Cache Machine

Welcome to Winkwell Cache Contents

"Welcome to Winkwell" is the third geocache I've put down since starting geocaching.

At 6.3km from my home co-ordinates, it's relatively close and I come to this part of the world fairly regularly as I have friends who live on one of the boats moored at the boat yard opposite and drink with them in the Three Horseshoes once or twice a week. This means that any maintenance required can be carried out quite quickly once reported.

Initially this cache was further down the canal (towards Hemel Hempstead) placed on an afternoon walk from home, through Hemel Hempstead town and along the canal, but I hadn't realised there was already a geocache from the Grand Union series already located within metres of my hiding place!

For those of who who aren't regular geocachers, the rules for placing a new geocache say that it shouldn't be within 0.1miles of another existing cache... This is to avoid having a number of geocaches too close together, thus increasing the risk of too much suspicious activity around the area - drawing attention to the location and potentially seeing the geocahce "muggled" (found by members of the public).

A view around the geocache location

This Sunday I retrieved the geocache from it's origianl location and took it with me part way along the canal, on my walk to Berkhamsted Castle with friends. I spotted a suitable location just off the towpath - still in sight of The Three Horseshoes pub and took down the all-important co-ordinates.

The geocache contains a logbook and two pens, a "first-to-find" certificate, a travelbug and geocoin (collected on my travels the first day I put the cache down), a small ladybird (from Alibags "Bridge 148 - Old Fishery Lane - Grand Union Series" cache), a Scout Network pinbadge, a pink penguin pencil top and Scouts "Join the Adventure" card.

Within hours of the cache listing being approved, geocaching player "emgi" became the first to find it, at 10.50am on Monday 18th January - congratulations, I hope you're the first of many.