After several days of Christmas indulgence and laziness, today was the day to get back outside. With an exciting new gpsr to play with it had to be a geocaching day.
Having had an initial hiccup with setting up the GPS – I blame tiredness! I was fairly confident that when we arrived at our chosen destination we would have some loaded geocaches to find. I did also sensibly load up the phone too, just in case. Always have a back up plan!

We settled on a trail in Santon Downham, a small village in the vast Thetford Forest. The trail would take us on a circular route through the forest and could also incorporate a couple of church micros too.

We parked at the first cache, promisingly called ‘an easy start.’ They lied!

Having never used a GPSr before I’m on a steep learning curve here, thankfully I had successfully saved caches on screen but needed to tweak a few settings before we could go any further. I took myself off to carry out essential tweaking and swear whilst the rest of the team had a poke about. I also got the phone out! With both devices struggling to settle on a sensible location and tempers rising there was only one option. Next!

A quick detour from our intended route to attempt a nearby cache and dash and I have never been so pleased to spot a humble pile of sticks.

Back onto the trail and the calming influences of the forest. The GPS and I are getting better acquainted and we head straight to the next cache. More faffing, lose tweezers, lose pen, lose the will to live. TAXI!
Eventually signing the log and I get a cheeky smirk from a passer by – he knows exactly what I’m up to!

The trail was well spaced with a variety of cache types and sizes and several pinecones hides.

With it being such a lovely day we braved a winter picnic and found a perfect sunny spot to recharge and warm up. Also great for drying out the children who steamed, because muddy puddles are irresistible of course! 😉

Despite the tiny size of the village we found three church micros, one we nearly missed due to the absence of an actual church. We stayed late to complete the trail but this meant we got spoilt with gorgeous sunset views.

Things improved with the GPS and I ended up only using the phone occasionally. I need to play around with my maps before I’m completely happy to leave the phone alone! (Who am I kidding!)

Thankfully we were a little better prepared for this trip as Mr Muddy had his new Christmas torch with him….men and their torches eh? 😉 This meant we were able to squeeze in an unexpected church micro on the way back, a particularly sneaky little hide, all the more satisfying in the dark.

Nine finds of mixed cache sizes and types (albeit several disguised as pinecones!) two DNFs (boo!) three church micros and three incredibly tired children – a rather successful winter walk.