Having been chipping away at my calendar filling challenge since March 1st, it’s logical that I’ve been slowly clearing up all of the local caches. 

The 10 mile radius from my home is slowly getting emptied of caches. 

Some days the finds are closer to home, but when I have a bit more time on my hands it’s satisfying to pick up caches on the outer reaches. 

Recently my furthest away caches on the 10 mile radius were located in Cavenham Heath. A trail of 10 caches placed in a sprawling route across the Heath. 

Old caches that hinted at maintenance issues, with the owner having long stopped caching. They also seemed quite labour intensive with a variety of waypoints on some of the caches, requiring you to collect information in order to find a final bonus cache.

Not too surprisingly I had been putting it off. 

Reading past logs wasn’t inspiring me to visit, in fact I was even considering logging that the caches needed maintaining with a future view to killing them off. 

I know, I’m sorry, but I feel no sentimental feelings towards old and uncared for caches. 

Be still my twitchy ‘Needs archived’ finger! 

Anyway, I digress. At the weekend we needed a place to visit. A dull and gloomy day and at a loss as to where to go. It seemed like an ideal opportunity to go and have a look at the trail, it surely couldn’t be any worse than I imagined.

 

  Cavenham Heath is a diverse area of Breck heathland with dry, heather heath, patches of bracken and sand sedge. Our walk was to take us throughout the Heath taking in riverside meadows, woodland, wet woodland scrub and small areas of fen. 

On arrival it would seem I had seriously misjudged this place. 

The first  part of the trail of caches took us through woodland, and wet woodland. Despite the grey and gloomy day it proved to be a great place to explore, with trees aplenty to climb and clamber over. 

I’m happy to eat my words, this place is actually rather great.

Ok so the caches weren’t anything special, but apart from being a bit damp were in better shape than several others I’ve found recently. The kids had a fab time exploring their new surroundings, discovering fungi and navigating boggy paths.

 
  We duly collected the required info for the final cache as we went and soon arrived at the site of cache number three.

*squeaks in excitement*

 

Sadly the cache not placed inside, just very nearby. Who cares about the flipping cache though? …Let’s get inside! 

The pillbox didn’t disappoint.  A stunning structure, and a very rare thing; impeccably clean inside. 

Sorry but I was having far too much fun and forgot to take pictures inside.

 

 On with finding the cache. (Or not as the case may be.) I knew from previous logs it was a tricky little blighter so suggested that Mr Muddy set up camp with his stove and make a brew, giving me the chance to have a good look around.

 

With the team happily set up in the new  local branch of pillboxbucks 😉 I searched. 

And searched. 

I failed to find a flipping thing. 

I called in the help of a phone a friend. 

With the precise Instructions of where and what I was looking for I searched once more.

I still couldn’t find it.  Feeling somewhat glum it was time to give up, besides if you can’t find it with the help of a PAF it’s their fault right? 😉

 

The next stretch of the trail took us through the centre of the Heath, the landscape so typical of the Brecks. Thankfully back to quick and easy finds that the children could get involved with and distract them from whinging about tired legs. 😉

Then back into woodland once more, along the path an unusual discovery. 

A pile of leaves arranged in the shape of a heart. Rather apt for the day before Valentine’s. Sadly trampled by my wayward daughter as she went past. No idea where she gets it from…  😉 

  

Back across heathland as we collected up the remaining caches.  A further two pillboxes discovered. One we didn’t venture to as surrounded by a mob of sheep and the third gated up, although I suspect due to its location would otherwise be more prone to misuse. 

 

The final stretch of walk along the riverside until finally we made our way to the mystery location.  A decent sized cache in a perfectly acceptable condition. 

All in all an unexpectedly enjoyable afternoon. The lesson well and truly learned to not judge a cache until finding it. Or even not finding it. 😉