Not a Great Start
Sunday afternoon and all three girls seem to have made their minds up to watch telly and generally do very little, so Kev decided to go out hunting tupperware over the fields for a couple of hours. I did ask Ami if she wanted to come but the answer was a resounding “huh?”, so alone it was.
After the trip to the “Bordering on the Ridiculous” event we were aware that there are a bunch of caches around a walk of reasonable length around the fields there. What we didn’t realise was that there are a couple of others within a few yards of each other. In fact I parked up on the roadside just north of the pub looking to start a walk from there. So I fired up the iPhone and the Garmin and lo and behold there’s supposedly one within 5 yards. Gorrick’s Spring, Calverton, no less. Finding it on the phone was the easy bit, though. Finding the cache was a nightmare. After a PAF at a later event I now understand that my problem was partly to do with altitude and partly to do with the coords being slightly off. So I didn’t find it.
I also didn’t find Ouse Valley Walk – Pointer, despite 15 minutes of hunting around. Must try a PAF on that one as well. Couldn’t find the little Herbert. Maybe returning during winter, with the corresponding lack of leaf cover, would be a good idea.
Going Off-Piste
And so to the main event. I seriously had no idea how far I would get around this walk, but by now it was getting on 3 pm so time was not my friend. First on the walk (once I found how to start the walk) was Riverside. No Troll. This was a simple little cache under a pile of wood.
Next was Dare You? The name gives more difficulty than the actual cache, which proved quite easy to retrieve.
From here I would have done some more but I made a bit of a boo-boo. I lost sight of the markers for the public footpath and ended up walking most of a mile down the wrong side of a hedge that I couldn’t get through. So I walked all the way back and then walked all the way down the other side of the same hedge. There were lots of sheep. The next cache was very appropriately called Baa Baa Black Sheep. It was quite easy to find.
I was just toying with the idea of what to do next when Kas called to mention the girls were getting restless and she was about to put the tea on to cook. I begged for a half-hour reprieve and walked back to the car via Just Northamptonshire #008, which is just up the road to Passenham and stuck behind a tree. It also proved to be a fairly easy find.
So not a bad afternoon, all in all.