Devon

This is a short blog about some of the caches that we did on our week long trip down to Devon after the Christmas family festivities.

Saturday

We arrived in Bristol ready to spend the evening finding a variety of caches to break the journey overnight.

Gorgeous View

We really enjoyed our walk around Bristol, we've visited a few times since we started caching but it's probably been about 4 or 5 years since our last visit and in that time there have been quite a few caches published - we picked out a few to find and did the virtual, lab caches and a great little multi.

Sunday

We were up early to finish off the lab caches around Bristol.

Underhill Yard - Historic boatyard serving Bristol harbour

Then to Brandon Hill to play the Grand Old Duke of York Wherigo which was really enjoyable and in a great location.

View from Cabot Tower!

Cabot Tower is a 105ft (32m) tower in a public park on Brandon Hill in Bristol.  The tower was built in the 1890s to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the journey of John Cabot from Bristol to Canada.  You can climb the steps to the viewing platforms and entry to the tower is free.

Then headed back out of the city to Wraxall to do a Wherigo at Ty Sculpture Trail in Towerhouse Wood.  Ty Partridge grew up in the house at the corner of Towerhouse Wood and the woods became his playground throughout his childhood but very sadly he died suddenly of Leukaemia aged 21. This sculpture trail is in his memory.

The woods were very muddy and the Wherigo took quite some time to complete and we finished in the dark.

Monday

A lovely sunny day again today and we started off with a virtual at the Turf Lock.  The lock is only accessible by foot, bike or boat!  We parked at the car park at Powderham Church to start our walk to the lock. The Turf Lock stands at the mouth of the Exeter Ship Canal.

The walk was just over a mile each way.

Very sunny and the skies were clear - it was 12 degrees and at times felt very much like Spring.

Then onto Teignmouth where we spent the rest of the day wondering around finding caches.

Tuesday

Hey the sea

We headed into Brixham to spend the day caching.  We parked at Breakwater car park which cost £1.50 for 24 hours.

It was nice to be back in Brixham, we last visited on the motorbikes over 30 years ago on a camping holiday.

We did the Trawl around the Harbour puzzle which was a great way of seeing the harbour and really made us slow down and look at things we wouldn't normally have noticed as it  involved walking around the harbour and identifying different locations from photographs from the cache page.

Golden Hind Virtual

Brixham Harbour

We also made a start on the Brixham Lights multi which was quite involved, there were two zones in the harbour itself then you had to go up to the Napoleonic fort at Berry Head for the rest of the waypoints.

There was a bit of ambiguity over one of the waypoints which led us to the wrong location, we spent ages looking in the wrong place.  After contacting the CO we decided to return early tomorrow morning as we'd run out of daylight -  bearing in mind we had time constraints for tide times at Burgh Island tomorrow.

At just 5 metres in height, Berry Head lighthouse is the shortest lighthouse in Great Britain but at 58 metres above mean sea level it is also the highest!

We had a lovely evening walk around Brixham seeing all the Christmas lights.

Wednesday

Happy New Year!

We were up early to head down to the beach to do an old cache called New Years Beach Party that was placed on 1st January 2003 so we thought it would be nice to find it on its 17 year birthday.

Then back to Brixham to find the Brixham Lights multi which was a quick find this time.

Then we headed towards Bigbury on Sea to do the virtual at Burgh Island.

Burgh Island is a tidal island and twice a day it gets cut off by the sea so we planned our visit today so we could walk across the beach at low tide.  Although there is a sea tractor which is operated by the hotel at high tide.

The island was much bigger than we expected and even had a hotel on it.  The Burgh Hotel is steeped in history.  In the 1890s a prefabricated wooden house was built on the island and used for weekend parties.  In 1927 the island was sold to a film maker who then built a more substantial Art Deco style hotel.  During WWII the hotel was used as a recovery centre for wounded RAF personnel.  Today Burgh Island is a Grade II listed building. Notable visitors to the hotel include:  Agatha Christie - it inspired the settings for two of her books 'And then there were none' and 'Evil Under the Sun'.  It was also used as a filming location for the 2001 TV adaptation of Evil Under The Sun.  The Beatles stayed in the hotel when they were playing a concert in Plymouth apparently and it is said that Eisenhower and Churchill met there in the weeks leading up to the D-Day invasion.

Hotel by night

Later we headed to Snape Point near Salcombe for the night.

Thursday

We'd planned a walk today out to Bolt Head to find a cache from 2005.  I'd spotted the walk on the National Trust website so it was a bonus that there was also an old cache and a virtual  as well.

We set off in strong winds passing the Walkers' Hut on the way, which is an honesty based cafe.

 It was a really good walk despite the windy weather.

Struggling to stand upright!

After this we headed towards Totnes stopping off at South Sands Beach so Charlie could have a swim in the sea.

There was an abandoned hotel near the beach, it'll be interesting to see if there are any changes made to it the next time we visit the area.

We spent the evening in Totnes playing a Wherigo and doing the lab caches in the pouring rain.

Friday

We spent the day doing lab caches at Haldon Forest Park.

