The cache has been archived.

This was our main goal of the day today, the weather looked promising, and I'm planning to tackle Africa on Wednesday, so this was a bit of a trial run for the new iPhone 6. I'll put some technical stuff at the end...
We decided to park at the paid parking near the suggested start point as we'd decided this was going to be a day out, and I tracked our activities on a spare eTrex 30 (more later)
We've been to Virginia Water before, and I've been here many times some years ago, but never walked the entire grounds, in fact, I'd never really appreciated just how big it is !
This isn't a cache to rush, both the effort that have clearly gone in to setting/maintaining it, and the grounds themselves demand much more appreciation, yes, it is a LONG multi/mystery, but there is a real "Yes!" sense of achievement when the log is finally signed
A comment worth making here is, as VHF1 certainly appreciated, there are ample opportunities to stop, have a seat and just enjoy your surroundings too
The stages are very nicely laid out, with sufficient time/distance between them to allow you to appreciate the grounds and we had no problems identifying where we needed to get the information from, and found it pretty quickly once there. Where the information is missing, as ever, Amberel's provided information for those stages.
There was also a bit of variety in the questions to answer, which keeps the interest going too - even if I might've looked a little strange at one or two of the stages (If you've done it - I'm sure you'll know what I mean)
As per some other comments, this takes in most, if not all, of the most interesting features of this wonderful landscape, and makes for a memorable and very enjoyable day out.
I was also VERY glad of Amberel's very precise details re. the final, I would really have struggled otherwise, for reasons that are entirely understandable, and it the crowning glory was to locate the cache, remove the lid and still find everything in pristine order inside (oh yes, sticks across X still intact )
Duly signed and replaced as carefully as it had been found, a big grin and real sense of achievement - thanks Amberel.

TFT great walk and the cache.

Boring technical stuff for anyone who's interested:
iPhone 6 on EE 4G contract, no problems on the entire course, fully charged when we left the car, used 30% charge in total (but - not all on this cache !)
Oregon 600 used as GPSr for waypoints, so I wasn't using the iPhone for that side of things.

Cache maintenance this afternoon. The cache was in pristine condition, you would never have known it just sat there through the wettest winter on record.

 

Rgds, Andy

---(2011-11-10 15:48:00---(Find 6881)---
We enjoyed the similar cache "Bushy Park West" some time ago and had been saving this one for an autumn day when less daylight means shorter walks closer to home. We've visited Virginia Water many times before but this cache took us to places we'd not previously seen. We were surprised and pleased to see that there've been some improvements since we were last here but to say what they are would give away too much about the cache.

Most of the answers were easily obtained: we filled some in before leaving home (though we visited the waypoints anyway) and some we knew before reaching the waypoint, though as we were passing anyway this didn't save any time. A few of the questions caused us some problems: at one waypoint we searched for some time before finding the answer; at another we went straight to the right place but didn't see what we needed so spent half an hour looking elsewhere before discovering that the answer was obscured by mud.

Another waypoint seemed to be about 50m from the given coordinates but as the required information was reached first then that wasn't a problem. One question was very subjective and had many answers: we had five values in just a couple of minutes. Luckily the second guess proved correct.

We weren't surprised that the final was both difficult to get to - though we didn't take the easiest route - and difficult to find. The hint did help though as there are many such items it wasn't easy to see the described location.

The route took us about six hours - rather longer than the suggested three - though we did stop to eat our sandwiches and also visited a couple of nearby caches on the way round. We had a very enjoyable walk in an area we know reasonably well and now know even better.

Thanks for the cache.

Did this one on GC. Took a few days to complete it as we mopped up the other caches in Virginia. Was a bit of a fight to get to the final and a bit of a wasp issue on the path.

What a fabulous adventure. Tackled it this afternoon with Sharky and Penguin and Heffalump007 - getting 4 bicycles into the back of my car with only one seat down was difficult but achieved by removing the wheels.  Taking bicycles proved to be a good idea because the place was packed and parking was hard to come by - so we cycled in from further away. 

Unfortunately, at the first stage, Heffalump007's iPhone had no coverage, so we could not submit our answer and were stuck. A phone call to Mrs Muggle soon had us on our way again and thankfully this was the only location at which the technology failed.

After the first few stages we got to the Valley Gardens and were obliged to push our cycles....then we began to wonder if it was such a good idea to bring them after all, as waypoint after waypoint came within that area. Finally we thought we'd broken free, only to have to go back in again!

