Geocaching marathon – Bruntingthorpe parish ramble

Ok, the weekend didn’t start too brilliantly. On the Saturday we decided to do a series of caches around Broughton Astley. We entered the second field and were immediately charged by a group of Cows; hearts pounding we managed to cross the field and shut the gate behind us just in time. There was a 10ft gap followed by another gate which led into another cow field; these cows also came running over to us and we were now hemmed in by two groups of cows who were not moving. We had to climb over several sets of barbed wire fences (over which I managed to rip my trousers between the legs) and bypassed the fields. This has now given us a serious phobia for certain types of cows and we now plan our routes a little more carefully!

Bruntingthorpe Parish Ramble

We wanted a full day out Geocaching on Sunday, so after a lot of careful planning (reading previous cache logs to make sure there were no cows), we decided to do the Bruntingthorpe parish ramble. This was going to be quite a Geocaching marathon for us since it is a 7 mile circular route with 31 caches and took us about 6 hours to complete; I am very proud of my little boy who didn’t moan once while we walked it and it was quite a hot day too. The route started at a lovely village called Arnesby and passed through the equally beautiful villages of Shearsby, Bruntingthorpe and Peatling Magna.

Unusual Cache Containers

With over 30 Geocaches to find on this marathon we would inevitably find some very unusual cache containers. The first unusual container we came across was this water drain cover. This had us scratching our heads for ages and then Angela picked it up from within some long grass and there it was hidden underneath.

Water drain cover cache container

And this Geocache was hidden within a mobile phone case that was placed within a tree!

Mobile phone geocache

We had never searched for Geocaches within a churchyard before so this was another first; this cache was hidden behind a gravestone that was propped up against the church wall.

Churchyard Geocaching - Cache behind a gravestone

We finished the round trip by returning to the village of Arnesby. The village has a lovely privately owned windmill that we could see for much of the route.

Arnesby windmill

And the last cache of the day was located within an old red telephone box that had been converted into a book swap for the village.

Old red telephone box geocache

What a great day we had around Bruntingthorpe and we got back to a well earned rest.

Mick