Seeking Lunchboxes

There was a bit of a strung-out sequence of events that led to today’s activities. The first link in the chain was that at the end of February last year I registered on www.geocaching.com. I can’t remember exactly what prompted me to do so, but I would guess that, as I was at home without a car at the time, and getting bored of endless repetitions of the same routes, I had it in mind that it would give an objective to my walks.

I also seem to recall using the search facility and finding some vaguely local caches and having the thought in my mind that I may take a stroll to find them.

A couple of weeks later I found myself back in employment and the geocaches got forgotten.

The next link in the chain was that a few days ago, whilst clearing out my emails, I came across the Geocaching.com registration email, which reminded me that it existed and that I had registered, but didn’t prompt me to pay the site a visit.

The following day, I plotted a new local route, that used a number of paths that we walk regularly, but extended the circuit out a bit further to the north.

Then, just a day later the next link arose, when Ken over at Where The Fatdog Walks posted an entry about a geocaching outing he had taken. It’s not unusual for Ken to go out seeking caches, but this time I was prompted to go and revisit the geocaching website.

And what should I find there (once I’d figured that searching based on my postcode didn’t give accurate results at all), but that with only two minor diversions there were nine caches hidden on the route that I had the day before devised.

This afternoon we set out on this extended version of our ‘shuffle around the block’, armed with a marked up map and a list of grid-references.

The first cache was located two-miles into our walk and was easily found, as was the second:

Crossing the next field, heading towards an attractive farmhouse, I marvelled at the fact that we had never walked this way before. Admittedly, the clear blue sky, and the frozen mud probably contributed to my assessment of the area as being ‘quite lovely’, but the farmland is well-kept and it has been remiss of us not previously to have paid it a visit.

Then we put in a bit of a nonsensical loop, which I had plotted purely to add a bit of extra distance. It was a loop that made us feel a bit silly as it involved us passing through the same farmyard twice within ten minutes (passing the same farmer twice), and also saw us catch-up with another couple out walking – who we had ten minutes earlier passed as we headed in the opposite direction.

The smallest of many cows in the sheds in the farmyard

Our pace slowed considerably as we caught up with the couple, as knowing that we were about to dive off into a hedgerow to seek another plastic tub, we didn’t really want to get ahead of them.

With the third cache found, we had nearly caught them again when we got to the location of the fourth cache, where we failed in our mission. A good ferret around was had (including moving things it was clear that other people had moved in the recent past), but we had to concede defeat.

Onwards we went though, and shortly after passing a shooting party, we passed the church which I so often photograph from a distance from the southwest. Today I snapped it close-up from the north-east, which meant that the sun was behind it, giving a silhouette shot:

The fifth cache of the day was easily found and I managed to log our visit on the scroll of paper in between other people passing (of which there were lots at this cross-roads of little lanes).

Back on the estate, the next box was secreted behind a tree, within two feet of where we pass almost on a weekly basis. This was where we needed to deviate from our route a bit, and with the options of taking an out-and-back route via Rights of Way or indulging in a bit of trespass, we opted to trespass.

That led us to the seventh and eighth of the day, and to the conclusion that seeking out plastic tubs did give an unexpectedly pleasing objective to the walk.

With just one cache left to find we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a hundred dog walkers (always seems to be the case in this location about an hour before sun-down), but we soon shook them off as we headed into one of the juvenile National Forest plantations. Unfortunately, inside of the plantation turned out not to be where we needed to be; we needed to be just the other side of the far boundary, which left us bashing through the undergrowth trying to find a way back out of the enclosure.

We couldn’t sign the log of the last one, as it was a container so tiny that it didn’t contain a writing implement (and we hadn’t got a pen or pencil between us), but we were happy to have found it.

We opted to take the short route home from there, rather than the intended long route (it gave us the opportunity to have a look at progress on an oak-framed house in the village that has been under construction for a long time).

The stats for the day were 6.5 miles walked, with 450 feet of ascent (steady on there!), and eight out of nine geocaches found.