A wander around Wilmcote

SS's Walk, 4.1 miles, 18 caches + 2 en-route, first cache: GC4FJ7E. 

This was another series that I missed being published, due to not being a premium-member for a while - discovered, once again, completely by chance whilst browsing the map. Wilmcote rang a bell... its a village Wacky races is very familiar with; I reckon he'd have loved to have come back to it with us today, shame he's living in a warmer climate now! Wilmcote, being the home of Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was very picturesque as remembered, with some charming cottages lining the principle road passing through the village.

Pretty buildings like this one are found throughout Wilmcote

Couldn't wait to get going, as this series has enjoyed rave reviews; wasn't expecting too much from the walk at first, Warwickshire always seems to be very flat. The caches were nice and easy to start with (little did we know that was soon to change,) and the best thing - cow-less fields - I think, judging by peoples logs, that we're the first to not encounter any at all! Now we wished we had brought along Fizz, the puppy! It began to drizzle after the first few caches, and we caught a beautiful rainbow during this...

Rainbow 

And then there was #6 - with tons of favourite points, we knew this was going to be a special one. Spent an age searching, in the end we decided to resort to TAF (Text-a-friend... I've just made that up, let's see if it catches on,) but just as I tapped 'Send' I spotted something suspicious, and there it was - a good hide, and always nice to break a chain of DNFs on a cache. 

And so on we continued, getting well and truly muggled at #7 (let's hope he didn't take the cache!) Found #8, I admit, after a TAF - but this would be the only TAF of the day. The series also sees some good sized caches amongst the sneaky hides, including a 'Large', a very elusive size these days!

The series improved further at #11: the sun was out and there were pleasant views all round to enjoy - the cache is aptly named 'Take a Rest', and so we did! Descending back down in to flatland,  #12 was pure genius - have never seen one like this before, it made us chuckle and it got a whole lot better as we tried to retrieve the cache! I can now see why it already has 80 favourite points!

Nice views from GZ at #11

And the ingenuity didn't end there... #13, with 81 favourite points, was also very unique, and therefore memorable. The remaining caches weren't too sneaky, more of the norm, nice and quick to find. The series finished off with a stroll along the canal, by now it was starting to drizzle again. Then it was a case of picking up (not literally!) two existing caches en-route to the car; had a browse in their logbooks to see if I could spot Wacky races' name, but with no avail as each has been replaced fairly recently.

And so, it was the end to a nice series. Most caches took a while to find, you really need to think out of the box here! However, every find was worth the search: the sneaky caches were showstoppers whilst the larger caches were well stocked. Take this and add it to a pleasant walk with a good view along the way and I can safely suggest this is one to do, if you already haven't. An enjoyable morning's caching.

Griff Grof