Geocaching is Great!!

Tonight we found two caches!! We had decided to go back to Anderson to find the cache that we missed last night, but to make it a longer walk we went to do another one at Winterborne Zelston Church. So, we started off by walking the same way as we walked last night and then just past where we saw the cows, we turned left to walk up this lane.

This is the lane to Zelston

It’s not actually a road to anywhere, it just goes up to the farm.

Looking up towards Wahn Fried on the main road

It was a lovely evening.. clear blue skies and very warm at 24 degrees C. We soon got to the end of the lane and were at the farm yard.

Almost at the farm buildings

I wonder which way we have to go now.. we’ll have to look for the little footpath signs. Ah.. what’s that on the gate I can see..

Good job dad spotted the arrow!!

Hard to see isn’t it. So we knew to turn right, so off we went. Down through the farm yard.

Down the track we go.. what's that at the end?

We had to turn left when we got to the end but first we stopped to say hello to a whole herd of young heifers, they were quite frisky and rushed over to say hello to us!!

Such cute young cows!!

They were mighty noisy though!! You’d think young cows would make small moos but they made great big grown up moos!!

Nearly at Zelston!

From here we just had a little way to go to the village and then we were at the Church.

Winterborne Zelston Church

We had to go in to find a gravestone so that we could work out the clue… which was the coordinates to where we could find the cache!!  We walked around the graveyard and found the headstone we needed.. and worked out the answer.

In the evening sun..

Then we were off to find the cache and it was spot on! We used the Garmin GPS to tell us where the “spot” was and we found it!!

Me with the Cache... isn't it tiny!!

It was in a film cannister and didn’t take long to find.. it was a bit close to an ants nest though, and some of the little critters got in my paws and made me wriggle about a bit! So, after that we headed off for home but stopped off at Anderson Church, where we’d been last night, and we managed to find the cache there quite quickly!

Hello... I wonder if he/she knows Bartleby

We called in at the pub on our way home and my friend Rhubarb was there. He’s a very handsome labrador.

Rhubarb

Our favourite landlady, Jan, gave us both a stick of tripe to eat… and then it was time to go home.

Waiting for a tripe stick

Such a fun evening.. I hope we go geocaching again soon.

My first time geocaching!!

One of my twitter friends is a human with a dog called Stella and she often tweets about going geocaching. So, today mum looked up the geocaching website and registered me – there are 197 within a 10 mile radius of my house!! Wow, that’s absolutely loads! Tonight we went out to find the two nearest our house.

On our way to Tomson Church

The first one was at the church at Tomson, only a mile down the road so we didn’t really need our Garmin GPS gadget but mum needed to learn how to use it, so we followed our path all the way there. This is on a stretch of footpath that we hadn’t walked on before.

Almost at the track to Tomson

Not only hadn’t we walked on the footpath before, we also hadn’t met this particular herd of cows before either! So once we got through the kissing gate we stopped to say hello. They were all wearing very trendy necklaces.

Hello Girls!! Moooooo Mooooo

From here we just had to walk down the lane and through the farmyard.. we’re not actually sure if you’re supposed to walk through the farmyard but it was only a short distance so we did and then climbed over the gate. Well, I went under the gate because I’m only short.

Me by the gate at Tomson Church

And here I am waiting to go through the gate so we can look round the church!

Tomson Church

Isn’t it cute? We walked round the back of it and found lots of young cows.

Just at the back of the church

They were a bit shy and we didn’t like to disturb them so we kept quiet, but they still all ran off into their sleeping area. And then, finally, it was time to go into the church!

Inside the church

There was a lovely old organ in there too – we just opened the lid to take a photograph and put it back down before we left.

The organ

Mummy is a bit funny when it comes to having things in number order or in straight lines.. and she had to straighten up the candles on the altar because they were all wonky and even the cross was all lopsided. Like when she hangs out washing on the line each thing has to have only 1 colour of clothes peg holding it up. How weird is that?

The Altar

Now, I don’t think it will hurt if we show a picture of the cache – it was our very first one and it was a very exciting moment! As we haven’t done it before we just looked at it which we now know is “TNLN” (took nothing left nothing) and we could add SL which means signed logbook.

Our first Cache!!

So, that was our first attempt at geocaching! On the way home we went to Anderson Church which is another local one – but we couldn’t find the cache so we’re going to go back again and have another go tomorrow. We hadn’t realised that the coordinates are the exact location of the cache, we just thought they were the location of the place where we had to look. See… mum should have read the instructions before we left the house!

Anderson Church

We walked back home across the fields where they’ve been harvesting oats. The straw is all in rows in the field and I had loads of fun sticking my head in the piles.

I've been rummaging in the piles of straw

We’re going to have to keep our eyes open for the big scary combines, but it won’t be long now before we can play hoopy in the fields again! Fields of wheat and barley are fun to run in but I miss playing hoopy.

I think I’m going to like going geocaching!