Compared to last week's storm we were greeted with wonderful sunny weather this afternoon. Perfect to go geocaching!
This week we did one of my favourite geocaching walks: the walk along the beach from Milford to Takapuna. This walk has geocaches hidden every few hundred metres and some with very clever hiding places. We decided to start walking and see how far we'd get.
Our first geocache was hidden in such an unlikely spot that it was ignored by most. One clever mum then decided that maybe there's something inside after all and guess what? A little magnetic box with dirt camouflage was stuck to the top of it. Our first find for the day!
Next our GPS took us to a wooden stairs and a lot of knocking and pulling on the wood. I had done this one before, so I knew that the geocache had to be there somewhere, but where was it? We then realised it was stuck - wood expands when it was wet and after some pulling and tugging we finally got it free. Another very cheeky hiding place.
Our walk continued along the beach, over rocks and stones and wooden bridges.
Our third geocache was the Giant Chair. For those of you not familiar with the Giant Chair, it's about halfway between Milford beach and Takapuna beach. The chair and the walls are part of Merkesworth Castle, also known as Algie's Castle, which was built in 1926, from locally quarried basalt, for Captain John Alexander Algie after he arrived from Scotland. Who would have thought we had a castle on the shore?
The chair and the castle also featured in a local children's book about a lonely, friendly giant Jasper who lives in the castle and builds the chair to encourage visitors. The children who feature in the story are all named after the grandchildren of the author Pam Laird. If you want to read the book, have a look if your local library has it. It's called 'Giant Jasper's Chair' by Pam Laird.
The geocache itself is another one of those very clever camouflages. It's in plain sight and literally right before your eyes, which is why I could never find it. Lucky we had a very perceptive dad with us who fished it out of it's hiding spot, leaving the rest of us to 'oooh' and 'aaah' about it all!
Our fourth and last geocache for the day was a typical nastly little nano. I call them nasty because they're very, very small and usually very hard to find as well. But as a group we are really fantastic, even the tiny little nanos can't escape us! Look at how small it is:
So that was our last cache for the day. Two hours walking, approximately 3.5 kms, and four geocaches. Not bad for a sunny winter's afternoon, eh?
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