26/3/11 - Abberley Village for a Dog's Birthday...

Miles - 4
Caches - Loads but only 2 I haven't found
Walk from - Pub Walks in Worcestershire - Richard Shurey
Pub Lunch - Nothing, they were having the electrics done

Abberley Village at EveryTrail


All of this has been Ellie's Idea - she has decided that the dog needs a brithday walk to celebrate her 8th birthday - so she is all up for a local walk, with a pub lunch, where the dog can get her own sausage.

Scan my library of books for inspiration and its Abberley Village for a four miler on the Worcestershire Way and a stop off at the Manor Arms on the way back.  This is a good local walk that I have done many times before.  For cachers, its part of the Advent(ure) series which I found a while ago but it did provide the chance to catch up on one DNF.  This had to be found, as after my poor attempt last time, 81 one people have found it and no-one else has failed.  It was a matter of honour.

Park up at pub and turn North East up country lanes, soon turning to fields and picking up the Worcestershire Way at Netherstone House.  I was prepared for the the stiff climb onto the hill, but Ellie maybe should have laid off the Pink Chill a bit last night.

Keep me up to Midnight for a lift again young lady.

Once having made the climb that Ellie has made look like the North Face of the Eigar - you are on a great ridge path that normally has good views.  Not today, due to low cloud.

Stop for a rest before the one remaining cache to find, which took all of 2 mins today.  Either I have got better or this one wasn't in its current home last time as there was no excuse for not finding it.

Handy Rest Area....

Continue along the path before the drop down into Abberley and back to the pub.  The Manor Arms is a 16th Century Coaching house.  Been here a few times over the years.  Today, at 12:10pm, we were the only punters and Ellie was gutted to learn that the Kitchen was being renovated and they are having a grand re-opening in April.  Bought her a diet coke to cheer her up.

Could have been lunch

So Ellie's great plan didn't quite work out - bit steeper than she expected and lunch not quite up to scratch.  Maybe she will come next week to keep working on me about how all her friends have cars, why she would get a job, if it didn't involve working evenings.  Or afternoons.  And why £200 on a pair of jeans represents an investment, rather than an expense.

Bloody Students.

20/03/11 - Queenswood Park

Distance - 6.7 Miles
From - Country Walking Magazine - March 2002
Geocaches - 2
Animals observed - Hares, Rabbits, Sheep, Ducks, Cows, Geese, Pheasants and Molly the Dog.

Queenswood Park at EveryTrail


This walk has been on the list for a while.  It's a 45 minute drive to a country park between Leominster and Hereford.  The weather is good, I am up early, Alex has no football, so I might as well get on with it.

First bonus of the day is the free parking.  This is a nice touch and the Wyre Forest ought to take note, instead of whacking a 100% increase on their prices.

Queenswood Park is 67 Acres of rare trees.... I couldn't see them for the woods but you can read about them here - Queenswood Park.  First cache of the day is behind one of them - a Wellingtonia according to the cache name and sign.

The woods are good walking - soon reach an observation post for a photo opp and keep heading west towards Westhope.  After a mile or so, come out of the forest onto flat farm land all the way into Westhope.

Observation Post Photo

Westhope is a tiny hamlet, and I skim the edges of it before getting out onto Westhope Common, where Molly gets the chance to play with a terrier puppy.  This results in the owner trying to control his dog in a broad herefordshire accent.  As the pup was having none of it, this was much funnier than it sounded.

Unusually for a country walking route - the three miles back was along a country lane.  Only saw one car, so Molly stayed off the lead.  Fortunately, the extensive views back over Queenswood, the clee and malvern hills made up for the monotony.

All road walking on the way back

Eventually come back for a short haul back through the woods.  The great thing about country parks is that they invariably have cafes and this one is no exception.  I knew there was one more cache to find, so I got my (half molly's) sausage sandwich and a cup of tea and sat in a hut to enjoy them.  Then a lad came along with a blue GPS device and mother in tow, so I knew I was close to GZ.  They went off hunting, but I could see the clue and a first, I managed to find one w/o the use of my own GPS.  Pointed them in the right direction.

