We hide our first cache

We had been thinking about when and where to hide our first GeoCache. Well we decided on the when, that being once we had reached our 100 finds, and would therefore be a kind of celebration Cache.
So as you have read previously we reached that target, so next we had to decide upon where we were going to hide the Cache.
After a lot of head scratching, and rejecting of ideas for one reason or another, we rested on the idea that it should be at a location that had some meaning for the both of us, once that was settled, it became much easier.
We chose a location that was close to where we met for the very first time, this being a small park called Lampipuisto (Pond Park).
We visited the potential location to find a good hiding place, we spent a long time there choosing the location very carefully, this done we then collected all the things together and returned later to hide the Cache.

Lampipuisto (Pond Park)

Small wooden bridge over the pond

View of the pond from the bridge

A couple of ducks enjoying the good life

After all it is hard to be a duck (yeah riiiiight)

So we added the cache to the website and waited eagerly for it to be made public.
Soon enough it was, and the first find log soon followed.
These logs have been, and still remain to be, interesting, it seems a lot of the cachers finding the cache have some kind of story to tell about the park, and others who even though they might pass the area everyday were not aware the park was even there. So we are very happy with our choice of location, and the cache seems to be a bit of a hit and success.

Mr Geocacher has one weeks summer holiday left, so we checked on flight prices to England, and found a pair of really cheap tickets, so we took the bull by the horns and booked them.
So the last week of September/first week of October we will be in England.
We do plan to do some GeoCaching whilst we are there, and intend to compare English ways of caching to the Finnish ways. So more on this subject at a later date, plus Mr Geocacher has to start adding the caches to the navigator.

After all this excitement we took a trip to hunt down another of those caches that has been eluding us.
Last time we had visited this location we had spent a long time searching and had to admit that at that time the cache had managed to avoid detection.
But on this occasion it was not so lucky, with no berries around to distract Mrs Geocacher, she demonstrated just how good her Geo-eye has developed and soon hunted down the poor unfortunate micro-cache, despite its cunning camouflage.

Although well camouflaged it could not escape Mrs Geocacher (it should have tried hiding in the berries)

Don't forget to join us again to find out what we have been up to.

Church Boats

Ok I know this is not what I promised you, but I have to clear up a mistake I made in the last post.

What was my mistake? Well I stated that the church boats were owned by the church, this in fact was not true, although I have now corrected it in the original post, I wanted to make a full correction for readers who have already read that post.
Also because I have become quiet interested in this subject.

The church boats were owned and built by the local villagers, and used mainly to go to and from the church. In those days most of the churches were located on islands.
Members of the village would own an oar or pair of oars, although the members were all equal partners there would have been a chairman in charge of the boat, and he got to be in charge of steering or "the Cox" calling out the tempo of the rowing, while other non rowing members would sway in time to encourage the rowers.
The largest of these boats could carry up to 40 rowers.

A pair of Church Boats in the boat house waiting for the next outing.

The Church Boats name and year it was made. This one is Ahti and was made in 1896

Church boats were normally named after a person, the "company" that was set up to build and maintain the boat, or after local fauna.

Ahti is an old male Finnish name, but also has its roots in mythology, being the Finnish god of the sea and fishing.

Although a lot of the church boats are around 100 years old they are still used today for rowing competitions.

More information about Finnish church boats can be found here. (link is in English, Finnish, Swedish, and German)

More information about Ahti can be found here.

Normal service will now be returned to.

Nice Weather for Caching

Sorry it has been a little while since I last posted, but the weather has been so nice, and we have both been so busy at work, that there has not been much time left for me to update you all.

So as I said the weather has been really good, so we decided to take a trip to Pori, in the west of Finland. We had a lovely day out, although the town was far too busy for us to get any caching done there, we did go out of the town to Yyteri (pronounced oo-ter-ee). Yyteri has a proper sandy beach, and we soon found out that there is a cache located on the beach, so of course we could not resist this challenge, and was rewarded with a beach hunt success. Sorry to say that we do not have any pictures that we could post of us at the beach, so enjoy the ones of us in Pori.

Mrs GeoCacher with a balloon mouse (yes it is suppose to be a mouse not a poodle).

There is a saying that goes something like "visit Pori and be dragged through the square in a basket". Well we found the square and the basket, but could not find anyone to drag Mrs Geocacher around.

We have also been to visit GeoCaching Mummy, although this time she did not come caching with us as there was not enough time.
We set out a cache route on the way there, and then another for the journey home.
This turned out very successful and bagged us many caches.

Yes this is a Wellington boot hanging upside down hiding a cache.

The building on the right of the picture houses a church boat (and somewhere hidden is a cache), there are many of these boats around Finland. No the boat is not a church, it was owned and used by the villagers to go to the church, and is rowed by a team of locals.

Do I need to comment?

(Ok if I have to comment) Just some lovely shots of the stream next to the church boat.

This is not near the church boat, but was still on the journey home. This rather erm safe? pier is still in use.

Then one evening we thought we would try our hand at finding a cache we had tried finding three times before.
So setting out on our fourth attempt we really did not know if we would indeed find it this time.

