Mersh #4 (Canterbury) Ashley, South Island, New Zealand
By corunnaroad on 10-Jan-12. Waypoint GC3AMXJ

Easy cache, lovely grounds, cheers

Driving through here, and took time to make a slight detour to come and check out here. Nice quiet place, no one around today, and a quick find before heading back to the main road, TFTC

On a mission with That Darn Bear to collect a fridge for the GeoBus. Grabbing a few caches along the way

In the area today with GeoHubby (GNARwhal) and Miss 11 (UnicornLex) to pick up some items for our bus. Cache took awhile to find. Miss 11 and I had a look around the grounds. Beautiful in Autumn. Thanks for the cache.

Quick trip ip to the Nelson area, with a wee bit of caching in between, many thanks for the caches . - Bitsprayer

At last, turned the frown upside down. Nice old trees here.

Lady mowing the church lawns was up for a chat - she knew all about the cache! TFTC

Found it it was in a nice place

Found on a nice day down here. Needed a few days off

Thanks. Beautiful spot

T4tc greetings from holland

Found difficult to open we had the tools

Difficult to open, thanks goodness andyfreya had the tools needed.

Found but try as I might I couldnt open it.#29

Found, but could not open the container

Pretty easy

All sorted. Check new clue.

Coordinates changed from:
S 43° 16.482 E 172° 36.054

Coordinates changed to:
S 43° 16.479 E 172° 36.055

Distance from original: 18.8 feet or 5.7 meters.

Hedge has bee cut back.

Gave a good clean up around. But no luck for us here today.

No Luck here today

This geocacher reported that the cache might be missing.

Piles of leaves soon wore down my patience so gave it away after prodding from a distance using a handy stick.

Kids on a roll today! Son finding this one although took 10 mins or so of searching! TFTC.

Found

Micro + no hint = frustration.

Nice to see the building having a new lease of life.

Down in Christchurch with the Squirrel, ABCDF4 and eyespyben. During Covid lockdown, we solved a load of puzzles and decided that this would be a good time to visit. We've enjoyed a few days of good weather and seeing the Canterbury countryside. The caches have been in varying states - some good, some not so much. Our time here has been a blast, and we'd like to thank all COs who have made this adventure possible. Thank you and TFTC.

With ABCDF4, eyespyben, and Gap (of Fap and Gap). Logging all finds as Team HRP (Huntly, Rotorua, Papamoa - Our hometowns)... During Covid-19 lockdown, we solved a truck load of puzzles around Christchurch - Canterbury region. No use thrashing the old grey matter for no cause - We decided we should make good on this handiwork...

There are lots of interesting trails and geoart surrounding Christchurch. What you aren’t told is how far flung some of these caches actually are. Some beforehand advice would have been great, so here are some of my notes... You’re welcome!

1. Mobile coverage is patchy, especially in those quiet, rural areas where it was most needed. Saving caches to offline might show that you are prepared and organised...
2. There are many dusty metal roads on the trails. The car will get messy, and your hair will feel like cardboard at the end of the day...
3. Suitable clothing and footwear are essential. You will climb in and out of hedges, gorse, and other rough stuff. You might get scratched, cut to shreds, and bleed a lot. It’s not advised to wear your brand new jacket on the day...
4. Take lots of food and drink. You’ll probably be head down, tail up and not realise you haven’t eaten until late afternoon. There are very few shops or gas stations out there...
5. Make sure that you secure keys and wallet and know where these are placed for easy retrieval. A full box of pens might be useful too, especially if you’re inclined to free some into the wild...
6. Know the difference between left and right, and north, south, east, and west. Turning right and heading north will not get you to South Christchurch quickly.
7. Look with girl’s eyes rather than boys eyes... Some caches haven’t been found in a while and you might have to get down on your knees to pray.
8. Always be prepared for misleading hints. This is what turns simple caches into D5/T5 hides... “Head height” could mean the cache is positioned at your toes.
9. Have a sense of humour and like the people you go caching with. It’s going to be a very long day, and you might want to hurt someone during the journey...
10. Make sure you can operate your phone/device and it doesn’t crash when you most need it...
11. Learn to cut and paste logs because you’re going to repeat this function so often when logging all of your finds.
12. Above all else, have fun and be kind...

If recent days have been anything to go by, then today's activity is going to seem crazy. We have such a big game to play, spread out over a very large area - An early morning start in the north, with a late finish on the trails to the south... Let's go! An interesting location, but not a particularly pleasant find among the prickly vegetation. Thanks corrunaroad and TFTC.

