JenLGilmour – Page 8 – GilmourFamily Geocaching Blog

A walk across the Humber Bridge

May 19, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged bike, Christian Aid, crossing, daughter, family, fun, hubby, Hull, Humber Bridge, life, love, Riley, Robyn, scooters, sophie, sponsorship, virtual cache, walking, we did itLeave a comment

A bit of a different post today because we didn’t Geocache this weekend! We went on a walk over the Humber Bridge which is just down the road from us.

The walk was actually a part of Christian Aid. I used to do the walk when I was younger so I was delighted to reminisce and complete it again but with my own children (and husband of course).

The idea is to gain sponsorship for each crossing you complete, each side is a station in which you get your card stamped. I wasn’t expecting anymore than 2 (there and back) with the three kids.

With Robyn on her walking bike we knew this could take us some time! In fact Robyn insisted on completing 3/4 of the way on the first crossing to bike it at snail speed. How she enjoyed it and how everyone went on ahead. Robyn was determined.

This is on the other side of the Humber Bridge and with some of our Church family from Tower Hill Methodist Church.

It took us 2 hours to complete the 4 mile walk and the children enjoyed themselves.

There is a virtual cache on the Humber Bridge by the way.

Here are the children upon completion.

Now collecting sponsorship for the two crossings. Get in touch if you want to sponsor Sophie, Riley and Robyn. Up to the 19th May 2018.

Jennifer and Co

Ps the cover photo of the blog is from around four years ago.

When in London…

May 16, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged alone, Cache, caches, David, Geocaching, Jennifer Gilmour, life, London, meeting, Micheal Angelo, museum, Paddington, public speaking, riddle, statue, Train Station, travel, V&A, virtual, virtual cacheLeave a comment

Hey everyone!

Jennifer here.

When in London… do a smidge if Geocaching!

I was in London for a speaking gig and couldn’t resist a sneaky bit of caching. I didn’t plan it, I just thought to myself if I have some time I will have a look and see what is around.

I had the opportunity to find two virtual caches.

First cache

I happened to have met a fellow writer in South Kensington for a coffee and I had a couple of hours spare and could see the V&A Museum was very close and had a virtual. I must admit I spent over an hour on it as it had a riddle BUT I got there in the end and wasn’t expecting to see this! I was so delighted that Geocaching brought me to visit the statue of David. It was in a side room I would have never had looked out for as it came from a dark corridor.

Once the riddle was solved I still had to find information from the back of the statue on a plaque. Managing to log it in the end and a lovely wonder around I enjoyed some time in the beautiful museum.

Second cache

I made my way to Paddington train station with good time, this is where I was meeting the event organisers for my speaking gig the next day.

I sat and read for a bit and then decided to have a quick look for caches to see if there was a cache in the station. I had already taken a must needed photo in Paddington underground to show the kids…

A quick look on the app and I could see there was a virtual cache nearby. I knew it had to be something to do with Paddington. A short walk a way and I find the statue I needed to. I had to answer the cache request and inform the cache owner of what was written on the suitcase. A nice and easy find with a photo opportunity.

It was nice to enjoy some light Geocaching in London.

Jennifer

Sometimes it doesn’t work out…

May 6, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged Brocklesby, Cache, caches, car, daughter, DNF, Easter, egg rolling, family, flute, fun, Geocaching, hubby, life, love, lunch, oops, pied piper, Riley, Robyn, sophie, sun, SWAG, trail, walking, weatherLeave a comment

Yesterday we planned to spend the bank holiday Geocaching (of course)! The sun is out and it’s perfect weather for some caching fun.

However it just didn’t work out for us on the Saturday. We went out to the Brocklesby Estate and planned to get a good amount of caches since we had been there last year and had realised just how big the trail was! In fact you may recognise the name because we came here for the egg rolling event as well. It’s simply beautiful.

You can find number 1 of the trail at GC3KAC7.

