Middlewood Circular Trail

The Middlewood Circular series of caches was our target for this weekend. The series follows an old railway line (now a walking path) from Marple down to Macclesfield and then back to Marple along the Macclesfield canal.

The cache owner has split it up into three chunks to make it more manageable and only parts 1 and 2 have been published so far. This takes you as far south as Bollington, which is still a substantial walk.

We opted to use our bikes as the old railway path looked to be good and the towpath on the way back would be ok for us. I'm not sure of our total mileage but it will probably be around 13-15 miles.

On the way to the start we picked up the replacement cache at Tesco's in Stockport. A *much* better placement than it's predecessor, which was just chucked in the undergrowth. 

It was only about 3 degrees so we put hats, gloves, fleeces and coats on and set off. All the caches were easy finds, with a nice variety of sizes and hide styles. 

We struggled with one called Wood End, which already had a DNF on (it looks to have been muggled by some wildlife before FTF) and then one called Iron Bridge on the way back up the canal. You guessed it, it was a micro hidden magnetically on a big metal bridge. Tons of places it could be. We looked all over and could not see it.

By the time we'd finished the series it was part way through going dark so we cycled back to the starting point for a nice cup of warming soup from our flask. 

Just time to get the other two nearby caches, which could be done as cache and dashes.

On the way back to the M6 and home, I could not resist a quick diversion to find a nano this side of Knutsford. I wanted to get the nearby new Pieman one as it had to be found by tomorrow but Isaac was insistent he wanted to get home in time for Merlin on the TV, so that one will have to wait for another day.

A fab day out with a lot of cycling in some lovely countryside and virtually no mud all the way round, which is good for this time of year.