Geocaching in Aberystwyth

Well, the school holidays are over and we managed quite a bit of geocaching during them. We hit our goals of beating our monthly record and our consecutive days caching record too. We didn’t do any over the weekend so the last day of our consecutive days record was on Friday when Morgan and I popped into to Aberystwyth to pick up a few last caches and then meet Anna for lunch at Ta Med.

There were a couple of caches in Penglais woods that we wanted to do. The first was a puzzle cache that took us around the woods looking for answers to clues which then gave us the final coordinates of the actual cache. The next was a simple cache on the edge of the woods overlooking the golf course. We managed to find all of the answers to the puzzle cache as we knew exactly where to look for them anyway, but we didn’t quite get around to finding the final cache. The one overlooking the golf course was nice and easy though so at least we managed to log a successful find.

Whilst walking in the woods we noticed that a few of the large Beech trees in the middle of the woods have some strange branches that grow into each other. I hadn’t noticed this before despite looking at these trees many times but I’m guessing it is a type of the natural phenomenon called insoculation. Insoculation is actually the process by which the branches, trunks or roots of two trees grow together in a form of grafting. In this case though it is two branches of the same tree so I’m not sure if insoculation is the correct term or if there’s another more specific one? Maybe it is something common with Beech Trees but I’ve never noticed it before and it’s strange how a number of the trees here exhibit it.

We also had some nice views out over Aberystwyth from the viewpoint.

Aberystwyth Viewpoint

Aberystwyth Viewpoint

So, we have now found a grand total of 375 geocaches and April 2013 has been our best month ever with a count of 52 finds and 12 consecutive days caching. As usual the caches have taken us not only to places we’d never been before but also back to places we should visit more often. We’ve had some nice walks to find caches and a few adventures with river crossings, mud, snow, slippery seaweed, ditches and car rescues. We’ve re-visited some lovely spots and had an excuse to visit other that we might not have had any reason to go to. Morgan has been into it properly and now has his mind set on beating the consecutive days record over the summer holidays – we’ll have to see about that.

 

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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