Canal caching near home
Over the last few weeks (and days!) several new caches have come out along the Shropshire Union Canal not too far from home. First there was the Wheaton Aston Extension series and then the Canal Walk series near Goldstone came out on Friday night.
I had a few hours spare on Sunday afternoon so set off armed with my bike to try and find them all.
I parked up by the canal bridge near Little Soudley and off I set. I wish I'd picked a different day than a Sunday for these caches though as the local angling club were holding a competition and there were fishermen every 20ft or so along the towpath. Trying to ride along it was like doing the hurdles, with all their long fishing poles blocking the path.
I could not spot the first cache quickly so decided to move on and look for it on the way back. The next cache was a nigthtmare as it was a micro in a random hedge. To make matters worse there was lots of ivy involved and a fisherman about 10ft from GZ. I soon gave up and moved on, muttering to myself about the cache.
Thankfully the third one was a nice easy find in a location I'd scouted out for our Mission Improbable - Cache Chase cache ages ago.
I returned to where I'd parked and quickly found the cache there. I'd initially discarded it as it was in a black plastic bag and looked like rubbish. It was only when I poked it with a stick that I heard the tell-tale thud sound of tupperware!
The last cache on this section was on a section of towpath that was officially closed as the bank had partially collapsed. It looked safe enough to me and nobody was around this part of the canal so I nipped in for a quick find.
A longish drive down lots of narrow country lanes later and I was parking up at the northern end of the Wheaton Aston canal series. I had decided to tackle these 7 caches in one go from here, even though some were very spread out and I could have saved a lot of time moving the Jeep along every so often. I'm glad I did as it was a lovely afternoon and I really enjoyed the bike ride :-).
The first one was a tricky find but I got there in the end. The remaining 6 were all easy enough but were fun hides with some hanging in trees etc etc.
After I'd ridden back to the Jeep I decided to go and pick off a new multi in Priorslee on the outskirts of Telford. A nice quick find of the urban nano here with some very unusual cannonballs along the edge of the road (the cache was called Magic 8 Ball - I bet you can guess where the cache was hidden).
By this time, I was due to pick Freya up from her friends house but I could not resist going back to look for the hedge micro as I was hoping all the fishermen had packed up and gone home by now. They had and the cache was a really quick find. Just goes to show how hard muggles make a cache to find.
That's all the new caches close to home found now so I'm off home for a lovely roast dinner :-).
