Chelmarsh

Mercian Way

Chelmarsh Reservoir

Caches - 18 + 2
Distance - 4.6 miles

A series of 18 caches plus 2 others en route around the Chelmarsh Reservoir.

This series has been on our to-do list since it was published a year ago, the forecast looked dry for today so we thought we'd have a drive out here to do it.

Parked near the church and did the Shropshire Church Gems cache first before continuing on to the series.

At the first cache we realised we were following another caching team, Pindemonium, and wondered if we'd catch up with them.  They weren't very far ahead and we caught up with them at #4.  Enjoyed a chat before continuing on the walk.

Chelmarsh Church

Really enjoyed the series with a good mix of hides and sizes which we completed in a little over 2½ hours which included a lunch stop

We noticed there was a trigpoint nearby so at the end of the series we went off to bag it.  The first field was quite muddy as it looks like there are normally cows in it, luckily they were safely in the cow shed .  The path into the field with the trigpoint was dry and as we approached it  we could see what we thought was a large bird sitting on top of it, but it didn't fly off and as we got closer we realised it was a statue of a GNOME.  Definitely a first for us, have never seen one like this before.  The gnome is mentioned on the trigpointingUK site as far back as 2006, would be interesting to know why it was put there and by whom.

Chelmarsh

On our way home we parked up and crossed the road to SVR Permissive Path and Field and there was a photographer waiting to film the steam train, so we stood about with our camera so he'd think we were doing the same thing , we were able to retrieve the cache whilst he was fiddling with his equipment, then as soon as the train had passed through we continued down to SVR Stand and Wave.  How lucky that we timed it just right to see the train!

Stand and Wave

Then it was time to head home, what a beautiful day it turned out to be.