a full week

It has been a very busy week which is one reason i have not done alot on here.

Floods-

Monday was very worrying, the journey over the pennines was very bad with driving rain and spray but on reaching work the river levels over the weir didnt seem to bad, this changed quickly and by 10am the storm surge made it downto wakefield and the river rose swiftly and overtopped the sheet piled wall, eventually ending up 1.5 m above the sheetpiles and flooding the whole basement are of the piling mat.
The river upstrem of the weir had risen to be touchiong the road bridge and below the weir it was only 2-300mm below the underside, the weir had virtually disappeared.
see these photos

the boats

across the river were looking very precarious and i heard later in the week that 2 narrowboats were sunk higher up the Calder when they were lifted by the floodwters onto the tow path and then overturned as the waters receded,The river breached the lock cuts flood defences in tose cases so it was an unusually high flood, but it ids the 2nd time this year that our defences on site have been breached.

Quiz event-
Well done to Muttoneer and his mrs, for a great event at the Swan in Winwick, very busy doo with over 40 cachers shoehorned into the room to take part, all the usual suspects and a few new faces, including Dewsetter who joined Qpootle 5 and myself in team cheshire,
Some very odd questions especially the music round which was very obscure.
Team griffin won and i think we came about 5th which wasnt too bad.
Met Cannonedwards for the first time at the end but didnt have time to chat, as usual it seems i didnt recognise Its Chopper, meetings before he has been in his bike leathers or head to toe in waterproofs, so how am i expected to recognise him!!
Normal time trying to wind up HazelS, mostl;y about her A49 mistake on the forums, but thats another story which will be lost to the memory soon.
Ac-P managed to win some money on a 1-1 challenge as well.
great night, Hope there is another in the pipeline.


TB race
thread here - TB race

Nw cachers forun tb race, great idea, tbs were released at the quiz, My tb was a late starter ( LOVELACE ) but logged it through the startline and it ios on its way now.

Scoring system relies on a bit of honesty and Jeremey has set up a scoring table which he will publish weekly link -
this will rely on us entrants updating it regularly though.

There has already been some contreversey over points scoring as Philpamandrob has taken ginderbreadmans' tb on a tour of 5 trigs plus photos on the wirral scoring a potential 100 points, but is it in the spirit of the race? hmmmmmm.


Weekends caches.

Sunday and we planned originaly of a trip up to J36 and climb the big limestone hill that towers over the M6 just before the J36. But we decided to not go as far and picked as our main object, JermeyR's The Beasts of Caton Moor, we also found Hidden Scout and as the result of an appeal on the Nw cachers forum, CBBCs challengs cache

The Beasts of caton moor was superb,read the log here
The beasts are the windmills, but i quite like them, they are so graceful and a great achievment in engineering and every little jelps in providing the energy we need to provide our power needs.
we also released into the cache our lovelace tb and qPootle5's Salty the diesel tb both of which are in the Nw cachers race, Salty i think scores 33 points for the cache whilst lovelace scores zero because i am its owner.


Hidden scout was a good cache to a nice rocky outcrop/ ridge just below clougha pike, good views and a well hidden cache, on the drive up the minor road to the layby near the cache we saw alot of cyclists, slowly climbing the hill, a lot of sweat pouring from them, rather them than me!!

There have been alot of caches hidden within the 10mile radius to home, even one by john stead using my Weaving around... title, which i dont mind, must go and clear all these new ones though.
QPootle 5 is the main culprit and Pandemi with the Tattonine incident series.

Boating

Holiday in June is booked with work, 2 weeks on the boat, we are planning our usual route, 3rd time now, of the 4 counties ring and the caldon canal, but the difference this time is we will be accompanied by Mrs B's parents,(my In-laws) on their boat.
The idea started from a discussion last year in, I recall, September after they had come back from a holiday, and after a braoinstorming evening of talking and arguing over maps, they presented us with an itinery, which we checked against our previous trips, to see whether it was feasible, which it was.
From that they booked a holiday off work and we agreed to do the ring with them.
I especially want to show them the Caldon canal which is one of my favourites.
Anyway thats the holiday plan for June.
But it depends on where we are moored at the time, we hope to be up in Marple to reduce my Commute to Wakefield by a bit, but we will see as that will mean a run down Bosley and Cheshire locks to meet them on the Middlewich arm, but at least it will give us a leisurley end to the holiday without having to drop back down to Anderton.

Looking forward to it, but first still need to get the BSS done.:(

plus there are a lot of caches set by the narrowboaters along the shroppie to grab now as well.