09/03/14 - Throw Those Curtains Wide

Distance - 5 Miles
Geocaches - 10 found, 2 DNF
Walk Inspiration


The day starts by checking Twitter.  Country Walking Magazine have tweeted the lyric to Elbow's Song, "One Day Like This".  A fitting ditty to name a blog after.

They were bang on the money.  Even at 8:30am, its a gorgeous day.  Blue Skies, Birds Singing, Mappiman's Gaiters on.

I decide to complete the next monthly stage of the Millennium Way.  Only meant to be 3.5 miles but last months was such a mud fest in miserable drizzle that we canned it early.  And went to the pub.  What a difference a month makes.  I will add these miles onto todays, where it will be a pleasure.

I park up at the Neville Arms.  This will come in handy later, I am sure.

All Walks need to start Somewhere

There is a new cache trail laid around here and some of it matches my walk on the Millennium Way.  That will add some spice - not that I really need it on a day like this.

To start though, I have to find my path.  There is some confusion, as I walk past a couple of beautiful thatched cottages.  When I say past, I mean in their garden, past their kitchen window.  And as the day is so nice, their stable door is open and they are leaning outside.  I can see where the path is marked on my sat nav but at GZ it is very confusing and probably been re-routed.  A friendly chat with one owner reveals that people are always getting lost down here.  I re-arrange my plans and double back to attempt the first couple of caches.

They are not easy.  First one is a protracted search and find but the 2nd is equally as protracted and a DNF.  I move on - there are a lot of caches and I am not spending all day hunting tupperware.

Not when there are frogs around to be hunted.

I thought for a moment, the Labradoodle would eat it.

We walk on.  Cacher's eye well in as we move through the finds on yet another stretch of the Monarch's way.  Not much to report as the fields turn into lanes and we navigate the hamlet of Cladswell.  This could be a descriptor for the mud, which is not as bad as last month but very sticky on the boots.

Its been all gently uphill but worth it.  After crossing the Evesham Road I hit some beautiful woodland and the start of another small cache series.

Walking Improves

Once out of the woods, there is a cache that has been planted to encourage the walker to stop a while and admire the view.

Best Stretch of the Millennium Way for a While

The walking in this section is simply superb.  I work my way down and around for a mile, seeing another couple who I follow back to the pub at a distance.  I wonder if they were the other cachers out today?  Some of the logs were signed.

Back to the pub, soft shoes on and around to their beer garden.  Would it be cheeky to use their hose pipe to clean a very dirty Labradoodle?

I work on the theory that the customer is always right.

I then sit, softshell hoody off, and enjoy my pint.  The tranquility is interrupted by two very stressed parents with their three under five year olds - the youngest twins.  Oh how glad I am to have grown up kids.  In the space of one Peroni, there are three footkicking tantrums, several wangs of handfuls of bark and the three utterances, and subsequent reporting by the shocked victims, of the F word.

The parents gently weep into their beers.