We'd spotted an intriguing puzzle cache called The Magic Walk when we were planning our trip.  In the 80s Jamie McCullough created a mile and a half interactive walk deep in the woods in Haldon Forest called 'The Beginner's Way'.  The walk has long since gone but during the few years of its existence it attracted more than 500,000 people to Haldon Forest.  On busy days more than 1000 people were drawn to the magical walk.  It was never promoted or advertised in any way, just purely word of mouth brought the visitors which was just how the creator intended it to be, it was something that should just be discovered.  He received many offers from TV and magazines but these were always refused.  Sadly, through lack of funding the spell-bounding mazes, ladders, tunnels and optical illusion have now all gone and all that remains is an archway.

We stayed overnight near Exeter ready for tomorrow.

Saturday

Early start in Exeter

Parliament Street virtual 

Chiseled street art by Vhils

Sunday

Heading home today but stopping off on the way to do lab caches in Portishead and Gloucester and also a virtual at the Wicker Man.

Sad that such a brilliant trip had to come to an end but we've taken away some very fond memories with us and we'll definitely be heading down to Devon again soon.

York & Hull Weekend

Just one day holiday left to use up before the end of the year so we decided to have a long weekend over in York and Hull to do the lab caches. Originally we'd planned a walk in the Lakes but the weather was looking to be very wet and cold all weekend and the forecast in the North East was for cold but sunny.

Friday afternoon we headed towards York stopping off in Skipton to do the new lab caches there.

It rained heavily all evening but the lab caches took us an enjoyable walk along up and down high street and it all looked very festive.

Apparently Skipton is on the list of 'Happiest Places to Live in the UK'.

The following morning we stopped off at the 'Finest View in England'.  Author and vet James Herriot gave the view from Sutton Bank the title of 'England's finest'.

It certainly was an impressive view.  It was really windy though so we walked for about a mile then returned to the van as it started to snow.

Don't get too close to the edge!  So windy!

It was just a short flurry of snow and thankfully didn't settle.

White Horse of Kilburn

Next stop was at the White Horse of Kilburn to find a cache from February 2002.  It's a bit hard to make out the shape of the horse from close up but the figure is 318 feet long by 220 ft high and covers about 1.6 acres and said to be the largest and most northerly hill figure in England.

There was quite a few steps to climb to reach the top which certainly warmed us up.

On the way to York we stopped off at another couple of old caches.

We'd decided it would be best to arrive in York late afternoon, thinking that we'd miss the worst of the Christmas shopping crowds - wrongo!  It was chaos.  We attempted a couple of the lab caches and the virtual before deciding to call it off and return early the following morning.

This was a much better idea, it was really quiet on Sunday morning and a lot more relaxed wondering around the streets of York.

We've visited York a few times since we moved to the North West 3½ years ago but we haven't walked around the city walls since 2011 - we were on a family holiday on our way to Scotland.

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is the shortest street in York.  It was first recorded in 1505 as Whitnourwhatnourgate which according to the sign next to it means 'What a street'.

After spending a long day in York we headed towards Hull ready for an early start doing the lab caches before heading home.

Unusual 'submarine' style canal boat spotted in Beverley.

First stop: Bankside Gallery.

In 2018 a Banksy mural appeared on the old Scott Street Bridge in Hull, it would have been really great to see it but sadly it was removed a couple of months ago ahead of planned demolition of the bridge.  You can the mural see it here

I'm not 100% sure but I think the mural is set to return at some point in the future and it has simply been put into secure storage for now.

This is the bridge without the artwork.

After the popularity of the Banksy mural, Hull City Council met with street artists and spoke with local businesses to see if they were prepared to contribute space to a new 'urban gallery' in the area.  Bankside Gallery is now an area of 'permission walls'.

We were last at Hull marina in December 2013 to do the virtual there so it was nice to come back to explore the area a bit more.  The lab caches were a great way to see more of the area.

Spurn Lightship

The Spurn Lightship was built in 1927 and served for 48 years as a navigation aid in the approaches of the Humber Estuary, where it was stationed 4 1⁄2 miles east of Spurn Point.

Cream Telephone Boxes

Since 2007 Hull is the only city in the UK to have kept an independent municipal telephone network provider which will explain why it has distinctive cream phone boxes and the residents also received the White Pages telephone directory as opposed to the Yellow Pages.

The Land of Green Ginger is a narrow street in the old town area of Kingston upon Hull. The Land of Green Ginger contains what may be the world's smallest window, being a slit which was used by the gatekeeper of the George Hotel to look out for stagecoaches and customers.

World's Smallest Window

Hull Tidal Barrier

 Since 1980, the mouth of the river has been protected by a tidal barrier at the estuary, which can be closed to prevent tidal surges entering the river system and causing flooding upriver.

Scale Lane Swing Bridge

This innovative swing bridge over the River Hull is believed to be the first bridge in the world that allows pedestrians the unique experience of riding on it while it opens.  The structure can carry up to 1,000 people while opening and up to 4,000 people when closed.

Well that's all we had time for before heading home.

Hope you've enjoyed reading.