We were up before the
lark, breakfasted and out of the house before 7am this morning.
Troops rallied and on to the motorway before 7.15am too. We were on a
mission to Essex. I've been going somewhat excessively at this
geocaching lark this last week in an attempt to complete the three
hundred finds in one calendar month challenge. And if anyone
seriously wants to achieve this, then a relatively (!) easy
way to do so is to go for a walk in Essex. The Chelmer and Blackwater
Navigation Series is a series of 112 geocaches laid out along
seventeen miles of the The Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation canal.
There is the minor
problem that the walk is in a straight line and you end up seventeen
miles from your car, but that is merely a piddling detail. The
obvious fix is to find like-minded friends and take two cars, meeting
up at one end, leaving one car there and then all driving to the
other and walking back to where you started. And that's what we did.
We arrived in Chemlsford shortly before 9am and found a cache whilst
waiting for our partners in crime, then left our car behind and set
off to the other end of the canal. We started our canal walk just
before 9.30am, and finished just before 8pm. It was a glorious day to
be out; following a canal meant that the going was very flat. The
dogs were very well behaved; it had been suggested that the distance
would be too far for the dogs. I seriously considered leaving Fudge
behind, but I knew it would be a long day and that he would rather be
with us than left at home. I watched him closely - if he showed any
signs of flagging I was going to carry him, but he did better than I
did.
Most of the caches were
easy finds; as we walked we picked up a few extra ones along the way,
including one in a multi storey car park.
As well as going for
three hundred caches in a month there was another milestone I might
hit. If we found one hundred and twenty three caches today that would
take my total found up to two thousand caches. We ended the day on
one hundred and twenty one caches; the last one of the day being the
"300 caches in one month" challenge cache.
We'd left home shortly
before 7am; we got home just after 10pm. I was rather tired, but came
home with something of a sense of achievement. Today was my most
caches in a day, longest cache walk (in distance and in time)
and I found my furthest north cache.
I need a rest now.
As always, there
are photos of the day's outing on-line
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