Walberton - Geocache

We headed out to Walberton at lunch time so that we could try out the local pub. We had planned a lot of caches today so needed to fill our bellies! Walberton is a village in West Sussex; it only contains three Traditional caches and one Mystery. The only pub in the village is The Holly Tree. 

The outside is very charming and if you plan on stopping for something to eat while caching here (despite there not being many) this is well worth a visit. 

 I actually remembered to take a picture of the food this time! My pie was FULL of steak and not just small pieces of beef; these were big chunks cooked so nicely. Lewis' burger was pretty big and you could tell it was handmade fresh purely because of the shape and size. Really nice food and average pub pricing. My Steak and Ale pie was £11 and I think the fish and chips were the same price. Lewis burger was around £11 too. Staff were very friendly so I recommend stopping by for lunch or dinner.

On to caching! 

Piggy Cache

We parked in the village community hall's car park, free to do. The first cache was about 650 meters away from the car park located in some fields. The day was quite warm for a British Winter but quite muddy too. The first cache was very easy to spot, it's a larger ammo box full of all sorts! Great cache for kids.

 Doesn't Lew look lovely? 😎

Roman Villa - Walberton

Of course Lewis would pick a cache that was Roman related, you can see that the site of the Villa is very open; with a view far and wide all the way round. With Roman buildings the idea was to be on open plain or a site where you had a vantage point to the surrounding area. if I have Listened to Lewis correctly it was key that you could see all around you in case of attack, they couldn't sneak up on you!

You can see a lot of flint as you walk along the field as well as newer grass were recent trenches for excavating had been. Walking towards the cache Lewis picked up a piece of Roman tile (most likely roof); you can tell it's Roman because the clay isn't baked red all the way through. 

Upon approaching the tree you had to explore it to find the cache, It's attached to some string so it's required to dig your hand inside and pull it out. Favourite point for sure.

Church Micro 871 St. Mary's, Binsted.

Continuing along the path you reach a nice steep hill with a church at the top! The cache is located just outside the church grounds, and is the smallest cache in this village. It was a easy find and surprisingly nice and dry. This cache does take you through a golf course so keep your eyes open for an over head balls!

After this cache you can head back the same way and easily follow the roads back to the car park. I once again forgot to reset the GPS but we were most likely walking for 1.5-2 hours. I calculated 2.08 miles but that's with straight lines unlike the paths actually traveled being quite windy and around fields. By this time my FitBit was around 6400 steps at a guess. 

We did then travel to Firmile Bottom in Arundel which we planned to collect 2 series but as it was getting dark we collected 2 caches of one series that were far out and plan on the rest of the series another Saturday!

The Return, Chichester PART 2 - Geocache

Video of the cache.
Me and Lewis finally got around to finishing the last half of the series in Dell Quay-Chichester! The original plan was to eat lunch at the pub, Crown and Anchor, and then cache afterwards. How it actually turned out was we ate lunch outside and then literally as we started to walk the heavens opened and it chucked it down. So we did the caches to following day (without lunch). As far as the pub goes for food, it's great. It is a little costly compared to other pub lunches but you are paying for the location too. I had the fish and chips (costing £14) and the fish was cooked to perfection although I didn't enjoy the mushy peas mixed with mint. Lewis ordered a burger with cheese and bacon coming in at £12. The menu isn't massive (around 6 mains) but it's very nice to sit in the sun and enjoy a lunch. 

Our view eating lunch!

Back to geocaching! 

The Return 10

This cache took longer to find than it should have because the hint had some confusing extra info "Right hand side of path in 'V' of tree head height. ICT opposite "path" to defences edge ('X' marks the spot although not buried)." The cache was just simply in a tree but I still have no idea what the rest of the hint meant and we spent some time trying to figure out what ICT means in Caching slang..

The Return 11

Upon arriving at GZ we had a brief explore for this cache but were soon cut short after a couple came and literally sat about 30 meters away from the location. We didn't want to look too suspicious so carried on and found this one on the way back!

The Return 12

A simple find if you know what part of the edge to look over, I'd say it's relatively obvious from past people pushing back the plants! 