Another fine spring day and another CW walk knocked off.  Even if it was from a magazine from 9 years ago!

19/3/11 - Furtive Caching in Dodford

Distance - 4 Miles
Number of Caches - 17
First Cache

Dodford HawkWalks at EveryTrail


I didn't realise quite how much I was following Delta68.... Not content to follow their caching blog - I have also inadvertantly followed them two days later on the same cache round.

To be expected on such a beautiful day, there were several teams out today.... We had the start of the round to ourselves but from Cache 13 out of 17, we started to bump into people. There is a bit of british reserve here - a polite hello is always shared but despite the fact that people are carrying GPS units and hanging around tree stumps in the middle of the woods - no one ever wants to make the first move to introduce themselves as cachers. I think I am going to look for a geocaching hat or something.

This walk will be truly splendid in a few weeks when the woods will be filled with Bluebells. Today, it was merely fantastic - gorgeous blue skies and a great walk into forests and some real off piste caches.

This series has been exceptionally well thought out - there were some surprises and some real effort into the cache containers. Start at Dodford Church - when we got there, we were the first car, when we got back, there were four. Head down a lane and around the back of a house where we set the dogs off barking. I bet the people here are wondering about the increased walking activity.

The cache trail take you around fields before entering the High Wood for the first time. This is spendid walking and the home of the first amazing cache - Fairy Door - which was worthy of a TB drop off.

High Wood

The walk took us on into Nutnall woods where we found another great cache - The Snake Pit - which made us laugh and was worthy if a photo opp.

Snakes

Carried on around until we got to number 13.  There are no paths here marked on the O/S Map or on the ground so moving around these caches was a bit of a wild hunt.  I spent around 30 mins looking for number 13 when it became apparent that someone else had found it.  The clicking of a tupperware box in the middle of the woods is an eerie sound indeed.  We moved on to number 14 and met up with another person emerging from the wild of the woods.  After having the first 12 to ourselves, we then met up with other people - some cachers, some not - at all the remaining ones in the series.  Always at the time when we hit GZ.

As this is so local and the light evenings are on the horizon - I will be back to complete the remainders on a nice evening soon.

A lovely walk and some top caches... Thanks to the bailey rangers for adding yet another series to the area.

13/03/11 - Hest Bank

Weekend Away
Number of Pubs - 4
Best - All of them (except the wetherspoons)
Number of caches - 6
Walk Distance - 5 Miles
From Country Walking Magazing in 2002.

13/3/11 - Hest Bank at EveryTrail


Staying up for a weekend in Lancaster.  Always wanted to explore this city - its on the doorstep of the lakes, has good rail links to London, Edinburgh and Manchester and has a lot of history.  It didn't disappoint and looks like a target as a potential place to live.

Saturday was the drive up, drop car off at the Waggon and Horses and head into town for an explore.  Started at Wetherspoons for an exceptionally good value breakfast but slight disturbed by the amount of people drinking bottles of wine with their breakfast at 11am.  Still - you need to drink in a Wetherspoons as they are anti-pubs.  With nice toilets.  Wander around the shops and up to the castle, a nap and a decent meal at Quite Simply French in the evening.

Sunday was for walking and we drove the three miles up to Hest Bank.  Parked by the beach and could see the tide was out - this was good for a cache that we were hoping to do on the way back.  Head south along the coast before crossing the railway line and getting down to the canal for a 2 mile stretch north to the camp site at Bolton Holmes.  Canal has lots of interesting buildings, including one with its very own bridge.

Swing Bridge

At the camp site there is a cafe - whcih we snuck into for tea and scones.  Sonia won't contemplate a walk without some form of cream tea although the lack of jam caused some mutterings under her breath.

Here we pick up the coastal path again.  There are exceptional views over the mudflats, the lake district to the North and Morecambe to the south.

