Withnell

Length	Estimated Duration	Difficulty
4.9 miles	3 hours	3
Max Elevation	Terrain Types	Smiley Rate (Caches/Distance)
734 feet	Good hard pack track / fields / roadway	3.06

We turned down an offer to go caching with Alan&Sarah a few weeks back as we had other plans but the circular route they did is one which we have had planned for some time. Not wanting to be outdone we decided that we would do the circular this weekend and hopefully extend it out to bag a few additional caches along the way.

We parked on the main road A675 (PR6 8DD) near to the entrance to the Nature Reserve. Withnell Local Nature reserve stands on what was 'The Walker's Railway', the line from Chorley to Cherry Tree near Blackburn. It went through the villages of Heapey, Brinscall and Withnell before closing to passengers in 1960. The Withnell Circular cache series is one by Schnuz (whom we have bumped into a few times in the past) and we are looking forward to some interesting finds today. We pick up the first couple of finds just along the main road (GC2DFM1 is where we started). Amazing that containers this size just covered by a stone are still there! Looks like the containers are all going to be good sized ones though. We head off the main road and follow the path behind some houses and that’s when it really opens out into fields and paths. Not raining today but the ground is very wet and boggy in places.

We manage to knock out the first third of the series in record quick time and then we start to close in on a local trig point. We deviate from the plan at this point (as you can see on the Everytrail map) and head off to find GC1AJ14 which marks the location of a floating trig point. Most trigs are fixed to the ground, however, this has been raised by several feet so that it's taller than the surrounding covered reservoir. As we approach this one it is with some trepidation as there are electric fences, cameras and audio monitoring equipment ‘guarding’ the reservoir. We found the cache ok but we had a really unsettling feeling that we were being watched! Seems to be a lot of security to protect some water!

On the way back down from the trig and the Captain cringes and realises he’s missed a cache somewhere along the way. Nothing for it we can’t leave a man behind so we’ll have to retrace our steps and collect it. The Good Wench of course uses this as an excuse to berate the Captain for a while! With ears still ringing we pick up the ‘lost’ cache and get back on track. The remainder of the circular takes us back into the Nature Reserve and along a well-defined pathway. As we make our way along we find one cache that has us laughing. ‘I’m no Ken’ is an Action Man 10 foot up a tree! There have been some great hides on this walk and some ingenious containers as well. Another one of note today was a bottle top in the ground – and yes you guessed it you pull it out of the ground and the cache is under it – I won’t give away any more details though!

Last find of the day for us is one of the smallest nanos we’ve ever come across. If it hadn’t been so shiny I don’t think we would have found it! It rests under the old bridge and as you walk through the Nature Reserve you forget that you are actually walking along the old railway line (even though there are subtle reminders everywhere).

The series has been a real treat and we bagged 15 caches along the way. Schnuz does a really good historical write up of the area and the old railway line on his cache pages so do take a look before you set out – makes you appreciate the walk more. We are heading over the pond next week for a bit of Stateside caching so the blog will have to take a break. Happy hunting until next time!