Looking over to Caer Caradoc from our walk
On Saturday myself and Isaac decided to head for South Shropshire as there were quite a few new caches in the area to find and it’s always a pleasure to cache in such a scenic area.
Daft sign seen on the gFab walk
We started off with a quick cache on the A5 by Shrewsbury before parking up for the ring of caches that were set for the recent gFab camping event. This basically consisted of 20 or so caches on a circular route round the area with a couple of drive-by’s nearby.
That's one heck of a tell-tale pile of sticks!
We parked up and set off on foot to do the series clockwise. Along the way we had great fun traversing a field full of 8ft+ high corn and no marked path over it. We walked through the corn, keeping parallel to the crop and finally made our way to the other side. The only other thing of note on this series was a fun cache where you had to ‘use’ a bit of old farm machinery by a track to get the cache to reveal itself.
About to enter the field of corn on the way to the next cache
After we’d finished our walk, we cleared up the other 4 caches in the immediate area as drive-by’s and cache and dashes before heading down the A49 to Marshbrook and the Shropshire Seekers new caches.
Views over to The Wrekin from the latter part of the gFab walk
We parked up by the outdoor centre and set off on foot to do the caches in order. There are 12 caches in the series, with clues in most of them which then lead to a bonus cache. Some great countryside round here which made for fab walking. The finds were all easy enough and along the way we bumped into Bullyboy2820, who we did one cache with before he stopped for sandwiches with his family. Great to meet you :-).
Abandoned house on the Marshbrook series walk
Once we got back to the Jeep, we worked out the bonus cache location and were soon there for a nice easy find. A huge big ammo box too – just the kind of cache we like to find!
Views over to the Long Mynd from the Marshbrook walk
Next, we headed off for the east side of Caer Caradoc to tackle the caches around the hill (mountain?). I’d done the cache on the summit ages ago and really enjoyed the wonderful views over Shropshire and Cheshire, so I was looking forward to taking Isaac up there for the first time.
At Three Fingers rocks at the south end of Caer Caradoc
All the caches were easy enough, with the last one involving a bit of off-road trekking on the direct route up the steep slopes of the hill. Great fun and some fantastic views over Church Stretton as our reward. We then continued to the old hill fort at the summit and enjoyed the wonderful views all around.
The panorama from the top of Caer Caradoc
Time was getting on now, but we could not resist two last caches on the way home. The first was in a ford not too far from Caer Caradoc and a cache we’d DNF’d ages ago. It still took a heck of a lot of searching for but we got there in the end thankfully.
Isaac at the summit of Caer Caradoc with The Wrekin in the background
The last cache of the day was a quick cache and dash on a new cache in exactly the same place as a now archived old cache.
A very quiet gate ;), right next to the last cache of the day
44 finds for the day, some great walking, lots of terrain and some really good caches. Our kind of caching day!
Here’s a link to our Everytrail plot of the day’s route.
