Geolympix Marathon series - D & E

Cobstone Mill

Geolympix Marathon Series - Rings D and E 

Rings D  in the village of Turville and Ring E starts in Fingest; together, they make an enjoyable  11 mile walk around the picturesque villages of Turville, Skirmett and Fingest close to the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire border.  The route is mostly on good footpaths and bridleways with a short section Ring D along a busy section of road.  The terrain is quite hilly with some fantastic views to be had along the way.

As the forecast was so good for today we thought it would be perfect for a trip to the Chilterns, one of our favourite areas for caching. The Geolympix Marathon Series was published in time for the Geolympix Mega event in July and is set out in 5 rings, covering a total distance of 26.2 miles.

We'd chosen to start with Ring D and detour for Ring E right near the end. We'd had a later than anticipated start to the day so we decided to just pick off two of the rings today and see what time we had left to do some more caches in the area.

We were both in need of some new boots as ours were no longer waterproof so decided to treat ourselves this week and today was the day to try them out.  Let's hope we manage to keep them clean.

Nice new boots, hope they stay clean!

The walk was one of the nicest we've done in a while, it had everything really, good paths, very well placed and easy to find caches, great views, lovely countryside, some pubs en route and one or two hilly bits.

For quite a bit of the walk we were following white arrows painted onto trees and gate posts which we really liked, not sure why, just thought they looked nice

Near the end of the walk we passed The Frog Pub at Skirmett so decided to stop off for a drink before completing the series and heading back to the car.

We completed the walk in a little under 6 hours, this included the stop at the pub.

Early autumn colour

Then there was just time for a very short series nearby, Stonor Circular, which took us about an hour, enjoyable walk up a steep hill then down again, no problems finding the caches but we had to miss out a couple of the series as they didn't seem to be connected to the circular walk.

Then it was off to McDonalds in Banbury for post-caching munch before heading home.  What a great day!  Looking forward to coming back to the area very soon.