Geocaching around Fazeley Part 1

We had the urge this weekend to go out Geocaching since we haven’t been for a few weeks due to the snow. We decided it would probably be wise to stay away from field and country walks because of all the rain last night and looked for some town trails. A town up the A5 from us called Fazeley looked ideal; there is a circular walk around the town with ten Caches leading to a final mystery cache.

Geocaches camouflaged with sticks

We parked up within an estate in Fazeley quite close to the first cache, out came the phone and we made our way to the first of ten caches we had planned for today. When we arrived at Ground Zero (GZ) we gasped. We had looked at the clue for the cache and it was ‘stickoflarge’ i.e. the cache was likely to be camouflaged with sticks. The bushes in the area had recently been pruned and there were sticks EVERYWHERE! That and the amount of rubbish around meant that this was not going to be easy. Half an hour later we still had not found it and I was about ready to give up when I noticed the cache peeking out from beneath a pile of sticks... we had been looking on the wrong side of the footpath! We signed the log and moved onto the next cache which we hoped would be easier; how wrong we were.

Geocaches camouflaged with Ivy

We knew this next cache was hidden within Ivy, and had our suspicions that it would be disguised as a fake Ivy leaf. However there was at least six Ivy covered trees that could be hiding it! We focused our attentions on one particular tree but wasted so much time groping around in the Ivy...the locals must have thought we were up to something!

Eventually Angela spotted a fake Ivy leaf lying on the floor; it must have become detached from the cache itself so we began to search around for the cache and finally spotted it close to the ground. His is the Ivy leaf Geocache (the light coloured leaf in the centre of the photo):

Ivy Geocache camouflage

So far we had spent over an hour around Fazeley Geocaching and had only achieved two of the ten caches! We were about ready to call it a day and decided to go for one last cache which proved to be straight forward (a Nano cache by a lamp post). We then walked back to the car and witnessed a lovely rainbow; I bet there is a really big Geocache at the end of this rainbow.

Geocaching rainbow over Fazeley

It happens so often that Geocaching does not go to plan and in this case the first two caches of the day were possibly the hardest we have come across to date. However we look forward to returning the Fazeley area to continue the challenge!

Mick