After puzzle solving in the Canterbury region along with EyeSpyBen we were invited to join Fap (from Fap & Gap) and Squirrel Nutcase to a week long caching adventure in the Canterbury area. With flights and accommodation booked were off, all met up in ChCh. and many hard dusty Kms travelled and many caches found, I think the Squirrel has said it all in his brief. Many thanks for the placements and Cos for bringin us to the very pleasant areas we travelled in to your region

After puzzle solving in the Canterbury region along with ABCDF4 we were invited to join Fap (from Fap & Gap) and Squirrel Nutcase to a week long caching adventure in the Canterbury area. With flights and accommodation booked were off, all met up in ChCh. and many hard dusty Kms travelled and many caches found, I think the Squirrel has said it all in his brief. Many thanks for the placements and Cos for bringin us to the very pleasant areas we travelled in to your region

A nice quick find here in an interesting place.
The cache was a quick find but the log is sodden and unusable. Photo attached. TFTC.

Love how Geocaching brings you to these lovely churches.

Rautiful church. TFTC

TFTC, found in the middle of the night!

Another lovely church. Cache was a quick find and Busypaws ended up getting scratched by the thorns.

Lyttletonwitch and I found 3 caches in church areas today. Really enjoyed them. You could blink and miss them if it wasn't for geocaching. TFTH a bit prickly!!

It was there

TFTC. found in prickles

DNF Found a lot of prickles but no cache

Doc keen eyes spotted this prickly beggar tyftc

A triangular spa bath was an unexpected sight in the grounds of this former church. Without a hint I struggled to locate the log until I read previous ones. Have added waterproof paper for next finders as original log is mush. Tftc. #3423

This one needs attention by the CO as the logbook is very wet. Or maybe the next cacher takes some replacement logbook. Unfortunately, we had not got anything with us as we left our tool kit at home.

Getting a bit of fresh air that I was lacking the whole day! Second visit, and finally got it!! It sounded like it should be easier in winter (technically spring now) but the darkness certainly did not help. TFTC!!

Nice

The Seagnoid, Toby, Zara and I are on a mission to find the elusive Turtle in Christchurch. We leave Zara in Sefton, while The Seagnoid, Toby and I start exploring between the Kowai and Ashley rivers. The elusive Turtle has been located and Gracies nursery visited, so lets see what else is around here.
This one became a mission and way too long before we finally snagged it. And its winter with no leaves to camoflauge. Tagged now out of here. Cheers

Taybeedragon, Zara, Toby and I came down this way as we heard the world turtle was hanging out somewhere near the nursery. It was too, we caught a glimpse of it back there, through the trees. So the mission for this weekend is done. But now that we are here, we carried on exploring the entire area between the Kowai and Ashley rivers.

Well, this took way too long to find!

What's a MERSH?

Quick find tftc

Nice easy find without theleaves

Had a quick look but too prickly.

Prickly prickly. Tftc

Could not find this cache

Lots of prickles and leaves

Cache in hand prickle in finger. Thanks for the hide.

Prickly it is.
Gotcha
Thanks

Doing some caches in the area Esay find. TFTC

Found it, thank you

Thanks to the neighbor Wayne.... cheers

Found and prickled. Kind of feel it is not where it is meant to be, lying loose as it is.
Thanks for taking us here to be able to visit the old church after the hunt.

Rather disappointed as everyone was saying how easy the find was

Easy

Found

Yay! A nice & easy local cache.

Got talking to the neighbour as he was wondering what we were doing, even though we thought we were not seen. He pointed us in the right area to look and we got talking about caching. TFTC

Ouch but still a nice easy find on a great day out. TFTH

Quick find with Aslan. T

Found it. Good cache. On warm saturday. Not far from the church.

A quick find with the 3yr. What a lovely building. Thanks for bring us here.

Out for a morning's caching with peter 007.
I had stopped by here before but there had been lots of locals around; good to find the cache this time.
really enjoyed having a look at the Church - and good to see it being used. I love the wooden details.
Thanks, corunnaroad, for this cache & the series.

Spent the morning geocaching with KotukuSI. Last for the morning, were about to head home when decided to visit the church as it was open. A credit to the locals for its restoration. Good to see its interdenominational use. Fortunately there was plenty on light when we found the cache so no injuries were incurred.

Beautiful old church! TFTC

Quick easy find on a daddy daughter trip. Had some fun playing in the leaves and then bagged some up for the compost. Great wee spot, thanks for bringing us here.

A bit of a prickly find.

Lots of fallen prickly leaves that I wasn't keen to rummage through by torch light.

Amazing building. Thanks for bringing us here. Worth the visit. TFTC

Cool hide

Gorgeous spot!

