Caching around home

At last some good weather. We decided it was time to get out for a decent walk as we hadn't done much distance this year so far. To pick somewhere to go we looked for the nearest geocach to home, which turned out to be in the village of Gedding.

The route from Hitcham to Gedding is the way I drive in to work each day along nice quiet lanes, so we stuck to the roads to get there. It made quite a difference being on foot, seeing so much more of the surroundings. Of course it took a lot longer too! A little under 2 hours, compared to the normal 10 minutes.

Once in to Gedding the GPS led us to a little church, which I have never been past before. The cache was hidden just a short distance behind the church on a footpath. It was easily found, and we dropped off one of our 'calling cards'.



The church is very decorative, with flint inlaid in patterns. Looking from the churchyard you can also see Bill Wyman's house.


We left Gedding, and then took followed footpaths to get to Bradfield Woods. Here we stopped for lunch, a flask of soup. It was freezing though, so didn't sit for long. We then decided to continue on footpaths to take a different route home. This way we also spotted a few deer in the fields, and also saw a bird with a long beak which we think must have been a Woodcock.

Total distance in the end was just over 13 miles which felt like a good bit of exercise.

A year in pictures

The following 12 pictures are the ones picked out for our 2008 calendar. We've had them printed by Photobox, and wrapped them up ready to give out as Christmas presents. We did some last year, and they proved so popular that this year we ordered 32 of them!

Brrrr.....

Well Tuesday was cold, but today even worse! It's times like this when living out in the countryside has it's problems. The roads become very slippery so getting in to Bury takes twice as long. And then there's having to defrost the car in the evening before heading home again :-(

Still, the BBC monthly outlook is saying that there may be some snow on Christmas Eve. I do hope so!! None before then though as we have to get up to the Lake District. After that then all snow is welcome, particularly if we get stuck in our cottage until spring!!

Silence

Hope you aren't finding the silence too unnerving, take it as more of a comfortable silence!

The other week on the radio they played 15 seconds of silence (Chris Evans on Radio 2). Any longer and the automatic backup at the station would kick in and play a pre-recorded tape. Since then I've had a few journeys to and from work with the radio off for a change.

At least I'm not alone - a drought seems to have hit blogs lately, so this is now a companionable silence.

Maybe I'll put up a few photo posts soon of images from this year....

A Saturday afternoon project

Take one corner of a garden



Add in two logs



Position birthday presents of:
1 x Tin bath
1 x Watering can
1 x Tap
1 x Copper pipe



Finish off with
1 x Bag of stones
1 x Frog
1 x Solar powered pump
and some water

Geocaching Monday

As the weather was reasonable and we had spent the weekend indoors completing our Inn Way report (yes it's finished! - click here to read all 9 days and recommended B&B's in the Lake District) we decided to get outside and find a few geocaches.

Looking on the website there were a few new caches set up that we hadn't been too, and we could also combine visiting them with checking up on some caches that a friend of mine owns.

First we headed to Ixworth Thorpe and had a short walk along a farm track and through some woods to get to the site. This seemed a popular path with runners, several times we were passed as we hunted for the cache container just off the footpath. Eventually I found it and we filled in the log book.

Next stop was Ampton Water where we did our first check on my friend's cache. It was still well hidden and the container was full of things to swap.

Back in the car and over to Coney Weston for the next new find. The cache was called 'Gnome Sweet Gnome' and we soon found why :




The cacher who set this one up likes creating unusual hiding places. Another later in the day wasn't anywhere near so obvious as a bright red door in a tree! Again the name contained a clue - 'Not Mush Room' - therewas only space in the 'container' for a slip of paper to sign.

We then enjoyed a good walk around Knettishall Heath, performing another maintenance check there. This cache hasn't been found for 6 months as it requires some work to find out where it is hidden.

Finally we dashed over to Brandon Country Park and had a very quick walk around a route there to check on the third of my friend's caches. The log book in this one was full as it's a very popular spot, so we put in a new one.

According to the GPS we totalled up a little over 7 miles in all of our short walks, so not bad for an afternoon.

Further progress

More days have now been added to my Lake District Inn Way report, including the amazing photographs of Buttermere.

I've booked to go away to the Lakes for Christmas this year, so hope to get lots more photographs then too.