Once beyond the Valley Gardens, the route followed the predicted course and we made up for time lost earlier, but none the less we were racing against the clock with the daylight fading fast, and GZ at the final known to be gloomy at the best of times.  We tried to guess the penultimate waypoint but failed, and in the event it is en route to the final and our hope of a short cut to save some minutes did not work.

On approach to GZ, we took the route that seemed most promising by bicycle and were able to push our cycles to with 120 feet. Then into the thick dark undergrowth with just one torch between us - Heffalump007's headtorch, which he kindly lent to Sharky, through Sharky made a meal of the terrain and followed, rather than leading the way.  In fact, the torch mainly served to blind the rest of us and make it impossible to adjust our eyes to the low light. I got myself perhaps 20 feet ahead of Sharky and was then able to pick my way quite well, with the backlight on my GPSr turned right down, so that it did not dazzle me.  Amazingly, I got to within 16 feet of the cache with comparative ease and then found the cache very quickly, with the aid of Heffalump007's torch, whilst Heffalump007 and Penguin retraced their steps having overshot the hide.

Left a geocoin, took the Travel Turtle.

The twilight was fading very fast indeed and it was only just possible to retrace our steps to the bicycles, then we were literally cycling in the moonlight. It's amazing how bright a half moon partly obscured by cloud can seem when there's no other light!  Fortunately a pedestrian gate to the park was still unlocked when we got there and we shaved a couple of minutes off our return route to the car. A great adventure and we'll definitely be heading out to the others of this type soon.

A "whereamberelgoes" cache, definitely recommended.

Many thanks, Sandvika #1351

Very many thanks to Ian for finding a couple of errors on the trail, now corrected. As a result of a further set of GPSr readings, and comparing mine with Ian's, I've moved the final co-ordinates by 35-40 feet and improved the guidance a bit. All set for the next visitor .

Rgds, Andy

FTF

With WW2 needing to stay at home today to get on with work, last night I was working out where I would go and I saw that this one had still not been attempted. I had done Amberel's similar cache Isabella last year and enjoyed that, so decided that today I would combine this cache with some of the nearby puzzles that I'd solved.

Parked the car at 8.30 am on a grey morning and set off. All went well until stage 7 when I found the feature I needed, but all my inputs were rejected. So a PAF was needed and Amberel gave me the information I needed. I checked again but got not see this anywhere, so took some photos. Another stage shortly after that was the only one that it took some time to find the information,. and then al;l went well until the final web page question when another PAF to the owner was needed. That one was definitely a problem with the web page and has now been corrected.

The successful input to the final web page gave me the coordinates of the final location, some hints, and a photo, so after 2.5 hrs I approached GZ pleased that it looked like it was going to take less than the 3-4 hours that Amberel suggested. However, as the cache page says the final is in some dense vegetation and the GPS signal soon deteriorated and soon became virtually useless. But as I said, Amberel had given some helpful hints - but there seemed to me a number of items that matched the hints and with a useless GPS I couldn't work out which was the one I wanted.

During this time Amberel had been sitting at home tracking my progress (after my first PAF he knew it was me going round),. as he got notified whenever a new webpage was requested from his server., and I received a phone call to fined out how I was getting on. I had to exit the dense vegetation though before I could actually talk to him and let him know how it was going. Back into the bushes again with a bit of extra information and a lot more searching. Time flies and another phone call, so I have to exit the bushes again. I think by now Amberel felt sorry for me and he says he will get on his motorbike and ride over - a 20 minute journey. At that point a lot of walkers passed by so my return into the bushes was delayed until they passed by (fortunately my exits had not coincided with muggles passing by).

I continued my search and in what seemed no time at all I heard the noises of someone approaching. Amberel soon appreciated my problems with multiple features that matched his hints, but soon saw the one I needed. With that resolved that cache was soon located in a place I thought I had checked at least once, but with lots of similar features around It was hard to work out which matched the photo on the last web page. So a blank log was signed at 12:23, still inside the upper end of Amberel's suggested time for this cache, although if he had not come out to help me I'm sure it would have taken longer.

We took some further GPS readings and Amberel looked for other hints to add to that final web page. Thanks Andy for coming to my rescue - I think I would have found it eventually but you saved me some time. A very enjoyable cache - just a shame that it had been a grey day because I've been here many time before and it is even better on a bright sunny day.

TNLN TFTC