Long Weekend in Llangollen

In 2016 the UK Mega was held in Llangollen in North Wales, we were only able to attend the event for the day so didn't get chance to do many of the surrounding caches.  We've been planning to come back ever since.  There was a post on Facebook a few weeks back saying that some of the caches would be archived early next year so we decided to make a concerted effort to get the puzzle caches solved and get over and find the caches.  We had a day's holiday left to use up for this year so we decided to have a long weekend in the Llangollen area.

We set off early afternoon on Friday and stopped overnight in Whitchurch.  We enjoyed a walk around the town and found a few caches.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early ready to start on the 2016 puzzle caches around the lanes of Wrexham.  The plan was to find as many of the caches as we could on our bikes in the short hours of daylight that we had.  

We really enjoyed cycling around the lanes finding the caches.  The weather forecast had been for rain showers throughout the day but we only got caught in a couple of light showers and on the whole the weather was bright and sunny.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to Llangollen.

It rained all night and when we woke up it was raining still, it didn't look hopeful for our bike ride but after we'd eaten our breakfast the clouds lifted and the sun came out.

The plan for today was to do the MEGA series on our bikes which was a linear route of about 8 miles.

Coffee and Cake before we set off

The route was quite hilly so we planned to stop for the caches on the uphills on the way out then on the return leg stop for the ones we missed.  This proved to be a good method and we made very good progress.

Horseshoe Falls in the background

The route was very scenic and is one of the best caching series we've done on our bikes.

Great fun whizzing down the hills

We were about 1½ miles from the end and the sky went very dark, the heavens opened and the rain came down, very quickly the roads became more like a river and we were glad to get back to the van to dry off.  We finished the series in just under 4 hours.

Monday

A bit of a later start to the morning and got up in time to see the sun rise.  The skies are much clearer this morning so hopefully the rain will stay off today.

             Mild enough for shorts!

Trevor Quarry

There were a couple of Earthcaches nearby so we decided to do those first,  Really interesting, I love Earthcaches that involve looking for fossils.

We'd run out of daylight yesterday to do the caches around Horseshoe Falls so we decided to do those next.  We relocated the van and parked in Berwyn to start our walk.

Llantysilio Church

Horseshoe Falls is a weir on the River Dee about 5 kilometres north-west of Llangollen.

We last visited back in 2013, the river wasn't as fast flowing then.

2013

In 2009 Horseshoe Falls and 11 miles of the Llangollen Canal was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status.  This includes the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct .... for non-Welsh speakers this is pronounced 'Pont-ker-suck-tay' 😁and Canal (including Chirk Aqueduct near Oswestry.  The canal was awarded World Heritage status because of the bold civil engineering solutions needed to construct a canal with no locks through such difficult terrain.

It was very pleasant wandering around finding the caches and being a weekday it was much quieter.

The Chain Bridge

The Chain Bridge is a footbridge over the river Dee at Berwyn near.  It is jointly owned by Llangollen Town Council and Llantysilio Community Council and the bridge links the two communities. The current bridge is the third bridge at this location, the previous bridge was destroyed in a flood.  There are some interesting old pictures of the bridges here

On the way home we stopped off at Pontcysyllte to find a puzzle cache that I'd solved by chance a few days ago.

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

By this time it was starting to get dark and we decided, very reluctantly, it was time to head for home.

A great weekend, we'll definitely be back in the area soon.

Weekends go too fast!

Saturday

Today we headed over the Pennines to view a flat with our daughter and spent the rest of the day mooching about in Sheffield - I love going to Sheffield, so many great places to visit and a trip wouldn't be complete without stopping off at the Unwrapped Shop to fill up our empty jars and containers.

The peanut butter machine is so much fun to use! 😍

It would be great if we had a a zero waste shop on our doorstep.

We stayed overnight in Castleton in our usual spot ready for a walk the next morning.

Sunday

A bit drizzly first thing but it soon cleared up and we set off on our walk.

The Parish Church of Edale 

We parked at Edale Station to do the BL series which is a short series of 14 caches on a 4 mile loop.  The first cache of the series is very close to the start of the Pennine Way.

