Wandering around Walmley

Plants Brook

Wylde Walmley Wander

10 in the series plus 3 extra
4.5 mile circular walk

Headed off this morning to do a new series near Sutton Coldfield around New Hall Valley Country Park
Parked up in the car park near #1 and set off, very busy in the park this morning with dog walking muggles galore, so lots of stealth required.  We found ourselves on the wrong side of Plants Brook and briefly considered splashing across it..... well the dogs didn't seem to mind.... decided to ask a couple of passing muggles if there was a bridge further up and luckily there was so we walked on and found a drier route.  We'd just started searching for A Stroll to Sutton when we saw what we thought were muggles standing on the path, luckily having dogs is great for cover so we just pretended we were searching for a lost ball in the bushes, then when they headed towards we realised they must be cachers, it was Dave77st and Le Barts, enjoyed a quick chat then went our separate ways as they were going off to do Rovers Demised that we'd done back in August 2007.


Between #2 & #3 we could see a large manor house through the trees, it was New Hall Manor which claims to be one of the oldest inhabited moated houses in Britain and is now a hotel and spa.  In 1993 Bon Jovi's video 'Sleep when I'm dead' was filmed there!

Arrived at #3 and started searching, taking it in turns to keep a look out, from quite a distance away we could see One Last Look coming towards us, just as they were about to join in the search I found it using the 'where would I hide it' approach :D.  Enjoyed a quick chat with BobnJill and off we went again in opposite directions.

On the way to #5 we bumped into The Grizzly Pair who were doing the series in reverse order.  Enjoyed a chat then we went on our way.

We recognised the location for #6 from when we were FTF on Initially Dimitri back in February 2008, we could see that new fencing had been installed and the path widened so we weren't at all surprised to see it had been archived.

Took a short detour to Plants Brook Walk and when we signed the log it had been visited a few minutes before by 'Four Rocks' we think we may have passed them on the path but couldn't see any sign of a GPSr, hopefully bump into them another day.

Part of the return walk involved crossing a very busy golf course (they really ought to try caching), it felt a bit perilous dodging the balls but we made it to the other side without incident.

Completed the rest of the series and even bumped into Le Barts and Dave77st again.  A really enjoyable walk around the park, completed  in 2 hours 38 minutes.  All fairly easy to find caches and a mix of hides and sizes, just what we enjoy.

Walmley