9 Usual Suspects – The History
Back in 2014 events were few and far between in North Wales, with most being hosted by visiting geocachers and usually consisting of a quick meet at a well-known tourist spot. Around this time Geocaching HQ started issuing souvenirs that could only be obtained by attending events. After driving 120 miles on a very wet, cold, horrible Sunday afternoon to spend 15 minutes standing around a trig point getting soaked we decided things needed to change. So naturesbyte and I began to host souvenir events. With the same faces regularly attending these events we all decided to form a group to share ideas and the responsibility of organising events. What were we going to call ourselves? The 9 comes from the number of regular attendees and the Usual Suspects comes from Ecobake’s logs. Occasionally he wasn’t the First to Find on a new cache and if one of us had won the race he would put in his logs that he had been beaten by one of the usual suspects.
With our group name sorted, 9 Usual Suspects geocaching account was opened on the 4.8.2015 with our first event at Witches Brew Tea Rooms, Pwllheli on 22.8.2015. 2015 also saw us host the GIFF (Geocaching International Film Festival) for the first time, it has since become an annual event in our calender. With 2016 being a Leap Year someone had the bright idea of having an event and maybe setting a few caches…….. Leap Day was celebrated with 2 events, breakfast and evening, with the publishing of the 29 series during the breakfast event.
In April 2016, with the support and loan of equipment from Gwynedd Councils Tidy Town Scheme, we organised our first and very successful Cache in Trash out (CITO) at Lon Cob Bach, Pwllheli. We have since hosted at least 2 CITOs a year at 7 different locations every time filling the trailer.
As we all enjoy each other’s company and geocaching together it was decided to meet up once a month for an evening event, this has been a great help in planning events, caching trips and our general adventures. The first Nosh & Natter was held at the Antelope Inn, Bangor on 9.5.2016. March 2020 would have seen Nosh & Natter 40 but sadly was canceled due to Covid 19 lockdown. There are now far more than 9 suspects attending our events and involved in the planning of our activities. Our trips to date have taken us to Wales’s oldest cache, Europe’s First, Dublin, Edinburgh, Paris, Prague and of course Piratemania, Geolympics and UK Mega’s.
Our Caches
The 29 Series
As mentioned above the 29 series went live for Leap Day 2016 during our breakfast event in Pwllheli. What better way to celebrate Leap Day than to have a new series of 29 caches over a distance of 29.2 miles? The series starts in Pwllheli and finishes in Bangor but can be done in any order. It was decided that all caches were to be drive-bys or very short walks to enable the series to be easily completed in a day. As there is a lack of Church Micros in North Wales we tried to include as many as possible. This was our first attempt at placing caches and naively we thought we were allowing ourselves plenty of time to hide the caches and get the paperwork complete……. 6 weeks ample time! Soon it became very apparent that it was not going to be quite as easy as we had thought. As we started putting caches in for review the rejection rate was far higher than expected, mainly due to some obscure SSSI’s and lack of correct permissions. With the 29th February getting forever closer the pressure increased to find cache sites that would pass the Reviewer. Our well thought out direct route began to get more and more slight diversions and we had to drop the standard of some locations/hides. With 2 days to go we had 30 caches reviewed, which one to drop? Only one answer, start the numbering from 0 – 29 and include them all.
A list of all 30 caches:
GC6AMBB 0 of 29, TB Hotel (Traditional)
GC6A5M7 1 of 29, Lon Cob Bach (Traditional)
GC6A5NV 2of 29, Lon cob Bach, Gwylfan Viewpoint (Traditional)
GC6A7W9 3 of 29, The Layby (Traditional)
GC6A7ZN 4 of 29, Yr Eifl Quarry View (Traditional)
GC6A81X 5 of 29, Trefor Beach (Traditional)
GC6A94Q 6 of 29, Field Puzzle (Traditional)
GC6A95N 7 of 29, Formerly Known as Trefor Pier View (Traditional)
GC6A96M 8 of 29, Just before St. Beuno’s Well (Traditional)
GC6A9KX Church Micro 8975… Clynnog Fawr (Multi)
GC6A9EW 10 of 29, Cycle Path (Traditional)
GC6A9NK 11 of 29, Aberdesach Beach (Traditional)
GC6A9PE 12 of 29, Pontllyfni (Traditional)
GC6A9RB 13 of 29, 1984 (Traditional)
GC6ANZ7 14 of 29, The High Wall Glynllifon (Traditional)
GC6BZ8F 15 of 29, On the Way to Glynllifon (Traditional)
GC6AJ1N 16 of 29, Take a Break at Llanwnda (Traditional)
GC6AJ24 Church Micro 9068…Llanwnda (Traditional)
GC6AFN7 18 of 29 In view of three bridges Caernarfon Morfa (Traditional)
GC6AFPK 19 of 29, The Old Workhouse (Traditional)
GC6AGT1 20 of 29, Cibyn (Traditional)
GC6AGTC 21of 29, The Old Ferodo Factory (Traditional)
GC6AGTJ 22 of 29, Derelict Building (Traditional)
GC6AGTV 23 of 29, The Griffiths Crossing (Traditional)
GC6AH85 24 of 29, Felinheli (Traditional)
GC6AH8A 25 of 29, Come and Feed the Ducks (Traditional)
GC6BWY0 26 of 29, Parc Menai (Traditional)
GC6AH8M Church Micro9069…Bangor – Our Lady (Traditional)
GC6AJ2W 28 of 29, Cerrig yr Orsedd (Traditional)
GC6AH90 29 of 29, Sit down and Admire the Bridge (Traditional)
For everyone that has completed the series Lon designed a profile badge.
