How wrong can I be!!

Well i definetley spoke too soon, as I am back in Liverpool, in the dungeon office at the Paradise street site.

A phone call yesterday and I was told to report to here to help in the sign off of the NCRs(non conformance reports) and the clients SORs (Site observation reports) basicly defects!

At least it meant a little lie in and i managed to try for a couple of caches on the way

Tried for Mars bars Enigma challenge cache- but was too dark and i failed to locate it in the trees

but did manage to find Carlos' Botson - with out flying - so the dawn raid to haydock wasnt a total loss.

good to catch up with JA and sam here on site and hopefuly will be back at the wakefield site tomorrow.

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.

Sunday walk and new geocoin

We got a new geocoin.They came on saturday morning, a gold and a silver Severn valley appeal geocoin, we have logged both coins on the site and will soon be releasing one of them into the wild.
The coins were minted to raise money for the Severn Valley railway, which was washed away in several places during the floods in July 07, see the link which has some videos.
The coin we are going to release has the mission of visiting preserved railway lines throughout the UK, so hopefully we will get some good photos.

lazing on a sunday morning, thats how the songs go.
so i had a lie in, but a little nose nudging me made me wake up and get up and take them out for a walk. I decided as i left the boat, that the walk would be longer than usual and i would go and check on 2 of my caches, Weaving through Barnton and Weaving through Saltersfod which both hadn't been found since october.
the sky was very grey but all the walk the rain just about held off, we followed little molly and her owners all the way past the boatlift and round to the Barnton footbridge, before we turned down the hill to Winnington swingbridge and onto the towpath of the river Weaver.
along here are the 3 micros and the final cache of weaving through Barnton cache, I checked the final box first, which is a little damp, but hopeflly will dry out in the coming few wekks as it gets warmer.
On from there past the large wharf buildings on wallerscote island and checked on the 3 micros along the towpath to the access road to Saltersford lock.
As we climbed up to the saltersford pool i saw a family standing above me looking at a sheet of paper, could it be walk instructions or was it a print out of my cache page?, It was a print out so i introduced myself to them and in their company wandered up above the tunnel to watch the 2 kids hunt for the cache.
They took the enigma geocoin, which i was going to leave there and continued on to weaving through little leigh.
The dogs and i returned to saltersford pool and after pausing to watch a boat exit the tunnel walked up to the main road in barnton and went home via the co-op and anderton.
good little walk.

Round Loaf in the dark and New site

Winter wander 2 dawn recon or round loaf in the dark!!
Another post on the forum, this time by Foinavon Round Loaf in the dark thread
asking 'how long it would take to get up to Round Loaf Barrow? ( which is also an earthcache )
and as before on my post for a walk round anglezarke moor, it turned into a little meet, 8 of us met at Alance bridge on Anglezarke reservoir at 6am in the dark
and proceeded up lead mines valley and onto the moor, great fun.on the way up we found caches BMR2, Lead mines clough , where Dizzley managed to loose his GPS, and Raided, before wandering out onto the moor with dawn just colouring the grey skies above.

As we stood on Round Loaf it became fully light and we could see a fair way.
Returned cross country, hard going steping over the tussocks, via Grain Pole hill, Hurst Hill, Mini Pikestones and Lapwing Layer, where the group split.
Jungle Godess, Stora and Carlos came back to the cars with myself whilst Foinavon, His 2 muggle friends, Muttoneer and Dizzley, Headed back to lead mines valley to look for dizzley's gps, which they found.
back in car for 10am with 8 caches under the belt, can't wait for the next one.


New site First week

Started at a new site at Wakefield on Tuesday, The job is a concrete frame and drainage works to the new Hepworth Art Gallery.see link I have just found the webcam for the site as well http://www.hepworthwakefield.com/AboutUs/NewBuilding/hepcam.htm
maybe you will see me striding across site, then again maybe not.



I returned to site for my second day there on Thursday to fing the river had overtopped its banks and had flooded the basement piling mat to a depth of about 2.5m at which point it topped over the sheet piled wall and flowed back into the river, lets hope it doesn't happen too often, or we will be swimming. attach some photos before and during the flood taken on my phone, sorry for the poor quality as it was before 8am and wasnt fully light.
friday was spent trying to empty the water out and repair damage to the riverbank to try and stop the river flooding again at such a low height.
blurb from the architects web site -
the hepworth wakefield is a new art gallery designed by david chipperfield architects to replace the city of wakefield's existing gallery at their new site on the river calder. the new building will house the gallery's collection of european and british art along with an extensive collection of work by locally born artist barbara hepworth. the official groundbreaking for the new site will take place on december 7, 2007 on the city's historic waterfront. david chipperfield architects have consciously designed the building to blend in with the area's small-scale industrial buildings. because the site is visible from all sides, the building has been designed with no front or back, giving every viewpoint its own unique perspective.
Sat morning
lovely morning when i decided to climb out of my pit this morning and take the 2 geohounds for a run, the sun was shining and the towpath muddy, and i saw a Kingfisher streaking along low to the water away fom us, the blue on it's back was shining in the sunshine, a great sight, one which always puts a smile on my face.

Happy new year etc.

two weeks off work so thats why no new posts,

we spent christmas in scotland, new year on the boat refitting the kitchen and now back at work on a new site in Wakefield west yorks.

Chistmas was a little eventful, manage to find 49 scottish caches in the week, some brilliant places we went to, will try to do a post for this alone.

as it is i'll leave it at that and try and update soon