We didn’t start at cache 1 but in fact at cache 10, in quick form our caching day looked like this: We found the first one easy, in fact it was Sophie who found it. The second we had no look. The third we bumped into a whole team of cachers who had set out to do the full 56 in one day! They found the cache for us and we signed the log 😉

We then sat and had some lunch as Robyn was a bit grizzly – to be honest she was very tired. The fourth cache we had no luck, it was more the inability to spend time on it with the three kids getting stung by nettles and shouting they had found it when they hadn’t. We just didn’t feel it and had spent a good few hours having a slow paced day.

Don’t get me wrong we had fun and it was the first time we didn’t mind not caching more, no frustration, we simply enjoyed the glorious sun.

And Robyn was way too interested in all of the mole hills, there were hundreds and she insisted in stopping at each one to investigate.

I better share this video of Rob who was trying to be the pied piper on the way back. The flute was some swag from a previous cache we had found.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aypB7kFe-ao&w=560&h=315]

So… if you ever aren’t ‘feeling’ it… it’s ok… embrace it.

Jennifer

Our first year cachiversary

May 1, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresLeave a comment

It was in fact yesterday but we couldn’t not mark the occasion without a blog post!

Our one year Geocaching anniversary- honestly can’t believe our first year has gone so fast.

In our first year we have managed to find 224 caches, we have hidden 8 caches and deployed 5 travel bugs!

It’s not all fun and games though, when we hit 200 caches it was a wet and VERY muddy day! We usually celebrate milestones with our victory caching dance but this is the response we captured of our three children:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqOL2HmNSbI&w=560&h=315]

I’m sure you giggled as well.

Over the next month we plan to finish our Gilmour Family cache trail, basically you find all 6 and you receive a special badge from us to say you did our family trail. We have already placed Sophie, Riley and Robyn’s caches.

Find them at: GC7NXCB, GC76GTC and GC7MQDM.

Thank you for joining us on our caching journey so far.

Jen and Co

Cache and dash

April 29, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged Cache, Cache and dash, caches, car, family, Geocaching, hubby, muggled, mugglesLeave a comment

A few weeks ago we decided to set out for the afternoon but Robyn (our youngest at 2) fell asleep as we drove over the Humber Bridge.

Funnily enough we found plenty of caches that were all around 500feet away from each other and a perfect opportunity for cache and dash! Basically meaning you can drive up, park and find the cache quick.

Sophie and I found the first cache nice and fast – perfect for the cache and dash theme.

The second cache we had come to was a bit of a puzzle as Daddy (Rob) and Riley went out to find this tricky cache. To be honest it was because they were looking in the wrong place- sssshhhhh don’t tell them I told you. Found eventually as Mummy directed them (of course). On we went.

We managed to get six before Robyn woke up but she only woke due to the excitement from Sophie and Riley as we found and took in turns to go hunting.

Beautiful views and a lovely mild spring day (at last). It was nice to be able to just have a drive out a break the indoor TV days.

You can see where we started caching at GC58RKE (Fred’s No1 The Start). These are premium but membership is affordable at just £25 a year – another reason we love caching.

Jennifer

Webcam Cache in Leeds

April 22, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged back in the game, BGT, Britain’s got talent, Cache, concert, fun, Geocaching, hubby, Leeds, life, love, Tokio Myers, webcam, webcam cacheLeave a comment

Tuesday 17th the hubby and I were about to enjoy our first night out away from children in Leeds. We had planned to see Tokio Myers who we had personally dedicated ourselves to when seeing him on BGT last year, his first audition struck us and we had said how we would support him as an indie artist if he wasn’t going to make it. We had no idea that he was going to win BGT!

Right outside the venue was a webcam cache and it was our FIRST ever cache of this type so we had decided to go and get it! It was rather humorous been able to see ourselves on the webcam page as we were stood looking at our phones and trying to work out if it was us or not. We moved apart from each other and refreshed the page and then we saw it on our screen – confirmation!

All you had to do was post a screenshot of the image with you on it as well as the date/time etc.

An easy cache that will be remembered for an eventful evening.

A few pics from the concert.

