Caching in Castle Combe

Castle Combe on 7/07/07

Scene from movie 'War Horse' filmed in Castle Combe

After watching the film War Horse a few weeks back we were intrigued to know where it was filmed, after a little research we found it was filmed in the village of Castle Combe in Wiltshire.  We checked what caches were located nearby and realised that there was an old cache there from 2001, Castle Combe (Wilts), that was on our to-do list, so we decided at the first opportunity we'd have a drive down to Wiltshire to visit the village.   I have to say that we've done many of The Wombles caches and we have never been disappointed, they've set lots of great virtuals which we've really enjoyed doing.

Pretty village of Castle Combe

 
On further research I found that this village has long been a favoured location by Hollywood film, television and advertising companies, the village makes a perfect filmset as there are no TV aerials or telegraph poles in sight.  'Dr Dolittle' was also filmed here in 1967 as was Stardust in 2008 and Wolfman in 2009.  TV programmes including Poirot and Robin of Sherwood have also been filmed in Castle Combe.

The Street, Castle Combe

We spotted that there was a circular cache series around the village which looked perfect for a walk in the area.  We parked up at the suggested parking for the series and off we went. We had hoped for a dry day but after weeks of rain it was too much to ask for and it started raining as soon as we left the car so it was on with the waterproofs.

On the way out of Castle Combe

The circular walk consisted of 10 caches and a bonus and passed through Castle Combe on the way taking in 3 additional caches.  All caches in the series were a nice size and well stocked and a good distance between them enabling us to enjoy the fabulous scenery.

What a great idea, should have these before entering cow fields!

The walk didn't involve walking through any cow fields and as we didn't have our dogs with us we can't comment on the dog friendliness although we'd say on the whole it seemed pretty much dog friendly but there were a few stiles.  Part of the walk takes you through the golf course of the Castle Combe Hotel, there was a handy bell to ring to warn golfers of your approach, as it was raining so hard we didn't think there'd be any golfers but we rang the bell all the same and there were a few hardy players on the waterlogged course.

Hmm

We really liked the bonus cache which was the first of its kind for us because rather than just collecting up numbers you had to collect up written narrative instructions, describing the route to the bonus - although this was slightly more challenging as we had a DNF on one of the series.

Castle Combe Cache

This was probably one of the best series we've done and we'd highly recommend it as it 'ticked all the boxes', ideal length of walk, good sized well spaced caches in a scenic picturesque area and even a pub half way and a pub at the end - the fact it was raining for most of the walk did not detract from our enjoyment.

Royal Crescent - Bath

The other reason for our visit to the area was to find the two virtual caches in Bath - we'd planned to spend the evening in Bath but as the weather turned to torrential rain and there were news reports of flooding in the South West we decided to head back to the Midlands after doing just a handful of caches in Bath itself - we hope to be back in the area very soon.  A brilliant day out!