High Noon Frenzy - Shiltonpigs 3rd "First to Find"

Mr Shiltonpig catching some "rays"

 Monday April 19th 2010

Caching can be extremely addictive and what had started out as a normal afternoons caching soon became a caching frenzy we were worse than 100 piranhas in a pond trying to get the only piece of meat....we were even slobbering at the end (well Mr Shiltonpig was anyway lol). So it had been a slow start to the day we had started off at Bignalls Wood otherwise known as the posh part of the National Forest, this is where all the reservoirs and stately homes and rich people live...lol Of course as always we were on the trail of those elusive high noon statues.

Josh "King of the molehills"

 We found the statue fairly straight forward...we had little excuse this time as it was in a field with no trees to block it. Mr Shiltonpig thought he would lie down and hope he could catch a tan when the sun shone through the hole in the statue....thats when Mrs Shiltonpig pointed out that the sun wasn't shining. Josh loved it here and was running around without any fear of thorns, stingers or thistles. So then we thought lets go and get another high noon statue....and so after some well deserved nouvelle cuisine (aka McDonalds) we drove to the Sence Valley park for the next one. Sence Valley is located in the part of the National Forest best known for coal.

Mrs Shiltonpig had given him 2 black eyes

 This cache was a sneaky little thing however the mightiness of Mrs Shiltonpig proved too great for it....the valley has 3 ponds which we then decided to have a look around....But then we thought to ourselves, lets go and do another high noon cache. So we then went to Billa Barra park and we found the statue no problem....but the cache was going to be a lot harder. Now if finding empty packets of durex was a competition we would have won, but it wasn't and we looked and looked for the cache and just couldn't find it. So we had found 5 of the 6 high noon caches....to find the bonus cache we had a choice, do we go home email the cache owner for some help or do we get out the fingers and toes and

Josh just didn't want to leave without finding it!

do the math. Well by now we were caught up in the moment, so we sat and worked out where we thought the co-ords should be. Driving with Mrs Shiltonpig directing via the gps was a new experience and lots of fun...and we soon found ourselves in roughly the right location. We drove down a bumpy lane and parked up....this was just the first half of it. We then had to find something that would give us more digits...we walked around for 10-15 minutes and then we saw it. We knew we had arrived in the right place! Then we had to work out some more figures, this took another 10 minutes....but we were not sure we had it right. We entered the co-ords into the gps and away we went.

Great cache...FTF prize was larger than expected

After 5 days, 30-40 miles driven, 6 woodlands and the bonus woodland, 6 statues we walked right up to the cache and its hard to describe the joy and smug satisfaction in finding a series like this first. We can't tell you where we found it....you will have to go yourself. There is no question that this is our favourite cache in the region and should be in everyones "to do list". It really shows off the National Forest in a positive light and jumps straight into our top 10 list of caches found yet. We go home shattered, satisfied and a little disappointed that the series is now over! Thanks to the Ashby Bells for a great series!