What a day....got halfway to work and realised my phone, wallet and lunch were at home...ughhh. But apart from the excruciating hunger (started at 6am until 6.30pm) all i really worried about was what cache will i be able to get. Zoomed home and quickly logged on to find a reasonably local cache to hunt down and this one was it. Got to GZ and phone which had been on the bench all day dies...ughhhh. Had managed to get the direct and distance from the car before it died and found it right away. Retrieving past the spines was fun. Log was a ball of soggy wet (smelly paper). Replaced with something from the car and a new bag. Returned and off i went BACK home for a much needed feed. TFTC

02/02/2016 12:31:00 PM
6701
My first day off in my condensed fortnight working arrangement!! - I now get every second Tuesday off work, but still work full time hours by making my time up elsewhere during the fortnight!

Made the most of my day by running some errands - but I had made the mistake of wearing jeans on this hot day - so I decided to only bother for one cache - too hot to move!!

Turns out this is one I have DNFed before - no idea how that happened!! Easy as find this time round!!

Consec caching day # 1184

TFTC!!

This one was easy to find, not without a few scratches from the Hawthorne bushes, which brought back memories. The little red berries for these bushes was our favorite ammo for our pea shooters when we were kids in England. The log book was saturated and we were unable to log the find. We are giving your cache a fave point just for the memories.TFTC ☺

Find after fighting some prikles... was wet so couldn't write in log, but tftc

Continuing on our Mega trip with tmann421 and enjoying the variety of caches in the area.

TFTC

Great find with Just-Lookin after the MEGA. SL TFTC

In town for a “Mega” weekend of caching. I joined up with Yeetrees and gonefishing to form Team YGB. I really enjoyed exploring the country roads of Canterbury. We travelled a fair few Kilometres in the 4 days we were here, and had a great time, with a lot of laughs along the way. Good weather, and good company. It doesn’t get much better than that does it.

Monday. Day Four, Area 4. Today we ventured north up towards Amberley. A change of scene from the long straight roads on the plains that we had experienced in the previous days. We then headed back to Pegasus and Rangiora to round out the day with a bit of urban caching.

Thanks to all the CO’s for all the caches we found.

Cheers and TFTC

Found during the Mega weekend on bit of a tiki-tour around the Canterbury back blocks. Great weather, great caches, great fun! Thanks to all the cache owners for putting out and maintaining caches for us to find. All in all, a fun road trip with Boxhill and Yeetrees, we signed many of the logsheets as YGB to save both time and logsheet spaces.

TFTC corunnaroad

TFTC! Cheeky hide. Found with Gourdie.

??

Found two caches here. Both were mildly damp.. All the leaves are gone from the hedge so they're in plain sight of everyone. Potential high muggle area as there are a few houses around. Be careful of the thorns.

After searching around for about 10min and getting plenty of thorns in my hands I decided to leave this one for another day.

Yehaaa! Found it after a wee bit of searching! Our first one! Off to the next

Found
Nice easy one , J our youngest found it

Kids all tuckend into bed, Mrs TW tucked up with a good book and Mr TW off on a mad mission. Packed an array of 'tools' for a certain cache and headed off into the sunset. The evening was spectacular, warm and still great caching weather. Not many caches under the belt this evening but a great distance had been driven, just over 200km! There was FTF, multi tool madness, DNFs, muggles, sweat, cuts, blood, tight spots on 4wd tracks with a ladder on the roof racks, more muggles, lovely sunset and a long long detour down rough gravel roads to a haunted patch of blackberries and gorse, all in all a fun evening getting home just after midnight!
This was cache 3 of 13 for this mad mission.
Ouch!!! Had to retreat and read some logs. Oh there it is. I only found one cache with a damp log. Nice church, thanks locals for saving this wee treasure.

Thanks for the cache.
#2724

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For info on the next NZ mega, and to register, go to: [url=http://www.nzmega2015.com]nzmega2015[/url]
Visit the cache page and log a 'Will Attend' [url=http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC587BC_nz-mega-christchurch-2015]NZ MEGA CHCH 2015[/url]
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

another quick (prickly) find on our summer holiday tftc

Cool

Replaced log in plastic bag in the only one I could find.

Could only find one but if you find two please throw the wet one away. Thanks

One cache or two? Wet or dry? I can't work it out, but I certainly couldn't sign the one I found.

Another prick of a cache. Why put it in a spikey place? My hand is now infected after being spiked. I found this easily in the dark but it is absolutely saturated so unable to sign. Reading through other logs there seems to be two cache here so it's definitely time for maintenance. Not an enjoyable experience, though my aunty was fascinated after just being introduced to geocaching a few minutes ago.

We found lots of leaves and huge spiders but no cache. Will try again.

All good

Log replaced-all good