Grommits Grand Day Out

Thursday 11th June saw me meet up with The Syllogiser for this new series of caches put out by 1Grommit. We were nearly a hour late starting due to the M61 being closed to allow the air ambulance to land for an accident just before Chorley. Arrived to meet Don in Aldi at Bamber Bridge to grab some of the offers and then we set of for our first section. Parking at the junction of Jackson's Bank Road and Bezza Lane. We headed from there to cache GGDO21 and worked our way round to GGDO25 before bypassing the main village of Balderstone and dropping down to GGDO15 and heading back around to GGDO20 and the cars

The paths were very overgrown in parts (see photo) and the need for a map is required. Lucky for us we had two print outs from memory map, a pda with memory map and an OS map of the West Pennine Moors. This still didn't stop the situation of someone heading in the wrong direction because they had selected the wrong cache, the last one in fact to navigate to. After this technical problem it was onwards again arriving back at the cars 12 caches later. We then moved the cars around to the church in Balderstone and had a spot of lunch there. After taking on food and fluids it was off again to the start of the series and GGDO1. We had 14 caches ahead of us, 13 traditional and 1 unknown. So after 13 more caches we had completed the loop in two sections and had all the numbers to find GGDO Final. If you have had the privilege to meet The Syllogiser you will know that he doesn't talk that much, sorry that wrong. Anyway Don took the opportunity and the fact that we had different ideas on how to make our way to the final that he asked a local man doing some DIY for directions. It took Don about 10 minutes to run through the basics of memory map before we could set of for the final cache.

Because of the way we had done the series we were right next to the area the final was hidden in and it only took us about 5 minutes to make our way there and find the cache. At first we overshoot GZ but using the hint the cache was in hand in no time at all. Sat down to write the log and drop and retrieve so TB's and enjoy the sound of the wilderness with no sounds of the 20th century around. This is a great series, very hard going and difficult if you didn't have a map with you but as more people do it over the weeks i'm sure cachers trails will appear.