Well we still do not know how it happened, but this time we struck lucky and found the cache in a location we could swear we had searched several times already, but this time we found it within ten minutes of arriving at the cache site.

The cache that managed to hide from us so well. This was the second Nano-Cache we have found.

Well that is it for this instalment, there is more to come.
What? you want an example?
Ok then how about this?
Coming in the next action packed episode we hide our first cache, we find another sneaky cache trying to use camouflage, and we book a trip to England (English caches be afraid, be very afraid)

Ok, can I go now? Well tough because I am, so until next time, stay lucky.

Our First, First to Find :)

First of all Mr Geocacher had to go into town to leave some forms at an office.
After this was done we decided to go and take a look at a cache we had searched twice before with no success, even though we did not have any of our caching equipment with us.
We knew where the cache should be and thought a quick search late in the evening might be in order.
We arrived and parked our car and walked to the location, the hunt was on.
searching through the undergrowth, Mr Geocacher caught sight of something from the corner of his eye, so circling carefully around he moved in on the cache, and this time we had complete success, the cache was in the bag.

After that we went home to relax for the rest of the evening, or so we thought.

Once home we thought we would review some of the mystery and multi-caches in the area, and see if we could work any of them out, well time moved on and it was approaching bedtime, Mr Geocacher decided that he would just have a last look at the recently published caches.
There on the list was a new cache, only published 15 min's before and about 8km's (5miles) away.
At first Mrs Geocacher did not believe Mr Geocacher, and came to view his screen, realising it was real, the race was on.
Mr Geocacher has never seen Mrs Geocacher get ready and leave so fast, we collected up the navigator and a couple of torches and left, running to the car (again Mr Geocacher was surprised because Mrs Geocacher was running to the car, yet another first).
We arrived at the location and was in luck, it seemed that no other cache hunters were around.
Soon locating the coordinate location it was just a case of finding the actual cache, at the same time hoping that no others arrived in search of the rare FTF (First To Find) honour, after all this does only happen once in any caches lifetime.
After a few minutes of searching and head scratching we found our prize, and was very pleased to log our very first FTF, the time was exactly 00:00, what better way to end the night and start the next day.

Did we get to 100?

WARNING PICTURES MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!

Sunday morning dawned and we was up and about early, and preparing for a good days caching.
We had loaded up the navigator with lots of caches in Nokia in the days leading up to Sunday.

Mrs Geocacher preparing for an early start

Well we did manage to get out early, and made our way to a small village near Nokia, we had tried this cache once before but it had turned out NATSBOG. This time with it being early on a Sunday morning we struck gold and hunted down the cache, we had been in the right area before but because of the Geo-muggles, we had not been as observant as we might have otherwise been.
That done we moved on to one we had not done before, but was close by. Here we got a pleasant surprise when we opened the micro-cache container, the makers of the cache had made it from a 35mm film container, but then they had taken the time to use an old 35mm film roll and instead of the film inside they had rolled up the log book.

Mrs Geocacher with the 35mm film roll log book

We continued on, in high spirits, we was 2 for 2 and feeling good.
Our next hunt was to be another surprise and bag us the biggest cache we have ever seen, some how we went from the micro to the huge in leap.

Mrs Geocacher looking really happy and surprised at the size of this cache

We had to drive through this gate to gain access to the cache site, we assume it is to stop the cache from escaping. As you can see Mrs Geocacher seemed to enjoy playing with the levers on our exit.

Whilst we were driving to the next location the navigator alerted us that there was a roadside cache ahead, so we stopped by the side of the road and bagged ourselves this, then continued on our way a lovely cache location of an old stone railway bridge that is no longer in use.

Mr Geocacher "bravely" coaxing a spider away from the cache

Mrs Geocacher walking on the rocks in the stream while she examines the old stone railway bridge

So our day continued as it had started (no not in bed, please do try and keep up), but with us finding all the caches we visited, our navigator kept us informed of more roadside caches whilst we drove from location to location, and we decided if we would stop and do these hunts or if they were just a little far off the side of the road.
The finds just kept on coming, until we was just one short of our 100th find.

Could we do it?

Well with excitement we chose the next location and was feeling good, as we had not failed all day.

We arrived at the location and parked the car, and off we wandered following the navigator, well we came towards the cache location, and very close to it there was a Geo-muggle, so we crept up very carefully towards where the navigator was leading us, keeping a close eye on the muggle, who seemed more interested in his bottle of beer than us thankfully.
After a few minutes we were at the exact coordinates and had our 100th cache in our hands, we excitedly logged and made our way back to the car, being careful not to disturb the Geo-muggle and his beer drinking.

Mrs Geocacher back at the car at the location of our 100th find (woop woop)

So did we have any failures during the day?
To be honest not really, we did go to one cache that turned out to be NATSBOG, we dont count that as a DNF as we were totally unable to search. The cache is located by the side of a lake on the edge of a mooring dock, and of course there was a very big expensive yacht moored there with lots of children swimming in the lake.
We also went to find cache number 101 but when we got towards the cache location the rain started to come down, so we headed for home, to log our finds, write our blogs, and plan our first hide in honour of our 100th find.

All in all it was a great day for us, hope yours was for you.