England 221024 – 221031 Part II

This is the second short posting. They are short as I didn’t take too many photos this time.

WGW
Another abbreviation. Saturday was spent geocaching with with my other brother and his wife. They are the active geocachers known as zelger. WGW stands for Westridge Green Wander as the trail is located close to Westridge Green which is just to the west of Reading. My brother arranges geocaching days out for a group of geocachers and they have done most of the trails in the area. This one had been put to one side as parking for several cars, which was their usual need, wasn’t available. We were just using one car so parking wasn’t a problem.

WGW trail before our visit

The trail was characterised by being mostly on tree edged paths between fields with dozens of pheasants flyng around or sitting on the nearby fields. Most of the caches were film canisters stuck in logs placed on the ground. Water is the enemy of caches placed on the ground of course so quite a few of the log strips were damp. The trail ended with a Wherigo with codes being found in the trads along the route. Of course I forget to note any codes so we didn’t get to find the Wherigo

Team Zelger logging a WGW cache

WGW path

WGW Log – literally

WGW Holly berries

We were pleased that we were able to find all the caches on the trail. The story would be slightly different in the afternoon.

WGW trail after our visit

One of many large trees on the trail

The pub we ate lunch in

YAB
After a great lunch at the local hostelry we decided to do the YAB trail. There are two trails close to each other and zelger had done one of them and a couple of the caches we were to visit today. In this case YAB is Yattendon to Ashampstead and Back.

YAB trail before our visit

Again, we were on wooded paths between fields although there were a couple of small woods on this trail and a couple of multis to break the trend of just trads. One cache was definitely gone and is now disabled and I suspect that the second multi has also lost it’s container. We didn’t find the first mult which was a shame and I didn’t find the final trad YAB #12 The Sports Field. Zelger had gone back to the car as they found this on their previous outing so I was a bit naffed at that. Nonetheless nineteen finds out of 23 is quite OK.

YAB trail cache logged by zelger

YAB trail after our visit

Staines Moor
As I was flying home from Gatwick airport we planned to do two trails at Staines which is on the way to the airport. As it turned out the time taken to go round the first trail was far longer than expected due to the problems we had finding the caches so the second trail was not attempted.
Staines Moor 16 was close to where we parked the car so we started with that one. The multi Staines Moor 2 was based ona lovely mural under the railway fun but we didn’t find the cache. The next multi Staines Moor 3a – Trident was based on a commemorative plaque for an air accident that we both remember.

Commemorative plaque for 1972 Trident crash

I suspect that five years of growing vegetation was the main reason we didn’t do so well. The undergrowth was thick with brambles which are no fun to force your way through.

Staines Moor cache logged by zelger

At least we discovered that there had been an old railway running along the edge of the western side of the moor, parallel to the current M25 motorway.

Staines and West Drayton Railway bridge. No cache though.

Staines and West Drayton Railway information board

After returning to the car and arriving at the oub for lunch an hour later than planned we checked the status of our morning out. Of the fifteen caches we attempted seven were DNF’s. It doesn’t happen so often that a trail is so unsuccessful but it does happen.

Staines Moor trail after our visit

Due to time restraints I left after lunch for the airport and my brother returned home.

Clerkenwell London EC1

My last visit to England was in April but I had no opportunities for geocaching. This visit was made in order to participate in GC75FTF WINTER GEOLYMPIX: ASHRIDGE 2018. As it is about an hours drive from where my brother lives it was a great opportunity to catch up with family and make a couple of small geocaching outings.

On Wednesday both my brothers, one with his wife and one of the daughters in tow descended on Kings Cross station for a wander around the nearby area of Clerkenwell using the CAMRA Guide to real ale pubs in London as our starting point.

As we were starting our wander at Kings Cross Station it was only natural that we should visit Platform 9 ¾. There was a long queue of Harry Potter fans waiting to have their photos taken with wand in hand. I sidestepped the queue and took my selfie from the side then moved on.

Platform 9 3/4

From here we walked north to the Regent Canal and the new gasholder apartments that have been built. The whole area was industrial wasteland for a long time but is now a super trendy and extremely expensive place to live. A penthouse apartment was on the market for £7 million!

A lock on Regent Canal

Expensive gasholder apartments

We followed the canal eastwards aiming for the first pub on our list. Along the canal bank we found Narrow Minded which both zelger (my brother and wife geocaching team) and I gave favourite points to due to it’s construction and placement. I won’t post a spolier photo.

After finding the cache GC3Y2QD Calthorpe at the gates of a small park we wandered on to the next corner and the Calthorpe Arms. Lunch was great value in this pub as was the quality of the beer.

Calthorpe Arms

From there we passed through a couple more pubs where real ale was served before walking down the pleasant street Exmoouth Market with small ethnic shops, stalls and cafes arriving via a short stop at the Exmouth Arms, at Bone House in Spa Field Park just as a police drugs bust was going on.

