Footnotes
1 I’ll message the CO to get to the bottom of my confusion!
After liaising with the CO to get the formula fixed following my previous effort, the geohound and I came
out for a drizzly walk in-between the downpours to have a second attempt at the FTF. We’re living in Standlake temporarily while our house is
repaired following a catastrophic flood earlier in the year, and while the dog – who doesn’t much enjoy rain – was initially hesitant about
coming out with me, she warmed to the idea just in time for us to set out.
Out in the wet.
The cache was an easy find in the second place I looked (if I’d checked the hint it’d have been the first place I looked). SL and returned, before pressing on to attempt a second FTF, this time at GCBX0JC.
TFTC, and for the quick turnaround on correcting the calculation!
