Swadlincote and Burton On Trent
On Saturday we decided to return to the Burton area and pick up the new caches that have come out in the area since our last visit.
It's a bit of an odd area from our experience as caches seem to get published and then get archived en-masse and you are never quite sure which caches are still there and which ones are not. Thankfully, we only fell foul of this on two caches during the day, but more on that later.
On the plus side, those caches that are there are usually great fun and you find all manner of things used for cache containers - not many lock and lock containers round here. There is even a full-sized dummy from a clothes shop used for a cache container somewhere in the area!
We'd seen on Facebook that delta68 had also planned to do the Waterside Wander series just south of Swadlincote and sure enough, as we pulled into the car park, we spotted their car. At the first find, they had thought to put the time they found it on their log - we were only 10 minutes behind them!
We dashed off to try and catch them up, having a quick find at cache number 2, before catching them all up at cache number 3. Great to meet you all again - we set off to do the rest of the series together. The rest of the series was nice and easy with the only real problems at the last cache (#14) where we had to search a few minutes before spotting the hide. Delta68 headed off to do other caches and we said our farewell's.
The weather was still not great with light rain but the forecast said this would pass and things would clear up in the afternoon (it did!), so off we set to grab a few other local caches.
The next one was by a Church and we could not find it. I checked the live GC.com site using my iPhone and the cache had been archived. Hmmmm. The next cache was the same. We were a bit frustrated with this and decided to choose caches wisely for the rest of the day and only pick ones we knew had definitely had recent logs. This worked a treat and all other caches for the day were there and found.
Next stop was the Clueless Cache series, which is a set of 6 caches on a circular walk around a lovely lake on great paths. We really enjoyed these ones as we love the challenge of this kind of caching and the location was just fabulous. The only problem was with #6 and a quick PAF soon put us on the right track.
We then headed off to the Washlands, which is a big parkland area along the banks of the River Trent, right in the middle of Burton On Trent. We knew where to park as we'd been for two previous caches in the same area. After parking up, we set off for a long circular walk around all the new caches, going down one side of the Trent on the way out and coming back the other side of the Trent.
Some fun hides and great cache containers on this section of the walk. We loved Burton Bridge with it's very impressive row of sandstone arches underneath. Near the end of the walk, we spotted an ice-cream shop so stopped for some very welcome refreshments.
Just time for a few more caches, so we set off towards the A38 and home, but instead of going onto the A38, we diverted to the Dunstall Circular series, just the other side of the main road.
This was another really nice walk around part of a very well kept estate. The last cache in particular was lovely with carpets of bluebells in the woods near the cache.
We were getting hungry by now so headed off down the A38 to the M6 Toll and northwards to home.
36 finds for the day.