Copy and paste the following text to your profile page:
<a href=”https://imgflip.com/gif/148sl8″><img src=”https://i.imgflip.com/148sl8.gif“/></a>
Aberlleiniog Castle Trail
This series was placed as part of a project to encourage people to get outside to improve their health and wellbeing. We worked with Menter Môn, Llangoed Community Council and Wales Co-operative Centre to host an afternoon of geocaching activities which included a CITO and this series going live. The series was originally 7 caches designed as an introduction to geocaching, showing a variety of cache types, containers and hides guiding you around the castle grounds. We have since added another cache to the trail to replace GC63XZD Abberlleiniog Castle by Duncan Feegles which has been archived.
GC7R8HF Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, The Beginning (Traditional)
GC7R9KV Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, Up and Behind the Tree (Traditional)
GC7R9FE Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, Hazel Tree (Traditional)
GC7R9JR Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, Metal Gate (Traditional)
GC9CZA6 Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, Boardwalk (Traditional)
GC9JWGW Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, The Castle (Traditional)
GC7C5VW Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, on the Way to the Beach (Traditional)
GC7R9K8 Aberlleiniog Castle Trail, The Bonus Cache (Mystery)
Lon Eifion Cycle Path
Lon Eifion cycle path runs from Caernarfon to Bryncir following a disused railway line though some beautiful North Wales countryside. A regular 9US litter picking site.
GC73WMR Lon Eifion, Remains of another Day (Traditional) Archived
GC73VXB Lon Eifion, TB Hotel (Traditional)
GC73WKK Lon Eifion, Lon Eifion 8! (Traditional)
GC90J0V Lon Eifion, Mynydd Graig Goch View (Traditional)
GC90HVH Lon Eifion, The End (Puzzle)
GCA4DX7 Bats, Bats, Bats Traditional
Traeth Lafan Nature Reserve
Traeth Lafan is an internationally important ecological area consisting of 2500 hectares of intertidal mud and sand – a bird watchers paradise! Another 9US CITO site.
GC7C4Z2 Traeth Lafan Nature Reserve (Traditional)
GC7C5VW Traeth Lafan and North Wales Coastal Path (Traditional)
GC7C4Y9 Traeth Lafan Wherigo (Wherigo)
Dorothea Slate Quarry
Dorothea Quarry is a fascinating place full of industrial history which as the buildings and structures decay is slowly being reclaimed by nature. A great place to explore but please be aware that the buildings are all structurally unsafe. The caches were all published as part of our ‘Magic Makers’ weekend. We have not given any hints on these caches but have increased the difficulty rating by a point.
GCA9NZC Bright Eyes Revived (Traditional)
GCA9RBX Fly Over (Traditional)
GCA9WT2 The Gateway to Talysarn Hall (Traditional)
GCAADDX Out for Zero (Traditional)
GCAADZA Cornish Beam Engine House (Multi)
The Rest of Our Caches
GC6AJ2K Bangor Pier Viewpoint (Traditional)
The above cache should have been part of the 29 series but the area is shown as being a SSSI on the magic map. Anyone who has found this cache will know it is far from being an area of scientific interest. It currently holds the 9US record for getting published, original put in for review on the 30.1.2016 and finally being published on 23.9.2016!
GC7ZC3Q Sionyn68: Tu hwnt i… /The Wrong Side Of… (Traditional)
GC8HB9N The Old School (Traditional) Archived
GC8HBC5 End of the Road (Traditional) Archived
GC8HBDM Rhos y Pawl (Traditional)
GC8YYEK War Memorial #1221 ~ Pwllheli (Multi)
GC8DH3W Church Micro 12800…Llanfaglan (Multi)
GC76QEW Spoiler (Puzzle)
GC76QD8 Not a Karsahian (Puzzle)
GC9NJ42 Caernarfon Town Walls, Porth y Aur (Traditional)
GC9PPEA Dinas Dinlle, The Middle (Traditional) Archived
GC9PPD8 Dinas Dinlle, the Disappearing Coastline (Traditional)
GCA0C7V Under Bess’s Friends Nose (Traditional)
GCAAC90 Take a Break, Look at that View!