Pub which marks the start of the Pennine Way

The Pennine Way National Trail is a 268 mile (429 Km) walking route from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish Borders. It was the very first National Trail and opened on 24th April 1965.  It's a trail I have always wanted to do, we have walked bits of it over the years but to set off and complete the whole trail would be amazing.

Including stopping for lunch and dawdling for muggle walkers and generally enjoying the scenery the walk took us 3hrs 19mins but we weren't in a hurry so if you were pushed for time you could easily do it much faster.

One of the caches, Oh Noe Not Again, required wading in the River Noe so we decided to go back for that one at the end of the walk with our wellies.  We were able to park right next to it, the water was quite fast flowing but it was great fun.

Oh Noe Not Again

We rounded off the day with a few Church Micros and a multi from 2006 called In Search of Thomas - sadly we didn't find Thomas because by the time we got to GZ it was dark and the leaf fall was heavy so after a long search we had to admit defeat, we'll have to return in daylight to find that one.  Sometimes it's fun finding caches in the dark but the one thing I miss is seeing the scenery, not long to wait now until the nights start drawing out again 😀

Autumnal Weekend in The Lakes

We haven't managed to get up to The Lakes anywhere near as much as we'd liked to have done this year, in fact the last time was June!  So when we saw how good the forecast was for this weekend and we had no other plans, the Lakes was our obvious choice and hopefully bag a couple of Wainwrights too,

We have bagged 101 Wainwrights to date.  In 2010 we did our first one but at that time we weren't really aware of the challenge so we officially started the challenge in 2016 when we moved to the North West.  That year we bagged 53, then 2017 we managed 36 and this year we've done 11.

Saturday

Saturday morning the plan was to hike to Harter Fell (649m).  Harter Fell is a mountain in the western part of the Lake District.  There are several routes to the summit but we decided to walk from the Birks Bridge car park in the Duddon Valley.

Wrynose Pass

The route to the car park involves negotiating the tricky Wrynose Pass (393m).  Wrynose Pass is a mountain pass between the Duddon Valley and Little Langdale and is one of the steepest roads in England.  We have driven this route a few times now and once in icy conditions which was pretty hair-raising.

We had a leisurely start to our walk with coffee and cake in the van before setting off in the autumn sunshine.

The Birks

Looking back at The Birks - an old working farmhouse.  The property was owned by the Forestry Commission and occupied by a tenant farmer until the early 60s but is now owned by the Grove School in Shropshire and utilised as a field studies centre.

The first part of the walk was really boggy underfoot then after this section the path becomes very steep with loose rocks, tree stumps and bare roots.  We stopped regularly to take in the amazing views.

Autumn walks on sunny days are by far my favourite.  I love the contrast of the blue skies and the autumn colours.

It was just under two miles to the summit which consists of three distinct rocky tors.

We found the cache then it was a bit of a scramble to get up to the highest point which is the true summit.

At the true summit

There's also a trigpoint which isn't the highest point, luckily we'd read this in our A.W. guide book before we set off.

The views were stunning and we spent ages admiring them.   The Duddon estuary and Morecambe Bay could be clearly seen to the south and to the west we could just make out the Isle of Man.

After eating our packed lunch and sitting enjoying the views and sunshine we headed back down again.

A truly enjoyable walk on a beautiful autumn day.

After this we sat in the campervan relaxing with a cup of tea and I read my book for a bit then we decided to make a start on the new virtual in Buttermere.  You need to visit five waypoints so we thought we'd try and tick a few of them off over the weekend.

Later on, we were driving down the lanes in an area between Coniston Water and Windermere when we spotted something rather large at the side of the road in the headlights, we slowed right down and saw what we thought was a very large pig, but then we soon realised this was no ordinary pig it was actually a wild boar!  We'd never seen one in the wild before so this was an amazing sight to see.

The dash-cam picked it up very nicely.

This came straight after seeing a beautiful barn own perched on the hedge, unfortunately the dash-cam didn't pick this up as it was too dark.

After this we headed in to Ambleside for a few supplies.  When we arrived we'd just missed the town Christmas light switch-on so the place was looking really festive.

Sunday

Today we drove along Hard Knott pass and parked in the very small parking area for the walk up to Hard Knott summit (549m).  It was a bitterly cold wind today but luckily the sun was still shining so that helped keep the temperature up a bit.

