The Devil's Porridge
played
#153
This was a lot of fun. We had never used Wherigo before, but somebody mentioning it on the Essex Geocachers FB page reminded me that I had started to investigate it but not got very far. We went out fully equipped - 2 Android phones and an Android tablet running WhereYouGo, and a Mio P350 pocket PC running Wherigo. Plus new gaiters all round to cope with the snow/mud!
We had a few technical hitches at first, mostly from trying the different map settings which kept causing the WhereYouGo app to crash - HINT: exit the cartrdige to save your progress at each new location, otherwise you have to go back to the beginning again! Apart from that, the only technical problems we had were from the devices running out of power.
We thoroughly enjoyed exploring areas of the park that we had never been to before, we didn't even know that the factory used to be there. Even the kids found the history fascinating. But the pull of the playground was too much, and we had to choose between finishing the route or going to the park. The playground won, on condition that everyone agree to going back again the next day, which is what we did - to even more mud!! So we proved 2 days running that gaiters are not enough to keep our 7-year old's trousers clean, and will probably now buy him waterproof trousers instead.
The final scramble up the bank to the cache did result in a lot of sliding around but amazingly no-one actually sat down in the mud. We were impressed by how dry the cache contents were.