Hargrave Hobble

Hargrave Hobble

Hargrave Hobble

Length of Walk - 11 miles
Caches - 55 + 5

The Hargrave Hobble is an 11 mile circular walk of 55 caches set along the footpaths, byways and country lanes around the village of Hargrave in Northamptonshire.

We were planning our caching trip for the weekend on Tuesday when this series came up, looked like a good walk and the forecast was for a sunny day so we pencilled it into the diary.  

We had to drop our son off at work for 7am in Stratford-upon-Avon so we left home at 6.30am and arrived in Hargrave just before 8.30am, parked at the suggested parking and off we went.  We hope to complete the walk in 5 hours as we need to be back home at a reasonable time as Mark and Steven are going to a Rammstein gig at the LG Arena tonight.

All the caches were easy to find with useful hints, they are all set to be found which meant we could keep a steady pace going throughout the walk.

Just after finding #16 we were approached by the farmer, he asked us what we were doing, we didn't know that he'd seen us get the cache as we'd waited for him to go out of sight before we retrieved it but he must've been watching us from somewhere as he explained that there had been a few others doing the same thing in the last few days.  We said that we were out on a 10 mile circular walk from Hargrave, he wanted to know where we were from and where we were staying for the weekend, we answered all the questions then continued on our way.  After finding #18 we heard a quad bike speeding along and getting closer, it was the farmer again, this time he demanded to know what we were up to as his neighbour had called him and said she'd seen us disappear into the trees (at #17).  So this time we decided to explain all about Geocaching.  He was absolutely fine with it and if anything was relieved that that's all we were doing.  Apparently they and other farms in the area have had a spate of cattle and machinery thefts in the past few weeks so imagine all sorts when they started getting more people on the path than is normal.  Probably not the best location for these caches, the farmer was fine about it with us and some of the other cachers that followed us but not sure if he'll feel the same way after there's been a hundred visitors.

Pretty village of Covington

Just as we got to #24 we had a message from Pffaffabouters asking which one we were at, they were only at #6 so it wasn't worth hanging back for them but we phoned them to let them know we'd spoken to the farmer about caching.

Time for a cuppa

Thoroughly enjoyed the walk, all caches were found easily with great co-ords and useful hints.

We completed the walk in just under 5 hours, then it was back to the car for hot soup.  Then we headed home after picking up a couple of Just Northamptonshire caches.

A great morning of caching.