Redditch, A Webbie Walk and the Oversley Trail

We had another great day's caching on Saturday. This week we fancied a good long walk in the countryside so the area just south of Birmingham, near Redditch stood out as there are several new trails to get our teeth into.

We started the day with some "What's Wrong With Bromsgrove" caches - two dead easy drive-by's which were at places the cache setter liked when they were a child.

We moved over to do a short trail of 5 caches not too far away. A great walk - we particularly enjoyed the cache by the ford and just had to drive the Jeep through the ford later on :-). Unfortunately we had yet another run in with a NIMBY who did not like us parking on a quiet lane. I should be starting to get paranoid about my parking by now as this is the third run in we've had in as many weeks! Each time we have parked really considerately and left tons of space for farm machinery to get past. I guess some people just don't like their lanes being used.

A short drive through Redditch later (how the heck do you get on the dual carriageway that runs West / East through the town?) and we were at the Webbie Walkabout caches. This is a set of 10 or so caches on a circular walk in lovely countryside, just how we like them. We loved the walk and the changing scenery - our only complaint would be that all the caches were micros :-(. At least the bonus cache was a Small, which was good.

Then it was on to the final feature of the day - the Oversley Trail near Alcester. On the way we spotted a Sidetracked cache by the road in Wootten Wawen so stopped to find it (and how do you say Wootten Wawen without sounding like Jonathan Ross??).

Before we set off, we sat down on a handy bench near the first in the series to have our soup and sandwiches. We'd decided to use the bikes for this series as it looked bike-able on Google Earth and Isaac has been told by the Doctor not to do too much walking, while the tendons in his ankle heal.

All started well, apart from me not paying attention and riding right into a bush on the narrow path - ouch! We continued up the side of the beautiful woods, finding the caches as we passed them. It was then that we realised the clocks had gone back last weekend and it was going dark - and more importantly, we'd left the torches in the Jeep - doh!

We ended up doing the rest of the series in the dark, with the light of the PDA to help. We must have been up to date on our carrot's as once your eyes got adjusted to things we could see really well. After doing the bonus cache, we bumped into the cache owner himself, who had come out to say hello as we'd spoken to him as a PAF earlier. Great to meet you again Mark :-).

On the way back up to the M42 and onwards to home, we spotted another cache as we drove by, so stopped to find it.

A great day out in some beautiful countryside.