Monday 17 February 2014

Caching at Wall

Yesterday was such a bright and beautiful day, the driest for ages, we decided to get up, pick up mother, and get out and about.  It was my first proper day out since finishing work, so I was really looking forward to it.

We hadn't done any caching since the New Year and had a route planned for a nice 2.5 mile walk to get us back into the swing of things, around Wall, which is really just up the road and one of those places we've always being meaning to go and have a look at but have never got round to.

Now for those of you who don't know, Geocaching, or caching, is a form of treasure hunting using GPS, in which an item is hidden somewhere in the world and its GPS coordinates are posted on the Internet, so that GPS users can locate it.  Martin and I just love it and mum and dad are dead keen too!

Wall is an old Roman ruin site and used to be an important staging post on Watling Street, or the A5 as we know it, the Roman military road to North Wales.  It provided overnight accommodation for travelling Roman officials and imperial messengers. The foundations of an inn and bathhouse can be seen and the site is managed and maintained by English Heritage and owned by National Trust.

Wall Roman Site
There is a little car park in the village and we parked up, got suited and booted, and aimed for our first cache of the day which was to be found 'in the library'.

We discovered that the library was actually a converted phone box, where people could just borrow books and bring them back when they'd finished - how cool is that?  Martin had it in his mind that this cache would be hidden in a book, I completely disagreed, after all, what if someone borrowed it?  Me and mum let Martin have a good look through half of the books, before I turfed him out and had a look myself and, as I thought, not in a book.  We came out away from the phone box to sign the log in the cache, which is what you do when you've found it, then had to wait a while for a number of visitors to pass before being able to put it back.


The Library

Now, caches come in all different shapes and sizes, the cache that we found in the library was hidden in a magnetic key holder.  It was nicely tucked away - easy enough to find if you know what you are looking for, but very unlikely to be stumbled across by accident.

We set off on, what was a really lovely walk, which took us round the back of the Roman Site, up past the church, down a very muddy lane, across open fields and back into the village down a green lane.  Whilst it did get a bit breezy out in the open, we had sunshine and a bright blue sky ...... we've not seen either of those for a while.


Cachers


So, what makes a good day out caching then?

First you need cachers, generally speaking, the more the better.  We just had the three of us today (dad had stayed in to watch the footie).





Of course, you also need hidey holes, for the caches.  Stickoflage (a well known Geocaching term meaning hidden under a load of sticks), tree roots, ivy, under stiles, behind water or gas pipe markers all featured in our hunt today.
Hidey Holes

You've also got to be prepared to search and it's not always easy ........
Searching
Another thing that you tend to come across, though it is not absolutely mandatory is mud!!  We just had the one stretch today which wasn't too bad, considering how the rest of the country is looking.
Mud!
And what do you get from your search?
You might make new friends along the way, hopefully you will find the caches and, if you've planned it well, you will get a good walk, generally in the countryside with some good photo opportunities.
What do you get?

And when you've finished, it's almost mandatory that you find a tea room, garden centre with a restaurant or very nice pub to get warm, make use of the facilities and have a nice big piece of cake!!  It was a garden centre for us this time and we would all definitely recommend the cake!

2 comments:

  1. Great story and photo, keep it going! What app do u use in your trips? Personally I recently started using more professional apps and soft, like uboro, main website of this service you may check it. But it seems to me that your proposal is also very good and effective.

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    Replies
    1. Ah thank you Denzel. For photo collages I always use PicMonkey, it's free and really easy to use. πŸ˜‚

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