Ups and downs and muddy paths

It was a beautiful sunny morning when I woke up, clear blue skies. No work today, so that means only one thing. A nice walk in the countryside. I didn't want to take Millie with me because I knew I was going to be walking around a village first so I took her and Barney for a quick run over the park nearby. There is a cache there, a tiny one about the size of a fingernail, which I have been looking for on and off for six months. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ede3c12f-57c8-44fa-81a4-8835f78ccfd8 I had yet another look today. Nope couldn't find it. I'm thinking it must be lost so take the dogs back home and head off to the village.

At the village there was a multi-cache. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=985c1ec1-634a-4d03-8f54-a0c752daed2c This means that you have to go to different locations to get the clues and work out what the co-ordinates for the actual cache are. I spent a nice hour or so wandering around, finding out interesting little facts about this quaint and very old village which is absolutely steeped in history. Including a market square where people used to be hung. One such chap was hung just for being a Protestant in 1555. Unfortunately the cache site was in a field, so I had to traipse through the mud, which I had hoped to avoid today. The cache was in a tree which was right on the edge of a ditch. With all the rain and snow we have had recently the ditch was waterlogged so I had to gingerly cross the ditch to get to the tree. Picked up the cache, a small tupperware pot full of little odds and ends and opened it up to write on the log. Just as I had all the contents out, along comes a man walking his dog. Caught in the act. God knows what he thought I was doing. You've got to laugh. But I do always seem to get caught red handed these days. I must look all around before actually getting the cache. Anyway go that so off I went to do another one. This was a straight forward cache with co-ords and a clue to where to search. So I parked the car up and walked along to the cache site which was near a fishing lake. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=afdc0319-070a-4676-b339-f3ce79ca9e49 Fortunately there wasn't anyone around but unfortunately I could not find it at all. The clue was to look under a log. There were loads of logs and I searched under them all twice. No luck. Oh well that will be a DNF (did not find) to log on the website when I get home.
Off to the next one. My knee was getting very swollen and painful by now so I though I would do a straight forward mulit-cache up the road in an another village.http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f901231b-eab1-43ea-b3df-e15fabb5d086 The clues were obtained from a war memorial and I had the co-ordinates to the cache quickly. This one was in the woods, down a muddy path. So much for avoiding the mud today! It was quite slippery and on a slope so that was fun going down then back up again. I found the cache site easily though it was in a part of the woods that was not visited often so there were no paths in some areas, just loads of brambles to trip me up. Well that was me for the day so I went home for a nice cup of tea and cheese on toast for lunch.

I got home and started to log my finds on the geocaching website when I found out that the one I had tried to find this morning, in the park, had been found today. I was so incensed that I had not been able to find it. I messaged the person who had found it, someone I met last week actually, and confirmed it was where I thought it was. So off I went again to look for it, this time I took Millie with me. This was at 4pm today. There were loads of people walking their dogs so it was difficult to hunt for the cache. I spent ages walking up and down and talking to dog owners whilst Millie had a wonderful time running around with other dogs. Eventually there was a lull and I finally had it in my hands after much searching. What a relief. It has been bugging me for so long, not having this one ticked off my list, especially as it the nearest one to where I live.

So then I finally went home for dinner. What a day of ups and downs.