Checking TR’s Trail

A week or so ago we had an email letting us know that a geocacher had been unable to find Clue 1 on my multi-cache. They also hadn’t been able to find the one at New Barn. This morning the weather was perfect so mum and I got our stuff together and off we went. Mum wasn’t sure whether it would be ‘wellies’ or ‘walking boots’ and in the end she went for the walking boots.

We parked the car and walked up to where the first clue is hidden and, guess what, yup, it was right where we’d left it when we checked the trail in October before the winter set in. We’d come all this way so we carried on to check the all the others were still where we’d left them. No 2 was present and correct.

Next there was a small obstacle to get past… well, mum decided to walk round it but I thought I’d take a dip.

It was absolutely fabulous… cool and refreshing… I hoochied down and got myself properly wet.

It’s quite a big puddle, not quite a lake, but a massive puddle. It would be nice if it was there in the summer but it never is.

Clue No 3 was a little bit wedged into its hiding place so mum loosened it a bit before we carried on. We’d not actually looked at this one back in October because a nice farmer had opened the gate for us so we didn’t like to lurk around waiting for him to leave!

This next picture is the view from near No 4.

We’re now into the woods proper and here I am on the trail to No 5.

This will be a sea of bluebells in a couple of weeks time so we might come back again then. Meanwhile, there’s been a change in the bridleway route so we decided not to go on up to TRs Secret Rendezvous and used the new bridleway to see what it was like.

Before we set off we looked back towards Clue No 5.

Then off we went, over the horse jump and off through the woods.

This is the new bridleway, another sea of bluebells… it’s soon going to be really pretty.

There are lots of bird feeders so there were lots of good sniffs for me to check out.

Not to mention some puddles to cool off in… er, okay, wee in. Look, it’s a girl thing, I just can’t resist weeing in puddles!

I resisted this one though!

And here we are back on the regular bit of footpath.

There are lots of lovely old ancient trees here with huge trunks and loads of branches that would be great to climb.. for humans, not dogs.

We stopped to look at the view for a while…

And then we surveyed the puddles and mud. Mum reckons the mud score is probably a 5/10 or possibly a 6/10. There are only a few very muddy sections and all of them are passable round the edges with care. BOL ‘care’ is optional but if you don’t want to watch your step then make sure you have someone ready with a camera for when you fall in.

Clue 6 was present and correct too. So, off we went to check on ‘The Singing Post’… one of my extra caches to make the trail a bit more exciting for geocachers who don’t like long walks without caches.

It was fine… the snail colony were still living in the old plastic camo bag. I wonder why snails like living in plastic bags? There wasn’t any breeze so we didn’t get to hear the post singing when we passed by but we saw a log from a cacher that came up this morning and they said they heard it singing.

The weather was almost scorchio so I took a dip in this old water trough – lovely green water that makes me look like I’m covered in camouflage slime when I climb out!

And here we are back in Muston Lane… just like the good old days when we used to live in Winterborne Kingston and walked this walk most days.

It wasn’t at all muddy because there was a tree across the footpath… fine for mum and me to get by but not for horses and its the horses that churn up the footpaths with their great big hooves.

We took a bit of a detour to nip up to Hill Barn cache which couldn’t be found anywhere so we hid a new container and log sheet under a nice rustic piece of concrete. We also checked on the New Barn cache and Bingo’s Big One.

Look who we bumped into! It was my old pal Barney!! I haven’t seen him in ages and he was out walking with his neighbour a black lab. I remember having bonkers walks with Barney when I was a puppy and he was about 2. Such happy muddy memories!

Here we all are, almost back at my transport. Barney hasn’t changed much, but he’s got a few grey whiskers on his chin now… a bit like me!

That’s it for now… I’ve got a very belated ‘taste test’ blog to do and will put paws to keyboard very soon… they’re like buses. No posts for weeks and weeks and then a whole bunch at once.

 

~ by Dolly on March 25, 2016.