Looking down the old canal from the blocked off end, whilst on the Potty Challenge series
I’d planned to go out caching with Isaac near Kidderminster on Saturday but at the last minute on Friday night we realised he was due at school on Saturday morning. We quickly swapped the day out to Sunday (better weather was forecast anyway) and I decided to head off and do the Potty Challenge near Brownhills on Saturday instead.
Walking along the canal at the start of the Potty Challenge series
This is a series of 12 caches, plus 2 extra ‘bonus’ caches along a canal and then leading round in a loop via an old railway line. If I finished the caches in good time I’d then go on to see if I could find any other caches in the area.
Lifting a canal boat out of the canal
I parked up near to cache #1 in the series and set off on foot up the towpath. I can’t really say too much about the caches as the Challenge is there are hardly any clues. Needless to say most were pretty easy but a few were right stinkers and took a while to find. All good fun though and the kind of caching we enjoy for a change.
Walking round the woodland part of the Potty Challenge series
On my way round I bumped into Steve from the thurs night gang – great to meet you again. Once I’d finished the series I decided to head off to the strangely named ExCanExCan series, which are set along the route of the now closed and very much returned to nature Cannock to Brownhills canal.
On the way to my DNF at the Cannock end of the old canal. Not the prettiest of locations, but it's not supposed to be.
Nothing too taxing here apart from the one at the Cannock end where the old canal used to terminate. My GPSr lead me to one of those horrible metal fences with 1001 places to hide a micro and I soon got bored and moved on to the next cache.
Wild meadows near the Big Kids Challenge bonus cache
I did a couple more caches around the Hednesford area before heading down to Pelsall to do the final of the Big Kids Challenge (a series by the same cache owner as the Potty Challenge I’d done earlier in the day). We’d done the Big Kids Challenge ages ago but then the bonus cache came out. I managed to find it quickly enough, along with two other new caches in the same general area.
At the Fool's Gold cache near Cannock
Time was getting on by now so I decided to head over to Essington to make the 4 new caches there my final ones for the day. On the way I quickly cleared up a DNF from the last time we were in the Bloxwich area.
A very pretty stretch of canal near Bloxwich - I DNF'd the cache though
The Essington caches were all quick and easy, with the highlight being that one was a totally un-expected ammo box. I’d love to find more of these as they make great cache containers.
31 finds for the day, which is not too bad as I was only really intending to go out for the Potty Challenge series.