The Return 13

Lewis went down off of the path to find this one, although it's not as low down as you'd first assume. Sometimes I think we over complicate caches..

The Return 14

This cache is very well blended in, we spent a couple of minutes looking all around two posts. We assumed it would be at the base but the cache is actually hidden within ivy along the top!

Inside we found a trackable! FarmtagZ 2015 hasn't been traveling for very long but it started in Bretagne, France. It's only been in 4 caches and was exchanged at a meet and greet, quite a lucky trackable to get from France and England so quickly!

Number 15 in this series is a church mirco and after a previous attempt at a church micro between 11-12 we decided to just skip it out and come back another time to do both church mircos in one.

What Ammo Box

I found this cache without Lewis telling me when we were there, the entrance to the cache is obvious, too obvious that it makes me wonder how exploring kids and such haven't found this! It has a lot of swaps inside and now counts as our second ammo box! 

The Return 16

I'm not really sure why the series ran through the countryside and left the last one in a public place. It does return you back into Chichester but it's located at quite a high muggle area and if you're lurking around the tree you look awfully suspicious! The tree itself is right next to the Tesco Extra walkway so many people shopping walk past here. Luckily it was a Sunday and close to closing time so their weren't too many people passing by. We stopped for some refreshments to take on our journey back!

Big Green Ugly Thing

This last cache was so close by it wasn't worth leaving! It's found by the overpass to the train tracks and although I haven't got a picture of the big green ugly thing, it is in the video if you want to see it. This cache was a feely job rather than a seeing but it didn't take too long! Just have to be careful for muggles as they walk past to get over the tracks. 

The journey itself took us around 3.5 hours to walk there and back (forgot to reset GPS so just estimating) the total distance we walked (including off track of the series to get a church micro) was 3.84 miles - 6.1 km. We arrived about half 1 and got back home at half 5. It didn't seem like a long walk but it was quite warm! I guess we can't say we've finished this series as we have the church micro to do but for now we've done 99%! All the caches part of the series were small so easily fit trackables in and luckily enough for us we bagged another trackable!

Boxgrove and Our Trackable

I recently bought Lewis his own trackable, it's an imitation of Indian Jones on a silver coin featuring "Cacher Jones". The main quest of the coin is to travel to Rome as that is were we first went on holiday together. I also set a smaller quest for it to just travel to other archaeological sites around the world (mainly the UK). I set these adventures because as some people may know Lewis is an archaeologist and loves anything Roman and Iron Age related. I just got lucky with the coin being Cacher Jones as he was also Lewis' inspiration to become an archaeologist. Our idea for the trackable is to get people more involved with history and perhaps get people to take it to places in which they'd learn something new!

Anyway onto the cache Boxgrove Man!

While heading for the cache we saw this little sight of two mini lops outside in a cage and this border collie just staring at them, the dog didn't take its eyes off of them!

When approching the cache you have to walk through farmers crops but in the distance the start of a small woodland area, the clearing is slightly visable with people walking the grass down. 

Once you have had a fight with nature to get inside the woodland area you can discover the cache!

A large ammo box, which is our first ammo box, with lots of swaps inside and a nice big log! As usual there is some random rubbish in there that annoys me that people seem to think caches are a dumping ground for rubbish or things they couldn't be bothered to carry or dispose off! Nonetheless it has lots of geocachers cards inside!

Lewis chose this cache because of its location and historical meaning, it's a famous stone age human remains site dated at around 480,000 years old. You can read more about the site itself if you find the cache! We put in our trackable with fingers crossed that it makes a successful journey.

We explored around the area to try and find the actual site in which the remains were found. Currently it's a large quarry barricaded all the way around and there are actually signs saying "Keep Out"..but telling an archaeologist to keep out isn't really going to work and seeing as it was a bank holiday we knew we'd be alright!

Lew is gazing upon what he wished he'd discovered.. ;)

Heading back we saw that the little dog was still sitting with the rabbits watching over them! Bless!

So our trackable is off out in the world and hopefully leads a successful adventure, I will continue to write up where it goes and if it goes anywhere of historical interest. The cache itself is easy to find although prepare for nettles and stingers. It's a nice walk and can extend further onto another historical site "Devil's Ditch".