Some Devonshire caching

West Alvington Stroll, 4 miles, 15 caches. First cache: GC3BPWZ

Down in Devon for the weekend for family matters, and we planned to sneakily squeeze in a local series of caches to complete early Saturday morning.

We chose the West Alvington Stroll, taking off from Kingsbridge. As my dad knows the area especially well, he suggested this walk would be a cracker; I could certainly tell so by some of the contour lines on the OS map! In addition, it was (by far) the sunniest day of the year so far, therefore I was especially hyped as we parked at the village hall and set off, as a whole family, on this loop!

We were greeted by a friendly cat, and we wondered if s/he'd ever part our sides as she followed us long past #1, but eventually parted ways with us (never actually noticed when s/he vanished!)

There were serval sneaky hides as we continued along the route. But I almost forgot about caching as I got lost in the amazing views; this really is a lovely corner of the country. Living in the Midlands, there's also some overwhelming feeling every time you see the sea, and this was certainly the case on this walk, parts of which circled Collapit creek.

My favourite part of the walk was the descent down towards the estuary. The views were best here, panoramic and captivating:

Image taken from Cache Gallery, Geocaching.com, uploaded by user on 01/04/12. Unfortunately, I was too busy enjoying the views, and forgot to take out the camera! Obviously it was far sunnier when we did the series, and the views I describe were even better further up!

We soon faced a challenge: we had been teased with the same cattle field being in our sight the whole way, and now we had to cross it. For those of you who don't know, we dislike cows. Never have before. If you want to know why we do now, find my blog post from 27th October 2010 on here! - let's just put it this way: we were chased by a herd of them in to a river. I had never been directly through a cattle field since. But now we had no choice. This is getting a bit dramatic, right? Well, luckily they caused us no problem, and we were rewarded with more good views at the top of the hill, but, sadly, not with the cache. We knew it was a challenging one, but we simply couldn't spot it.

So on we continued, crossing Collapit Creek, idyllic under the shining sun, taking in even more views (now across the valley over to Kingsbridge) on the homeward stretch; a nice, sneaky hide to finish things off. 

In conclusion, a throughly enjoyable series: good range in cache containers, superb views all the way round and a good mix of terrain. Highly recommended. 

~

Before the day was out, we joined the wider family for a pub dinner on the shores of Slapton Sands as the sun set. Quickly popped out to grab the adjacent Earthcache, which I really enjoyed, being a Geography enthusiast! 

I'll have to make sure next time we're down here to squeeze in some more caching, as we had a great time this time round!

Griff Grof

Quest for Ziggy

Ziggy Stardust, 6 miles, 4 caches. First cache: GC173RX

There cannot be a better choice of series to set out and complete than a Wrighty series. Long on the agenda, we chose our most local unfound, the Ziggy Stardust walk, to tackle on a chilly Easter Monday afternoon.

Bitter wind challenged us on the way to 'The man who sold the world' (#1,) but nothing could take away from the stunning scenery of the area, with GZ being in a good spot, in typical Wrighty style.

Unfortunately it was a DNF on the second cache (we were bitten by a dog on the way - maybe this sidetracked our search?!) and, so, as we continued, the question regarding whether we'd be able to deduce Ziggy's location missing a value began to (unfortunately) lure upon us.

The third cache, 'China Girl', was the highlight of the walk for me. The views were brilliant along this stretch, though we had to be very cautious walking along the lane, which was covered in ice! In fact, just to prove that I'm not exaggerating, have a look at what we spotted in a spiny to our right shortly before GZ:

Yes, that is a large piece of self-standing ice!!! :O 

When we did arrive at GZ we weren't disappointed. I couldn't have thought of a better place to put a cache, above a meandering valley! Despite the cold and the DNF, we were still enjoying the walk, and I was determined that we'd be able to find Ziggy! 

Did nearly slip on the ice along the same lane to #4 - it's outrageous the council don't place salt along these roads; we did see several cars drive by, thankfully they didn't seem to have a problem. So, the time had come to calculate the coordinates for Ziggy's location. Nope, we weren't going to get him. The strangest locations were produced as I substituted possible numbers into the coordinates! 

Nevertheless, we continued. I really didn't want to finish without collecting Ziggy, so by this point I was raiding the CacheWalker shoutbox and texting Wrighty himself for help. Unfortunately, no one on CacheWalker could remember exactly where GZ was, and Wrighty was working so never got to see the texts on time. 

We did enjoy the remainder of the walk, with more stunning views to supplement for the DNFs on two of the four caches. This did make up for that, and, at the end of the day, for me, it's the walk that counts, and not the caches: and this was a simply fantastic route. Furthermore, on the plus-side, it's a reason to return, perhaps with the whole family, to pick up the two we missed. 

A highly recommended series - hopefully you can top it off with finding Ziggy but, if not, you won't get back to your car feeling disappointed!

Griff Grof