Tissington Trail, Alsop en le Dale, Geocaching

Today it was raining. Raining so hard like you'd believe that it was actually hailstones. Tikka and I sat in the caravan, me typing up yesterdays trips and looking through photos, and her fast asleep at my feet, head across one of my shoes.

Then at just before 4pm it stopped raining... yay! Not wishing to travel too far with the risk of it starting again, I thought I'd have a go at this Geocaching malarky... while at home in Harlaxton there are none [yes, I did look] there seemed to be loads local to here, along the Tissington Trail. By all accounts it would seem that we've walked passed dozens of them in the last two weeks, and never even noticed them... but then I guess that's the point.

After I'd downloaded the local ones to the gps we were up and out and headed towards the Tissington Trail that passes by across the road from the campsite. Now while I'm not a great fan of prescribed / prepared routes, after the torrential rain of the last day or so it was a welcome relief not to add to my boot weight with every step.

It is a shame I'm going home on Friday, I can see that when Autumn finally arrives here, the scenery is going to take on a different level of amazing...

A little way along and around a few bends and we were allegedly close to our very first cache... when we were supposed to be right on top of it and had searched for several minutes I clicked the 'hint' button... with a little more info we searched again. Of course Tikka was having a whale of a time... a human snuffling around in the grass; I could almost see it in her bright attentive eyes and smile, "You see how much fun this is - finally this friendbeast has come of age and is learning to be a dog... waggy waggy". Errr no... 

Noticing a few unlikely places rocks I had a poke with my walking pole and noticed a container within. Rather more excited than I am now embarrassed to admit [oh, I just have], I lifted the rocks to one side and extracted the plastic tub. Clearly this would once have been a nice tub, the sort of tub that a good kitchen may have with rubber seals and foldy down bits to keep stuff fresh. This tub was a little sorry for itself... one of the foldy down bits was missing, and the contents were no long dry. A very damp notepad which had last been found in March 2013, and previously in January. I picked up the pen and started writing "Andrew and Tikka [dog] 16/10/2013", or at least I would have if the pen had worked. It didn't. Sorely disappointed I continued etch/writing anyway... I was still leaving my mark, so to speak. There were other items in the cache; if memory serves correctly one was a medal, a star wars figure, and a small fluffy chick of the cake decoration kind. Not bringing anything with me to add, I took nothing... I understand that half the fun of this Geocaching thing is to leave an item, but take away another... Call me a bore or an old fuddy duddy [or Victor as some of my closest friends do], but I'll still to the slightly more adult version and just fill in the notebook... or not as was clearly the case here.

Ah ha, I thought... but when the pen is not so mighty... I still had this overly expensive piece of gadgetry in my hand... fumbling through the GPS menu I found an option to select cache as found... so I did... and it proudly announced that my find would be added to the Geocaching website the next time I logged on... oh jolly.

The next Geocache was just up around the corner... with a little less enthusiasm we travelled a bit further up the path, and again with the hint, found the plastic tub. Clearly in much better condition than the first one, but the contents no less dry. I etched my name again, put the tub back and decided that I wouldn't be searchign for any more Geocaches today... nor likely beyond... perhaps it would be more fun with interesting clues and a group of friends.. 

Game over I reverted to the walker within me and now had to decide... shall I push on and work my way back around the fields, or shall I just turn heel and walk back to the caravan site... Looking at the map I noticed that I wasn't that far from the Alsop en le Dale route that I did a few mornings back... except this time we'd be travelling in the opposite direction. Yes... that sounds far better that wearing out my boot plastic on hard ground.

Catching up the route we were soon underway with lovely soft and squishy grass underfoot. Much better.

I still can't get over just how green everything still looks around here... I'm sure our fields are this lush...

I decided to mirror and use this one for my facebook banner 

The walk back across the fields and towards Alsop en le Dale was wonderful, the sky even looked like it was clearing at time - I could see Blue Sky!!

Shortly the sun was beginning to set and I took a few pictures hand held without filters [filters and tripod in the caravan where they've stayed all trip]

The sky in this next one is fantastic... I'd add at this point that I haven't edited these photo at all... straight from the camera - as shot!

Back in civilisation again and along the road we saw these young cows in the field. They saw us and approached us at an alarming speed.. Thank goodness there was a gate and stone wall wall between us... in retrospect I should have turned the camera to video mode so that you could see how focused they were on reaching us... a little too keen for my liking... and Tikka's too... she saw them through the open bar metal gate and kept looking from me to them and back again, licking her lips all the while...

Now for the non doggy people out there, this action isn't "yummy, food. Feed me", it's more like "Oh my god I don't like this, this is scarey, help. HELP", or something similar. Understandably we moved on swiftly.