Geocaching Travels

On Friday, when I finished work and the sun was shining, I decided to go and try my hand at some geocaching. I have the app for my iPhone, and I had already scouted out a nearby location last week, which I couldn't reach due to some floods. Got dressed, and grabbed my camera (it's only a 5 megapixel thing) and set off to find the cache point.

This one was alongside a river, and then under a motorway bridge. I had a good look around, but couldn't see the actual cache, and nor would it come up as a nearby cache under the app. I checked on Safari and it turned out that the actual cache had been washed out. Which was a bummer.

So, I decided that as it was only 3pm, I could head for the next closest one which was described as a nice walk in to a nearby village. LIKE HELL IT WAS!

So, I left my own village and started to walk to another. I had to walk down a small road that had no actual pathway and was very sticky and muddy in a lot of places. I did see some people practicing showjumping along the way.
Horses are a regular site around here, but never having walked down the road, I didn't know people practiced, and I got directions to ensure I was going the right way. More walking down this country road and then I reached a familiar location, and had to do some traffic dodging as the pathway ran out on a bridge.

Got to my destination village at least, (which Google Maps says was a 3.4 mile walk) and hopped a few fences to get to a river, passed under a bridge and came to where the cache should be.

About an hours worth of searching, and there was nothing. Spoke to some locals (who were actually semi-regular customers, though they seemed not to recall) and they said they weren't aware of a cache point this close, but there were some others around.

I had to head back as it started to get late and my shoes and jeans were caked in mud. The whole trip took me about 4 and a half hours, and I got nothing from it.

Nothing but excercise, which in all fairness I probably need. Next day it's nice, I'll try and find a different cache, but with this one having been about 8 miles of travelling, I might try and find a closer one. In the meantime, some additional river photos from looking for the first one.

Actually, in regards to the photo of this boat, I'm hoping some readers will recognise the name. When there was some really bad flooding, this person's last boat got swept away and trapped under the nearby bridge. Now, she has her new boat though, and keeps it anchored, I think out of fear of it happening again.I know how much people that live in suburbia/big cities would love to view the countryside, and I often forget how great it is that all this is just outside my door.