1/10/11 - Trench Cache Fayre

Caches - 9
Distance - 3.3 Miles
First Cache

Trench Wood

Today was going to be a long walk.  I was thinking about a nine miler over Ironbridge.  However, as with nearly every day in life, work is getting in the way.  Not mine, but Ellie and Sonias.

Sonia has gone out to work looking like a victim of domestic violence after a row with a fridge.  She also has a cold.  She doesn't want to let the team down but should blend in well in Walsall.

Ellie is currently holding down two jobs.  As a result, I am letting go the yoghurt pot tops, permanently on lights and the dining room which looks like the painter Jackson Pollack has a good session.

Why do we all work so hard?  For what purpose?  With Sonia, it's holidays, with Ellie it's shoes but me, I need nothing but the fresh air, a round of caches and a decent malt on special days that end in 'Y'.  On the radio yesterday was a story about a man that walked for 16 years continuously, taking in 64 countries.  One day.....

All this lady work is not what has stopped me going on the big walk.  It's deemed not right to leave Alex on his own all day.  This is not because we fear a Facebook style party but because we will come home and find him watching the Simpsons surrounded by the debris of multiple bags of crisps. 

So, a small round of geocaches is in order.  There is a round of 9 at Trench Woods, just the other side of the J6 M5 Motorway Island.   Not been there before, so head off before the row about whether Ellie had time to wash her hair escalates to Def Con 1.

There is parking and a short walk through the woods.  I can hear rustling in the trees and me and the doodle stand dead still to be rewarded by two deer running across the path in front of us.  This, and the squirrels, gets the otherwise disinterested dog interested in the walk.

Cache one is where the woodland ends and reveals some great countryside views.

Camera on Cache Post, Tree flopped in the way

We then walk around the permiter of the farmland, with Fillet wood on our left.  A hunt for cache 2 but found and then I should have taken the hint that cache 3 is at the far end of the bridge, I should have crossed it.  Instead, I continue on the field edge and have to scramble over a ditch stream to get cache 4.  I'm too old for this.

Pick up the lane around Netherwood Farm Cottages and fail to find the cache along here.  I have read the previous logs and know that I have to worry about killer dogs, and just as I am lay prostate over a large fallen tree to see if the cache is on the other side, I can see the cavalry charge coming up the lane.  Two of them, and its always the small one that makes the most noise.  Just as Molly and me take our defensive positions, the farmer comes out on a 4x4 bike and calls them off.  They are angry but obediant.  I decide to abandon the hunt but part of me feels that the Jack Russel has half inched it.  He's that sort of dog.

The rest of the caches are fine and we head back up to the woods through sheep fields at Oddingly Bridge (#2).  Back into the woods for the last couple and soon back to the car.

Scene from the last cache - who would have thought is Oct 1

Perfect little round for my needs.  I get home and clean the dog and out comes the boy in his bumble bee pants demanding £8.50 for Microsoft XBOX loyatly points (no wonder Bill Gates is so rich) and a bacon sandwich.  The crisps were safe.

Thanks to  matt232323 for the round.