A select band of club members (Jane, Kim, Nick and Ruth) were planning to go for a walk on Easter Monday. With one of the crew recently discovering the delights of geocaching, a route was decided on that gave the opportunity for a few good searches. Geocaching involves hunting down ‘caches’ that are hidden throughout the world, through the aid of GPS and sometimes a clue (http://www.geocaching.com/).
We headed to our start point in Aldington (after getting lost on the main road to Ashford, this did not bode well). Our first destination was a little off route into a nearby wood, the search for the cache was a little tricky, however Nick came up trumps by reaching into the darkest depths and we had our first find. Everyone was now hooked, and we set off to the next point. My mind was becoming a little confused following the walk directions (cross a stile, go down the left of the field, cross a stile, go to the right of the field, etc…) and I thought I was seeing things when we came across a vintage car tipped down a hole in the middle of the field, after a little investigation by Nick, we headed off again.
After about 3 miles we reached the military canal (at least I knew where the route was going now), there were a good few caches to look for here and they were all found easily, one even involved searching out a few ‘creepy crawlies’.
As time was ticking by we decided to take the short cut back to the car, making the walk about 8 miles rather than 11.5. We attempted an unsuccessful search for a cache on the way back, but accidently ended up in someone’s garden, oops!
On reaching the end of the walk, we stopped off in the pub for a well earned drink and
looked at the map to see if there were any opportunities to do a few searches on the drive back. So on route back to Icklesham we went to look at Bilsington Church and Obelisk, we would never have stopped here if it wasn’t for geocaching!
Well, a beautiful walk, in good company, 8 geocaches ticked off, what a great day!!!
Jane (photos courtesy of Nick)
P.S. Some of the detail of the walk has been missed off, as there would have been too many ‘spoilers’ for the geocachers out there!