The windiest lake in England!

Today we went geocaching at Stithians Reservoir which is supposed to be the windiest lake in England. It certainly was really windy, enough to blow the cobwebs away, as my mum would say.

Wild iris

 We saw beautiful wild flowers, insects and birds...

Damsel flies were all around.

One of the many herons we saw

 The windiest place on the whole walk was crossing the dam... we just had to rush across... it was quite scary...

The dam

We enjoyed the walk immensely. The geocaching was difficult with some really hard to find caches  though we got 12 so we feel pretty pleased with ourselves...

Until next time

Gillian

Colan Woods (and Haunted villages!)

Wild trees

The weather was better today so off we went to Colan Woods. (We had a hard time finding the parking spot so have agreed we need to buy a Satnav for the car as we are starting to travel further afield on some very narrow single track roads where you really don't want to do more miles than you need, and you definitely don't want to have to try to turn around!)












Once we finally got there, we found 6 caches in the wood. We also bumped into another local geocaching family who amazed us by managing the route with a buggy- it was prettty muddy!














We were totally intrigued by a mass of ruined buildings in the woods. It looked like a significant hamlet with a school house, possibly a chapel/church and several other buildings. We guessed they must be from at least the late 1800's when it became expected for children up to the age of 12 to have an education (being married to a history teacher does teach you something!)

Sean clambered all over the walls

 This building had 2 stories and maybe a bell window...


We came home and googled Colan Woods ruins and came up with some strange results. Some people claim that the hamlet was haunted and even that all the villagers suddenly disappeared without trace one day in the early 1900's. We didn't find the "time slips" suggested or feel the haunted atmosphere.... It was however unexpected to find a hamlet that must have been totally abandoned in the relatively recent past.


Nature is now reclaiming the site, to the point where many of the walls in the woods are now almost completely covered with moss and ivy. It really is an amazing place and will linger in my memory for quite some time. It would make a great setting for a mystery story... for when winter comes and we can't go geocaching because of the weather...


Until next time
Gillian

A funny day geocaching!

It's been a funny day geocaching today. The weather forecast was awful, with heavy rain and thunderstorms predicted, so we abandoned our plans to walk in Colan Woods near Newquay. Instead we went to Trago Mills to shop for wool and stationery. While there we found the geocache in the woods by the store. Who would think there were some quite pleasant walks near such a big store!

In the afternoon we went to nearby Lanivet where there are two multipart geocaches requiring you to go to a number of locations to find numerical clues around the village to give the co-ordinates of the final caches.

Celtic cross in the graveyard

Some of the clues were at the local church, where we met a delightful lady who was about to do the church flowers. She let us look around the church and told us about the beautiful stained glass windows. She also told us that there had been a church on the site for over a thousand years, and they have a list of rectors on the wall going back to the 1200's. It was also probably a pagan scared site before that. Lanivet is actually the geographical centre of Cornwall and is halfway along the Saints Way which goes from Padstow to Fowey and was the route Irish pilgrims took towards France, hence it's importance.

Celtic cross near the bell
tower and war memorial

Lanivet Church 

We collected all the numerical clues, did the maths and went looking for the first cache. We got close, but the GPS pointed to the middle of the main road, so we used common sense and the cache name Road to Nowhere to guide us.... it wasn't enough today...


By then it was getting overcast, and we really didn't feel like getting wet through as we had both gone out without coats, so we called it a day... 


We will have to go back and try again another time.


Until next time
Gillian

Geocaching on Goss Moor

Goss Moor is a Nature Reserve we have seen many times from the road but never visited before. Several new geocaches have been placed there recently so we decided to visit on May Day Bank Holiday.

Sleepers marking the line of the old track

From where we parked we walked along a disused railway line into the reserve. The evidence of it still there in sleepers embedded in the path.

Sean pointing to the sleepers

The clay chutes

We found the old platform where the china clay was loaded onto the train trucks via clay chutes. 












Along the walk we had to climb gates, not something I was born to do... if only they gave me a hand instead of laughing and taking photos!

We also found the dodgy foot bridge that seems to be on every walk we do - this one had a loose hand rail, which made it safer to cross without holding on to anything...

We also found a bit where the stream had flooded across the track - we didn't want to turn back so we had to go round by jumping across where it was narrowest...








Sean and me needed a hand with this one...











We were so glad we continued. It was beautiful...

 Hidden in the trees, John spotted a sign. 

 

















 We didn't see many people- just a few "Moo-gles"!

We had seen plenty of evidence of cows all afternoon- and had nearly trod in it a couple of times- but suddenly as we went round a corner we saw a whole herd of cows and their calves.

We found 6 caches on a fantastic walk. We have a few more to do here so we will be going back in a few weeks...




Until next time
Gillian

Grogley Woods

We visited Grogley Woods today, targeting 6 caches. We found them all but got pretty wet along the way. It's the first time we've geocached in the rain. Does that mean we're serious geocachers now?

Just before the rain started  I took some photos of the view looking back towards Bodmin. The Beacon is clearly visible: we live to the left of the Beacon as you look at the photo...

These views shows the stunning valley between Grogley and Bodmin.

And finally - walking up the trail. There was a lot of climbing uphill on this walk and it rained very heavily just after the second cache, and again on our walk back downhill to where we had parked. We got soaked to the skin but loved every minute of the walk!

Until next time
Gillian

Birthday Geocaching

Sean wanted to go for a little walk when the rain stopped on his birthday so we included geocaching and found a couple of local caches.

We found a quaint little foot bridge over a stream besides a ford for cars- not that anything other than a determined four wheel drive car could get down the steep and rubbley track to the stream.

 Me on a bridge I didn't mind!

We also walked to a cache high in the East Woods, which also go down towards the Camel Trail.






Until next time
Gillian

Geocaching in Wadebridge

Todays Royal Wedding Bank Holiday has given us the chance to take another day out geocaching. We went to Wadebridge with a list of 15 nearby caches and the thought that we would do a few and see where it took us.

The Old Bridge at Wadebridge

We first looked on two bridges, one a road bridge, one a very bouncy footbridge. Both were pretty busy so we weren't able to do a proper search so we decided to move on to quieter locations and come back to these two when it is quieter, perhaps earlier in the day.




The Old Bridge is stunning. It was built in the 1460's by a local and is said to be built on wool. This supposedly actually means built on the profits on wool, but it is a nice story.  I read that Wadebridge was called Wade before the bridge was built because prior to the building of the bridge people had to wade across the river.

View down river from the bridge

View upriver from the bridge

The day was mostly overcast so the photos don't have the brightness I like, but they are very atmospheric.

Challenge Bridge- built by the TV program Challenge Anneka

Further along the Camel Trail, as we walked upriver east towards Bodmin, we had some beautiful views of Egloshayle (which means church by the  estuary in Cornish) and the church in the village which was built in around 1490 (though there were previous churches on the site dating back to the Norman Conquest in 1066, parts of which can still be found in the church today).

Along the Camel Trail we had to stop by this amazing tree...

Our own little wood sprites hiding against a tree!

                                     and spotted this huge fungi...

 ...and saw several beautifully elegant swans.

We found six geocaches today, including one called Box, where we got to the geocache easily enough, but had to solve a particularly challenging puzzle in order to access the logbook (http://coord.info/GC2AMEY) - it is definitely the most interesting one to date...


The beauty of the Camel Trail is that the scenery changes all along its length. Walking along the part that moves into the Camel Estuary has a completely different feel to it than walking along by Poley's Bridge where the river was still very much a large stream. It also changes with the seasons so will walk it again later in the year...


Until next time
Gillian