H
hg137
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The long wet days of winter were slowly drawing to an end. We hadn’t been caching in 2026, so today we ventured out to Hartley Wintney. Predominately a pavement walk, avoiding muddy paths.
Hartley Wintney contrasts : beautiful pond, and busy A30!
We’d cached twice before in Hartley Wintney back in 2019 and 2021. This time we were after a 5 stage ad lab, a multi-cache and a puzzle cache. We also had an ulterior motive, Mr Hg137 was due to give a talk to the Hartley Wintney U3A in April, and we could reconnoitre the venue.
The ad lab took us around many of Hartley Wintney’s historic locations. Many we had visited before, but a couple were unfamiliar to us. The first was an ordinary office block set back from the main street (the A30). The block was called Malthouse Mews to commemorate a former brewery of the mid 1800s. Only the name remains today.
Malthouse Mews
The A30 runs through the bustling town centre, and most of our caching trip was to the south of the road. Hartley Wintney Cricket Pitch is one of the oldest in the country, indeed it recently celebrated its 250th anniversary. We had to locate a seat, and record some information to log the ad lab find.
The cricket pitch did bring back memories for Mr Hg137. He once played on this pitch.
Cricket Pitches aren’t photogenic in February, but “The Cricketers” pub was!
During the mid 1990s the IT department he worked for had an annual match against Accounts. The Head of IT was also head of Accounts and he played for Hartley Wintney Cricket Club, which is why the match was played there. It was the sort of game where everyone had to bowl at least one over. Somehow Mr Hg137 had one of the first overs. The batsman was the joint departmental head. Now Mr Hg137 is no cricketer, and the ball was still going at head height when it reached the far end of the crease. The head of department was able to hit it, but had he missed… it may well have been the end of Mr Hg137’s cricket and IT career!
St John’s Church
Our journey continued passing one of Hartley Wintney’s churches, St John’s, and the war memorial. Here some counting was needed for an ad lab stage. Then we arrived at probably Hartley Wintney’s most famous landmarks The Mildmay or Trafalgar Oaks. Planted after a request from Admiral Collingwood (battle of Trafalgar fame) for more oaks to build more ships, hundreds of oaks were planted in Hartley Wintney. Over the years a few have died, but many remain. Of course we no longer need oak trees to build ships, so they still remain as a plantation 200 years on. It is believed to be the only such plantation in the UK.
There are so many trees, we grimaced when we saw the ad lab question which started…’count the trees…’. Fortunately all we had to do was count a discrete area in front of a community hall !
When one travels on the A30 through Hartley Wintney one sees very few houses. Our next ad lab stage at St Mary’s Church was some distance away. To reach the church we had to walk through a housing estate! By the look of the architecture, late 60s-mid 70s in date. The twisty-turny roads took us a few hundred yards short of the church. Here we had to find a date on the lych gate.
St Mary’s Church
Normally these dates are easy to spot. Now whether our caching eyes were still on hibernation, or the low Winter sunshine blinded our eyes – it took an awful long time to find the date.
We realised the puzzle cache was about ½ mile away but on an unpavemented, busy road. Our plan to walk to the puzzle cache was thwarted. We headed back to Hartley Wintney to start the multi-cache. The cache was part of the ‘fine pair series’ where numbers on nearby phone boxes and letter boxes are used to derive coordinates.
Calaculations complete we headed to GZ. The route took us (unusually) some distance from the fine pair, and we soon realised we were backtracking on our ad lab outbound route! Indeed we had paused to answer one of the questions very close to the cache’s hiding place!
This just left the puzzle cache. We had discovered online where a mysterious sign was, and thus we thought we knew where the cache was. We drove the car closer to the cache, and started searching. Sadly for us – a DNF !
That was the only downside to an interesting morning in Hartley Wintney!
PS The other downside – we never quite reached the venue for Mr Hg137s talk!
Hartley Wintney contrasts : beautiful pond, and busy A30!
We’d cached twice before in Hartley Wintney back in 2019 and 2021. This time we were after a 5 stage ad lab, a multi-cache and a puzzle cache. We also had an ulterior motive, Mr Hg137 was due to give a talk to the Hartley Wintney U3A in April, and we could reconnoitre the venue.
The ad lab took us around many of Hartley Wintney’s historic locations. Many we had visited before, but a couple were unfamiliar to us. The first was an ordinary office block set back from the main street (the A30). The block was called Malthouse Mews to commemorate a former brewery of the mid 1800s. Only the name remains today.
Malthouse Mews
The A30 runs through the bustling town centre, and most of our caching trip was to the south of the road. Hartley Wintney Cricket Pitch is one of the oldest in the country, indeed it recently celebrated its 250th anniversary. We had to locate a seat, and record some information to log the ad lab find.
The cricket pitch did bring back memories for Mr Hg137. He once played on this pitch.
Cricket Pitches aren’t photogenic in February, but “The Cricketers” pub was!
During the mid 1990s the IT department he worked for had an annual match against Accounts. The Head of IT was also head of Accounts and he played for Hartley Wintney Cricket Club, which is why the match was played there. It was the sort of game where everyone had to bowl at least one over. Somehow Mr Hg137 had one of the first overs. The batsman was the joint departmental head. Now Mr Hg137 is no cricketer, and the ball was still going at head height when it reached the far end of the crease. The head of department was able to hit it, but had he missed… it may well have been the end of Mr Hg137’s cricket and IT career!
St John’s Church
Our journey continued passing one of Hartley Wintney’s churches, St John’s, and the war memorial. Here some counting was needed for an ad lab stage. Then we arrived at probably Hartley Wintney’s most famous landmarks The Mildmay or Trafalgar Oaks. Planted after a request from Admiral Collingwood (battle of Trafalgar fame) for more oaks to build more ships, hundreds of oaks were planted in Hartley Wintney. Over the years a few have died, but many remain. Of course we no longer need oak trees to build ships, so they still remain as a plantation 200 years on. It is believed to be the only such plantation in the UK.
There are so many trees, we grimaced when we saw the ad lab question which started…’count the trees…’. Fortunately all we had to do was count a discrete area in front of a community hall !
When one travels on the A30 through Hartley Wintney one sees very few houses. Our next ad lab stage at St Mary’s Church was some distance away. To reach the church we had to walk through a housing estate! By the look of the architecture, late 60s-mid 70s in date. The twisty-turny roads took us a few hundred yards short of the church. Here we had to find a date on the lych gate.
St Mary’s Church
Normally these dates are easy to spot. Now whether our caching eyes were still on hibernation, or the low Winter sunshine blinded our eyes – it took an awful long time to find the date.
We realised the puzzle cache was about ½ mile away but on an unpavemented, busy road. Our plan to walk to the puzzle cache was thwarted. We headed back to Hartley Wintney to start the multi-cache. The cache was part of the ‘fine pair series’ where numbers on nearby phone boxes and letter boxes are used to derive coordinates.
Calaculations complete we headed to GZ. The route took us (unusually) some distance from the fine pair, and we soon realised we were backtracking on our ad lab outbound route! Indeed we had paused to answer one of the questions very close to the cache’s hiding place!
This just left the puzzle cache. We had discovered online where a mysterious sign was, and thus we thought we knew where the cache was. We drove the car closer to the cache, and started searching. Sadly for us – a DNF !
That was the only downside to an interesting morning in Hartley Wintney!
PS The other downside – we never quite reached the venue for Mr Hg137s talk!
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