It was a very straightforward walk from the parking to the summmit, the route isn't particularly well trodden and in areas it's quite boggy so its a case of picking the driest route.  Once again stunning scenery as the skies were so clear.

There is a cache to find at the top which we is always a bonus when Wainwright bagging.

We didn't hang around long at the top so once we'd admired the views and found the cache we headed back down to the parking.

The weekend was over far too quickly, we've had a fab time, hopefully we'll be back up to the Lakes again very soon.

Winter Geolympix

Where is the year going?  I'm so behind with writing blog posts, can't believe I haven't done one since the Yorkshire UK Mega.  I'm going to put some time into catching up with posts over the next few weeks, we've had quite a lot going on non-travel or caching related so the blog had to take a back seat.

So I'll start with a post about this weekend.

Thursday night we headed down towards Ivinghoe for the Winter Geolympix, we stopped off for a few hours in Solihull on the way to visit our son.  A 180 mile journey and we arrived in Brill about 01:30 where we'd planned to stay overnight.

Up early Friday morning and started the day with a walk around Brill to find a few caches.

Still some lovely autumn colour around.

We last visited Brill back in 2008 so it was nice to come back for another look around, still the picturesque little village we remembered it to be.

Brill is well known for its windmill.  Brill Windmill provides one of the earliest and best preserved examples of a post mill in the UK. In 1967 the Council installed a structural steel framework that helps to support the mill's ancient timber frame but means that the mill is static and can no longer turn to face the wind.

From here we headed to Gibraltar.  Yep you did read that correctly - Gibraltar.... the small hamlet in Buckinghamshire.  We visited Gibraltar - the British Overseas Territory - last month (blog to follow) and whilst we were there we did a couple of multis and a letterbox where the final locations were here in Buckinghamshire.  From Rock top to Rock Bottom: Long-range LB/H!, Triumphant Triple: Plaque Buildup 3 (Ultra-Multi) and Gibraltar twinned with... Gibraltar? (Ultra-Multi)  So it was good to finally bag those.

We were hoping it would be a little warmer in Gibraltar

Flashback to sunny Gibraltar

After this it was time to check into the campsite for the weekend.  We stayed at Town Farm Campsite in Ivinghoe which was the suggested campsite for the Mega Event.  A nice little site with really good facilities.

Sunset at Ivinghoe

After checking in we headed off to the Beacon Sandwich? Winter Geolympix Torch Procession event on Ivinghoe Beacon.

Ivinghoe Beacon Trigpoint

It was really cold and windy at the top of the hill so we didn't hang around too long, we enjoyed chatting to a few other cachers before heading back down again.

Then back to the campsite ready for an early start in the morning.

Saturday - Up bright and early ready for a day of fun-filled caching.

Porridge with a View

The Mega Event wasn't due to start until midday so we decided to find as many caches as we could on our bikes before heading to the event.

We had a great time cycling around the Ashridge Estate on our bikes, chatting to lots of cachers along the way.

You can just about make out the mega event behind the trees

The weather started off lovely and sunny but by mid afternoon the weather had turned very dull, cloudy and cold.  We later heard reports that it was the coldest October day in 25 years!  Not sure how correct this is but it really was bitterly cold.

One of the lab caches

We then headed to the parking area ready for the night caches.

It was such a shame that it rained heavily the whole evening, so much effort had gone into setting the caches up, it was still a really good turn out despite the awful weather.

We had such a great time and the weekend went far too quickly.

We headed back to the campsite ready for another early start on Sunday.

We stopped off in Aylesbury on the way home mainly to find the new virtual and play the David Bowie Wherigo.  The virtual and wherigo were both at the new David Bowie statue.

The statue was unveiled in March this year as a tribute to David Bowie who died in January 2016 aged 69.  The money was raised by a crowdfunding appeal and through that they managed to raise the £100,000 needed.

Why a statue in Aylesbury?  Aylesbury was once home to Friars, the venue where Bowie first performed as Ziggy Stardust and debuted two of his albums.

Sadly the artwork has been vandalised twice in six months - the first time within 48 hours of it being unveiled!

There is a live stream webcam available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so if you go along be sure to let your friends and family know so they can look out for you 😎