Length
|
Estimated Duration
|
Difficulty
|
3 miles
|
2 hours
|
2
|
Max Elevation
|
Terrain Types
|
Smiley Rate (Caches/Distance)
|
483 feet
|
Path / Track / Road / Fields
|
3.66
|
A bit of housekeeping first. I've had to start creating an archive of walks (bottom left pane) to house some of the tales as I've reached my allowance of 20 pages! The details are still there for anyone who wants to reference them and the trails are still on Everytrail.
 |
| The Blue Lagoon With Rishes10 |
Since the Blue Lagoon last week it’s been non stop. The Captain and The Good Wench have been out on a couple of short trips during the week to bag a few caches and on Thursday The Captain and caching buddy stevebm hooked up to complete one of the LEGEND series of cache trails SIREN.
The plan was simple. The Good Wench would drive in convoy with stevebm and we would leave his car at the bottom of the trail (GC2B1BZ). Then we would head to the northern end of the walk (GC2B1EB ) and she would leave us to get on with it – sorted. Once the entrance to the public footpath was found (you have to go through the Range Rover garage car park) it was pretty much a case of sticking to the public footpaths all the way. Recent heavy rains though soon had us donning waterproofs as the ground was especially wet (even though it wasn’t currently raining). We had no sooner picked up the first cache when we had the shock of our lives… a snake crawling along the Captains boot. Later research uncovered that it was in fact a legless lizard (know how it feels sometimes) called a sloe worm but nonetheless it makes you jump. First time Steve or The Cap’n have ever seen one so already it’s been worth coming out today. It’s a good series with nice sized containers all the way and we even picked up one that had previously been DNF’d so a pat on the back for us. It’s about 7.5 miles of heavy wet ground though and it takes it out on the old legs. The trail can be downloaded from the Everytrail link to the right (Barton -Goosnargh). We got back to the car just in time though – the sky turned black and thunderstorms moved in!
For Saturdays walk though we needed to find something we could do quickly as we needed to get back for the crews school fete. Team SK have a short series laid out around the scenic village of Chipping so we decided this would be perfect as most of it is on country roads with little field tromping required.
We loaded up and set off to our parking spot at GC2H9NZ. As we got closer to the sun started to come out - bonus! There is ample parking for a couple of cars at this location and it’s a good place to start the walk (as you don’t tackle the fields until you are nearly back here later). We nipped over the road and found the cache with ease so a nice start. We then walked up the main road 0.4 of a mile to the next location and after we realised we needed to be behind the houses we came across a nicely planted well and an old cart. A nice little spot with some amenities (which the crew took full advantage of). We make our way along the road but given how early it is on a Saturday morning we are surprised just how busy this road can be. Cars and cyclists stop us hunting but a break in traffic gives The Captain all the time he needs to lay hands on the cache and we soon have it signed and on our way. 
Up the hill past the old mill next and we see the Mill Pond. No one is feeding the ducks today so no one to hide from as we search for the cache. While The Good Wench is nano hunting the Captain spots the cache pretty much on plain view. That didn't please her! Off to the footbridge next and we've been warned by the CO it might get boggy after recent rains. An abundance of nettles to wade through to get to this one and as we do The Good Wench spies a field full of cows to walk through. Whilst the log is being signed The Captain performs a bit of jiggery-pokery with the route and we decide to heed the COs warnings of wet fields and at the same time avoid the cows. So we double back down the lane and approach the next cache from a different angle. Following the road back on ourselves we find the next location and we all have dry feet so that’s a bonus. However the cache is wet through (lid not on properly me thinks). We continue the series and find all of them but we have to return to GC2HAW2. We attempted this one on our way round earlier but fear it may have gone so we put in a text to the CO and carry on. The CO came back to us (once we had a signal) and gave us some pointers so we went back for a second look. As we neared the location we knew pretty much what type of hide we were looking for. It's a very busy road and even at 9am in the morning there were a lot of folks wandering around hampering our search. The Good Wench takes the rest of the crew on up the road so we are less obvious. The Captain takes a chance and explores more deeply a spot he has already given the once over. Only way to do this is to get right down (which next to passing traffic was quite scary) but in the end the cache is found..... just can't extract it from it's hiding hole! Tried to pull it out but nothing happening - looks like it’s been re-hidden a little too well! Took photo's of cache and CO was happy for us to log it and he will try to get it sorted for the next cacher.
Again the route is available for download from the Everytrail links. Happy Caching!
No comments:
Post a Comment