Bears, caves & a puzzling predicament!

As the bank holiday drew to an end,  so did the Cornish mist, but not before we discovered a fascinating earthcache at Holywell Bay. 

We could barely see the sea as we walked along the beach at low tide to St Cuthbert’s Cave. The mist was really rolling in! Upon arrival we found a couple of groups already exploring the cave - all non cachers - who were very chatty and helpful in guiding us up the slippery rocks to investigate the wonders of the cave. It was a little like being in one of the wonderful caves at Cheddar Gorge or Wookey Hole, but on a slightly smaller scale. We certainly never expected to see such a natural wonder in a Cornish sea cave. It was beautiful and something we would not have seen without caching! A great earthcache that we highly recommend to others.  

As things brightened up in the north we headed for Newquay and redeemed ourselves by turning a couple of previous dnfs on Pentire headland into smileys! We definitely pay less attention to the gps these days and go with the “where would I hide it” approach. Some great hides in some precarious locations, but always good to get our terrain ratings up - cliffs are in short supply at home!  

   

A couple of days later we headed to the pretty town of Padstow for some shopping in the gift shops and...yes you’ve guessed it a few more caches. After purchasing an oversized teddy bear (just don’t ask!) we decided to follow the trail along the bay and hunt out the caches on the headland. It was a slightly longer walk than we had planned and in hindsight we should have dropped the bear back at the car, as the headland was quite blustery, but two caches made the walk and wind worth it.

The first was ‘NCI - Stepper Point’. Whilst hunting around the National Coast Watch Institutions lookout for the cache, a lovely old chap popped out to greet us. He took us a bit by surprise and we were worried we’d been muggled but he knew exactly what we were doing and in a slightly mysterious way guided us to the correct section of wall and told us to look under a couple of pieces of wood. There the Tupperware box sat, located just outside the lookout door. I think it’s probably impossible to do it without being muggled by one of the NCI Volunteers!  

Next we headed to The Tower, an old tin mine chimney that has been  preserved. You can wander inside and look up at the wooden structure that holds the impressive tall tower in place. After a few snaps we headed down the grassy cliff and made our next find, under a little rocky outcrop. We then had to make a speedy trip back to Padstow before the parking ticket ran out, but I just had enough time to grab another cache magnetically attached to a beautiful old pump on the outskirts of the town.  

Our trip wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to another tourist honeypot Marizon on the south coast and the stunning St Michael’s Mount! We’d been here many times before but had only grabbed a couple of caches previously.    

This time, whilst the other half went on the hunt for a mobile phone case at the nearby superstores, I decided to walk along the bay collecting caches in the Ford Sen Myghal series. Soon after setting off I met a fellow cacher who pointed out one of the trickier hides (a big thanks to him) and I narrowly escaped being hit by the rather runny contents of a seagull’s stomach! Fortunately he missed leaving me to find some great hides unscathed. I racked up about 15 caches in an hour & will definitely return to find the rest in this series, which weaves its way all the way up to St Ives. 

We also visited a part of the Cornish coast we’d not previously explored, thanks to an earthcache and one of the new virtual caches. Parking up at the NT car park at Rinsey we set off to explore and discover two fantastic mines Wheal Prosper & Wheal Trewavas - the later apparently featured in the original TV series of Poldark. Sadly no sign of Ross Poldark or his horse during our trip, but the mine buildings & the Camel’s Head rock were incredibly interesting. 

The rain had finally arrived so what better way to spend the afternoon than at Truro’s fabulous cathedral. We spent a while here collecting information for a multi cache, which really ensured we took note of some of the building’s most interesting features. 

We finished our Truro trip with a Wherigo - the dreaded difficulty 5 play anywhere ‘Pub Quiz’ Wherigo! It certainly deserves its 5 star rating. Night after night we spent trying to answer the 200 quiz questions, & the penultimate sci fi round nearly finished us off, but we made it through, just about saving enough mobile data to actually go & find the final cache. Great fun - Wherigos are definitely my favourite type of cache. The other half isn’t so keen after this one!

We rounded off our trip with visits to Watergate Bay & Tehidy Country Park. Again locations we hadn’t explored before. Some of the cliff top caches at Watergate Bay nearly took our breath away as we climbed down the cliffs to retrieve them. I actually bottled out of going for one, just a bit to scary for even me!  

But I’ll end this week’s blog on a high...not on a cliff top...but with my favourite cache of the trip the Wherigo ‘A Puzzling Predicament’ at Tehidy. Based on the age old brain teaser, the chicken, fox and grain, this brilliant Wherigo had us making numerous trips around a lake to get a virtual Fox, Squirrel and a Nut to the other side without one of them eating another. I think we probably caused a bit of interest from other park visitors as we marched back and forth as fast as possible, but who cares, it was such good fun and we managed to get each move correct first time.

That’s it from us in Cornwall, but no doubt there’ll be more caching tales from more familiar turf next week.