The cache has been archived.

I will always prize the wonderful 'Top Cache' geocoin that Amberel kindly awarded this cache, made and presented to me. However, being a Top Cache in a lovely location with far reaching views in all directions and the omnipresent kites didn't yield a flurry of enthusiastic visitors so after being unfound for 11 years I decided to retrieve it.  The cache was an easy find, being a large ammo box, though well concealed, and it was still in great condition, as well as clean and dry inside. If it had been any other cache than my own, the excitement and satisfaction of finding a cache after over a decade would have been immense, but I don't even get to record this final retrieval as a find!

John and I saw a dozen red kites during the course of the day; on the way to this cache one of them had put up a mixed flock of woodpigeons and lovely white doves. Different sources give different values for E but my first choice proved to be the right one. Took a telephone number book, left a highlighter pen. Returned to Ewelme for a good lunch at the pub TFTC.

To be honest, the Kites have become easy to find well beyond the Chilterns now, so the photo log requirement does not really serve its intended purpose of cementing the memory of being close to the birds....which is not necessarily the case particularly in poor visibility anyway. Thus, I've removed the requirement, but will always be happy to see photos posted.

---(2010-06-16, 15:44:10)---(Find 5610)---
It's several years since we were last here visiting some of the Groundspeak-listed caches in the area. The climb seems to have got steeper since then. Once on the top we had a pleasant stroll passing some rocks which, when they moved, revealed themselves as sheep.

We're willing to bet that this cache was placed in the winter, or at least not in high summer. The vegetation is such that we couldn't see anything described in the hint and only by hacking through the undergrowth did we find something that looked like it might hide a cache. It didn't, but a lot more hacking eventually revealed something that did. Unlike Andy we found the coords to be quite good - it was just getting to them that was difficult.

We do agree with Andy on the logging requirement. Despite what it says on the cache page we saw few red kites here today. In fact, we saw more, closer to us, on the drive here than we did on the walk. The route is under heavy tree cover for most of it and only in the short stretch across the sheep field is there an unrestricted view of the sky. We waited here for a long time - longer than it took to find the cache - in the hope of seeing kites and the resulting photos prove that we did. The best of them is, as required, attached but we won't pretend that taking it added to our enjoyment of what is otherwise an excellent though tiring cache.

Thanks for the cache.

Having logged this as a TerraCache, I've returned to day to log again as an OpenCache. This is a lovely walk up and over the downs to a top cache, it seem such a shame that no-one else at all has been here between my two visits, even though they are separated by over a year.

The cache hasn't moved during the last year. I know this because the co-ordinates were 63 feet out a year ago, and they were still 63 feet out today . Despite this, the cache is not difficult to find - it's a large ammo box, and it's in a pretty obvious place. And it remains in perfect contition.

The cache page explains that the cache was set during the filming of a CountryFile episode, fronted by Michaela Strachan. Other caches were visited during that program, in one of which Michaela Strachan placed a plastic snake as a trade item. I collected that snake and released it as a travel bug. It started its journey in my "Brobdingnagian Micro" cache, but unfortunately the person who took it from that cache still has it - they appear to have stopped caching and have not answered my emails.

I was pleased to find another snake in this cache. I feel it has a sufficiently close link with the original to make it worth releasing on the travel bug copy tag, so I swapped it for some tee-shirt post-it notes.

This is a truly splendid cache. The only thing I really don't like about it is the additional logging requirement of a Red Kite photo. The cache page exhorts me to bring my telephoto lens. I don't have one. I don't have a camera that would take one. And even if I did, I don't have the skills to use it well. No photo that I take will even begin to approach the quality of the photographs on the cache page. At the very best all I can do is show a few fuzzy, featureless, unidentifiable darkish pixels against a blue sky. It doesn't prove I've been to the cache (the cache password does that), and adds nothing at all to the experience of reading the cache page. All it does is detract from my own experience on the walk by requiring that I fiddle around with a camera when I could be watching the Red Kites instead, and then demonstrate to all and sundry that I'm a rubbish photographer, with rubbish equipment. But to fulfil my obligations, here it is .

Here's hoping that a few more people will make the journey here during the next year,

Rgds, Andy