Adventures of a Bolas Heathen

Lovely Johnson Hall, which we went past on the walk

Yesterday morning I was in the office when 14 new caches came out just to the south of Eccleshall – well, when I say 14 new caches I really mean 13 traditional caches with a bonus cache :-).

I was too busy to dash out there and then but texted Allun from the Shropshire Seekers about them anyway. He was in Birmingham but on hearing there were so many new caches out he decided to wrap up what he was doing and head home. We thus arranged to meet up a bit later for a joint assault on the caches.

Going past some curious sheep

While I was waiting I spotted one of the caches had a mistake in the co-ords so let the cache owner know about it. They emailed back and mentioned another cacher had already started on the series, so we were not hopeful for any FTF’s when we did them.

We set off on the first part of the walk down a quiet lane and sure enough, we’d missed FTF on all of the caches. Once we left the lane and set off over the fields it was a different story and we were treated to quite a few FTF’s. We assumed the other FTF cacher must have just picked off the quick drive-by’s in their lunch hour or something.

Beautiful hidden pond very close to one of the caches

All the caches were quick finds and the walk was really nice – an area I’ve driven past tons of times but never stopped to explore until today. The last cache before the bonus had been muggled by some cows who obviously shelter from the rain under the tree the cache was hidden by. Luckily we spotted the cache out in the open a short distance from the tree, so had to hide it slightly differently to keep it away from the cows again. We’ve emailed the cache owner with the details.

As we were approaching the Jeep we spotted another car parked right by it and wondered if it was another cacher. Sure enough, as we got closer, Mark from cannonedwards got out for a chat. He’d spotted the Jeep as he was passing and then had spotted us walking back over the field. Great to meet you again Mark :-).

One of the cow mugglers - they were using the wood in the picture (where the cache was hidden) as a scratching post, thus dislodging the cache

Once we’d gone on our respective ways, myself and Allun wandered off to find the bonus cache, which was also a nice quick find.

A fun couple of hours out and 14 caches bagged in total. There are another 4 caches in the series yet to be published so we’re looking forward to them when they come out.

Here is the route we took on Everytrail.