Middlewood Circular 3 and the edge of the Peak District

On Saturday, we returned to the Macclesfield area to finish off the Middlewood Circular series of caches. Part 3 of the series had been published during the week so we were looking forward to finding them.

We drove up through Congleton to Macclesfield and opted to park up for the caches in between Bollington and Macclesfield. Out came the bikes and off we set. 

All were easy finds, like the previous ones in the series. At the Trail End cache, we had a laugh as there was a big blue portaloo sat by one of those huge circular gas canister thingies. Everywhere was shrounded in fog this morning, so the scene looked very atmospheric and like something out of a Dr Who set.

A while later, while on the canal leg, we spotted theblackwidow by one of the caches so stopped for a nice geo-chat. That's the second time we've bumped into her while out caching (the first time was while doing the Brummie Cut series).

After we'd finished stage 3 of the series, we drove off to clear up the two DNF's from last weekend on stage 2 of the series. Can't believe how we missed the Iron Bridge one last week as it was a very easy find this time and was in plain sight, if you looked in the right direction.

At the final one of the series (Wood End), we bumped into yet more cachers - nice to meet you M'over Arrows :-).

We then headed off up into the hills at the back of Macc to clear up a few between Macc and Buxton as they had been on our list for too long. The highlight of these was walking up out of the fog into a beautiful day with clear blue skies at a cache called Mineshead Revisited.

It started to go dark but we still fancied a few more caches, so cranked up the big torches and carried on. 

After doing the easier Macc Forest caches (will be back for the harder ones in the daylight), we headed off to grab a quick final cache on Alderley Edge. This turned out to be a trickier find than we expected, especially given it was such a big box.

We're now well positioned for the road through Holmes Chapel and onwards to home. Another great day out, with 30 finds and no DNF's :-).