Gait Barrows Geocaches

After a night in Kendal following Sunday’s walk, Monday morning first saw us revisiting various specific parts of Sunday’s routes, in search of Martin’s missing bunch of keys, including a quick jaunt back up Arnside Knott for me. It was no hardship to pop up there again. It’s a lovely little hill and if I lived nearby I’m sure I would be atop it often.

Just down the road from Arnside Knott lives Conrad, and I was keen to learn more of his plans for this year (featuring a 1000-miles walk around the border of Wales). After much chatting about gear and routes over tea and croissants off we all set to take advantage of the improved weather with a bit of a leg-stretch.

I had noted a number of local geocaches on my map, and even though Conrad had visited most of them before, he was happy to come along on our 5-miles Tupperware-finding mission.

Some of our route followed (in the opposite direction) Sunday’s route, and all of it was quite lovely. Moreover as the weather had perked up decidedly from Sunday’s dampness.

I think this photo was supposed to capture the improved conditions (I’d forgotten the camera, so there were just a few snaps taken on Mick’s phone):

Dampness still prevailed underfoot, mind. At one point the same temporary lake which had caused us a diversion the previous day defeated us again, but we didn’t have to wander far from the path to find a suitable place for a small amount of clambering to get us back on track the other side of the water obstacle. Soon after we were emptying a tub-full of water out of the third geocache of the day.

The final cache of the day required a bit of a round about route, as between it and the previous one lay Hawes Water, and given that none of us can walk on water, three sides of a square were taken. Once we got there I was glad to find that the killer ponies, which had plagued Conrad on his visit to this cache, ignored our visit:

I’m not sure about that blue jacket. I’ve never had a jacket of that colour before and I just don’t look like me!

It was then but a short walk in the woods to get back to our starting point, but first Mick decided to have a quick play with the 360 degree photo app on his phone:

The stats for the rather-pleasing outing were 5 miles walked with a whopping 500 feet of ascent and six geocaches successfully found.