On Friday I finally managed to spend nearly a full day boxing. I had listed some 20 boxes that the start points were within a mile of the car park including two that were the final boxes of a series that I started back in August but the last two were pulled because of forestry work.

My first targets were these two boxes. I located the last box I found then tried following the clues. They were so confusing that I might have been in completely different part of the country. Finally I gave up and tried a different box. This clue led me back to the same area and again didn’t agree with what was on the ground. Was this an enchanted wood? Finally did find one box on the edge of that area.

Gave up and tried a completely different series of 4 boxes which went quite smoothly. Returned to the car for late lunch and tried a mystery series that I had been puzzling over for some time and had finally pinned down as starting near this car park. First two – no problems (except for fording a river in flood). Then it led back to the same d****d wood and nothing made sense again!!!!

I was starting to think that that must be some sort of malignant spirit living there that leads innocent boxers astray, because out the other side things started to fall into place. I got the next box but by then the light was starting to fade so was time to pack up and go home.

Have any others experienced a similar situation where nothing makes any sense? I’ll return again to retry those missing boxes, probably the children will find them first attempt and it will all seem obvious. But for now aaaagh!

DM (who is not normally paranoid)

PS. Total for day 8 Founds 4 not found

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Have any others experienced a similar situation where nothing makes any sense?

Last weekend we went for a 9-find weekend to bring us to F50. One of the series we were tackling was a set of 3. We walked around this park hiking up and down hills for about 45 minutes occassionally thinking we found a clue that matched... then being lost again... before we finally gave up. On our way out of the park we stopped by the ranger station to pick up a map of the area. To our dismay, we were in the completely wrong area of the park, about 2 miles from where our starting point should have been. DORKS! The kids flat-out refused to try the new area (can't blame them, it had already been about 6 hours of boxing) and so we are saving them for another day!

We have noticed that the more tired we get, the less we are able to follow clues!

Carianna of GG

I can totally understand how you feel...everyday I wakie up is like "Ground Hog Day"...can't wait for it to end, so I can resume my life and letterboxing...Be Safe...BR1

and this sounds like KoTL04 and I with our bambino's regarding searching for Normie in NC...gotta hate that...Be Safe...BR1

We went through a similar situation a few months ago. We tried to take my 9 yo nephew letterboxing for the 1st time. We went to a small "park" in town that we are all very familiar with. Well, we followed the 1st part of the directions fine....everything fell right into place. After that I don't even know what happened? It said to keep a certain "tree line" to your left, sounds easy right? Yeah except the tree line was on our right! We thought well maybe just a slip up, and we would continue on. Well nothing else made sense. We tried going back to the beginning and taking it from where we knew we were right. We tried reversing it, looking for other "openings", different paths, you name it, we tried it. Anyway, it started to get dark so we had to leave.
We went back the next day, determined to find this box! Afterall it is a very small area, and I used to live on a street at the top of the park....so we really knew the area! Couldn't find it at all.
After this trip I felt like a total dope and that we somehow couldn't figure out these basic clues.
Maybe once the weather gets nicer we will try this one for the last time...I hear the 3rd time's the charm ;)

Yeah...those lil slip ups end up costing ya more than you know...Grrrrr...Be Safe...BR1

I have also found that some clue writers don't have really good attention for detail and may put something in the clue that is just wrong (like saying to turn east when you actually turn west or go to the second fork in the trail when you actually take the third) When I'm looking for one of that planter's boxes, I know not to rely too heavily on what the clue actually says (if there seems to be an obvious path heading off in the opposite direction that the clue said, I'm not afraid to take it) So maybe it wasn't all in your finding ability - it could have been poor clue writing! (and if my friend of the dubious clues reads this - you know we love you or we wouldn't keep looking for your boxes!!!!)

Galaxy4

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it could have been poor clue writing!

If it had just happened the once I might have blamed the writer - one of our more prolific planters does sometimes get his left and right mixed up and another has difficulty telling an oak tree from a beech - but these were from two or three different planters (our update lists don't give the planter's name).

This was either serial incompetence on my part or some serious changes had occured (like mature trees springing up) since the clues were written :-)

DM

you did say that they were doing some sort of forestry maintenance, which is why the boxes had been pulled temporarily, yes? perhaps the maintenance changed the look of the entire area?

night writer