As zelger really enjoy multis we decided to try The Smoothe Field Mystery and spent an hour or so visiting 7 waypoints before arriving at the cache. As we were also sightseeing it was a great way to see parts of Clerkenwell that we would otherwise have missed.

For example, at step 4 we found this bed of nails and behind it a colourful wall mural. The spike were painless according to my youngest brother who tried it out.

Resting on a bed of nails

Decorative ironwork at Smithfield Market

An alien in London

Another alien in London

I found the alien mosaics fascinating and it seems that they are a very common sight in Paris but can be found all over the world. I recall seeing one on an earlier occasion but don’t remember where.

Near to the starting spot for the multi was a virtual from 2001 that we just had to visit. A Meating place for Martyrs. Yes, the spelling is correct as it is close to the Smithfield meat market.

We were now happy with our day in London and headed for the nearby Farringdon tube station to start our journey back out of London.

Heritage Power Trail – Isle of Man

Isle of Man flag

The last time I visited the Isle of Man was in 1964 and the railways were still in operation. Fast forward to 2016 and I had the notion that I would like to revisit the island and add another geocaching country to my list. I mentioned this to my brother who is half of team “zelger” and he said that this would be a great opportunity for a “lads reunion”. Anyway, time passed and nothing materialised due to everyone having commitments. Finally, in March 2017 I raised the idea again and booked my tickets for Easter 2017. Half of zelger decided that this was not an opportunity to be missed and booked tickets too.

The aim of the trip was twofold. Walk the Heritage Power Trail in a day and spend a day of nostalgia on the electric trams and steam trains on a second day. While we were at it I threw in a geocaching event so we could meet some of the local geocachers. A friendly bunch they were too. The event was Meet a Swede, which isn’t quite a lie as I have dual nationality. Teamkiisseli from Finland were relieved that they were able to speak English not Swedish and didn’t need to discuss ice-hockey.

The Heritage Power Trail crosses the Isle of Man from Douglas in the east to Peel in the west. There are other trails as well but this one seemed to be the definite trail and also gave us the chance to brag that we had walked across the island. After a hearty but early breakfast at our hotel we made our way through Douglas to the start of the trail. Well actually, the end of the trail. Number 1 is in Peel and the last one, number 79 is in Douglas. I had been watching the weather forecast for a few days and it seemed as though we may be in for a wet day. Apart from some light rain early on we had no problems. The sky remained cloudy most of the day but cleared up for a while in the afternoon. There were several information boards along the trail. This was close to Douglas.

Steam Heritage Trail – Douglas to Peel

Our walk together with lunch and a couple of other diversions took all day but was worth it as it gave a nice string of smilies right across the island.

Heritage Power Trail – done in a day!

The majority of the caches were micros, either film canisters placed in nifty little wire baskets on trees and fence post or PET preforms. A few of the caches were larger, notably the TB hotel, the letterbox and the bonus cache.

Bonus cache

Of course, as the trail follows a disused railway line there are no really tough gradients. I think that the highest point we reached was 49 m asl. There were various remains from the days of the active railway, amongst them a couple of rusty bridges like this one.

A rail bridge across a river

The old station at Union Mills has gone along with all the track but there are details available on line for those interested.

Maps of the trail at Union Mills

Historical railway crane at Union Mill

After the third run of micros it was great to find the TB hotel. There was a TB in the box that we picked up and took with us along the trail.

zelger extracting a TB from the trail’s TB hotel

Even though it was overcast and only about 8 degrees C spring was still well on it’s way and there were flowers of all kinds along the trail. These were just some of them.

Plenty of flowers along the trail

Needless to say we were pleased to get to HPT #24 at Tynwald Hill so that we could get lunch. We got there a couple of hours later than expected but a couple of pints of beer to replenish our fluids and a hearty Manx cheese sandwich put us back in good spirits. I had originally planned to find a handful of caches at Tynwald Hill but decided to skip them as we were running late. Tynwald is also the name of the legislature for the island of Ellan Vannin (Isle of Man).

Tynwald Hill – of historic significance for Ellan Vannin (Isle of Man)

As we neared Peel the track followed the River Neb and the scenery changed somewhat. There was plenty of bird life including this heron.

Heron and mill wheel

Heron

After the intial difficulty we had finding HPT #76 the rest of the caches were easily found, until we got to Peel that is. HPT #2 was located at a sign but we couldn’t see anything. As we were searching we heard a voice. “Are you looking for the geocache? It’s in the …” It was a local guy getting something out of a nearby parked car. He saved our day. He had probably given the same hint to others before us too.

Peel Harbour

As we arrived at Peel Harbour we just had HPT #1 to find and that was a nano under a bench. Of course there were four people sitting there but we HAD to find that cache so we told them what we were doing and suddenly there were six people on their hands and knees searching for the cache. We found it after a rather long search much to our relief. All that remained was to get the bus back to Douglas. We had to wait an hour as it was Easter Monday and the busses were not running the regular weekday service. Once on the bus we were back in Douglas ready for dinner in just over half an hour.