Lakes in the background

The mudflats are well known as dangerous... we kept well to the edge to avoid quicksand but had to get a bit closer to someone who had risked parking.

Let's go off road!

We had found three caches by this point but the highlight was Hest Bank Wharf which was at the end of the Geogian Jetty.  This is only available at low tide and we were lucky to time it right.  Sonia showed me up on the caching front by finding it quite quickly.  We then had the russian doll experience of extracting the log.

Hest Bank Wharf Cache Site

This brought us back to the car.  Here for 28 hours - drank excellent beer in nice pubs, had the best breakfast of my life (no exaggeration), bought another book of lake district walks to ogle and had a bracing walk in the sea air..... all with great company.

Wyre Forest Eternal Triangles - Three trips

Dates Cached - 27/2/11, 5/3/11 and 6/3/11
Number of caches - 10
Distance - 6 Miles in total
First Cache

Around a month ago, an intriguing number of mystery caches appeared in the Wyre Forest.  Investigation showed that the first three in the series were traditional caches, containing the co-ordintates for the next three.

Last weekend the allure of caching in the mud was enough to convince my 16 year old daughter Eliie to come out with me.  I'm sure there was another reason, but what it was has not been revealed to me.  These were straightforward over the hawksbatch side of the forest.  Nice little walk was had and it took me to the observation platform that looks over Trimpley.  This was worth the walk on its own.

I got back and plotted the co-ords from the three.  To make it more interesting, the CO has mixed up the co-ords so you need to find all in the series to work on the next three.  It was interesting, as two out of the three were not on recognised paths on the map, so it makes you wonder whether you have made a mistake.

I headed out on the Saturday, again with Ellie (maybe she likes caching).  The walk took us around Pound Green area of the forest and an extended walk took us past some impressive but remote houses.  Ellie fancies living in one of these, but I did point out the pitfalls of what the impact of running out of milk would be.  These caches were again more or less straightforward.... I learned what a Fairie's doorway might look like and had quite a hunt for the Mossy Number E - which is a tube, buried in leaves in a Forest with a clue of "Near Tree".  Glad to have found it, as it meant I could come out for the remaining three and the bonus.

I was going to save this for the future, but having woken up this morning after a bit too much red wine last night, I didn't fancy an hours drive to the walk I had planned near Hereford.  So plotted the next three and headed out this morning.  Ellie's love affair with caching is over, so Mrs Mappiman came with me today.  Good job she did, as she is really good at hunting for stuff.  I think this is linked to her disposition of hiding my stuff around the house.  She calls it putting things away....

The caches were marked on paths, so I felt very optimistic about completing the series.  And the paths, over Earnswood Copse were excellent and new to me.  This series has really shown just how big the forest is.  I have been walking it for 8 years and here is a new area for me.

So cache G and H were easy enough, although Mrs Mappiman did question whether it was a Yew tree or not.  Cache I came interesting.  We couldn't really find anything that met the clue of Holly Tree, although there was a very wiry sapling of Holly near GZ.  I started looking in earnest and checked the logs to find out there had been loads of DNF.  It looks like the CO has replaced the cache, as there was one record of a find but we managed to find the original, as it had a clean Log Book inside it....  One for the geocaching ethics committee to see if I can have a FTF for this one!

A FTF?

Setup for a picture - had to be at the time when two bikers were zooming down the path.

I'll try and give a clue as to where this was.... if heading downhill on the path - its on the right.  There is a very thin sapling of holly and the cache is at the bottom of a tree that is just further away from the main path - just under a bit of root.  It is not covered with leaves and the top is slight sticking out.  The co-ords are bang on - but there are obviously a lot of trees!

This meant that we had the co-ords for the bonus - which was nice and easy, although we did manage to time our arrival when there were three sets of muggles in the area.

I've really enjoyed this set - the walking has been excellent, nice to have company and the mystery caches have made it that bit more enjoyable.  Thanks to johncrabbe for setting it up.