Happy Caching

Jennifer

Easter Sunday Geocaching event by Sophie Gilmour

April 7, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresLeave a comment

Last Sunday we went in our car 🚘, we drove to brocklesby and went on the Humber bridge to the estate there 🏡. We walked up a hill then saw lots of lovely people who had brought their own decorated eggs 🥚. Our eggs were amazing and extremely big, we rolled it down the massive hill. I rolled it really far and we had to go and run🏃‍♀️ to get it back. They did get dirty though. All of us were on the same hill but we went to the other side of the hill to roll our eggs 🍳 a bit more. I stopped and watched the grownups roll there beautiful decorated eggs as well🥚, some broke and cracked!

After that the lady that was doing a raffle and announced how many chocolates there were in the cache. The answer was- 99 chocolate 🍫 🍳 eggs and I wrote 💯, I was so close. We ran downhill and talked to some Geocaching people on the way to The New Inn which was a village pub. But on the way they said ‘across the road if you went in the telephone box 📦, there is a Geocache in it’ so we had to go and get it (of course). It was a really old telephone ☎️ box📦, we looked in side and it was like a library and the hint was dead simple – we found it. We finished at the bar but it was full, so we went somewhere to do some more Geocaching.

By Sophie Rose Gilmour

🌹 🧜‍♀️💋😺🙂😁

Brocklesby Egg Rolling 2018

April 2, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresLeave a comment

As a family we have only ever attended a couple of Geocaching events. I don’t know if it was because they were in pubs but there wasn’t the same atmosphere as what there was at this event. It was on Easter Sunday and we enjoyed it so much that we’ve decided to try and make it an annual attendance.

We had never heard of Egg Rolling before this event, so we were curious to find out what it was all about. I mean its obvious as you roll eggs down a hill right? But we didn’t quite expect that everyone hard boiled their eggs and decorated them. We had bought these large ostrich egg sized foam eggs for the kids to decorate and they stood out like a soar thumb…

We did put a rock inside and everyone was curious to find out more about the eggs so it was a fantastic conversation starter. The kids spent hours decorating them and it added to our half term which worked out well considering we have had a very wet half term. In fact we were lucky that Easter Sunday was dry, as it was wet the day before and the day after- phew!

On we went along to this meeting and we were greeted by many caters all eager to get rolling, we even had a little conversation with the Cache Owner (CO). Plenty of trails and caches to now check out for our next adventures all suggested by others which was lovely. We also managed to put some names to faces as when you meet people you tend to give your own cache name to be recognised.

It was a lot of fun and a great turn out…

As you can see by the kids faces they had so much fun, unfortunately we didn’t win and we definitely need to think about the eggs for next year. In fact Rob and I are going to have some fun and enter as well.

We even went and found a cache near the pub everyone congregated at afterwards, we had the help of a lovely couple who were also trying to find it. It was in this cute telephone box that was turned into a lending library.

Thats all for now but a memorable day.

Jennifer and co.

SWAG

March 23, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresTagged Aqua beads, caches, coins, daughter, Frozen, Geocaching, Olaf, OuTFox, printing, snowman, sophie, SWAG, token3 Comments

For those of you who don’t know, SWAG is short for Stuff We All Get. In the Geocaching terms it is trinkets you find in caches that can be swapped with your swag.

Things you may find are toys, tokens, trinkets, tools, badges, figures and mini stationary. It gives the children even more excitement when we Geocache and finding child friendly (or bigger caches) makes it important at times.

We carry a lot of SWAG with us just in case we come across a cache with no SWAG 🙁 which is an unhappy sight.

Sophie often makes some SWAG, here’s one of her aqua bead creations that is in our SWAG bag.

If you don’t recognise it, this little snowman is in fact from Frozen as one of Olaf’s miniature friends.

As well as SWAG we also put a token of our own home made family ‘logo’ which is like a token. It’s to be kept in the caches and it acts like a calling card- to say that we were there. In the local area people have started to recognise our ‘logo’ and have seen where we have been.

The tokens/coins are made from aluminium and last 2 years with quality and fading after that. A very good length of time.

Who’s made them? My husband of course! The printing business have benefits and you can buy them.

I hope this has opened your eyes to what SWAG is and helped you prepare as well.

Jennifer

Find out more?

March 20, 2018Posted in Geocaching AdventuresLeave a comment

I thought it would be worth re-blogging here because it shows behind the scenes of Rob (hubby). Love the answers.