Heading South West for some Bank Holiday sunshine

This week our caching adventures moved from the east to the south west. Yes we’re caching in sunny Cornwall this week...well sunny with a smattering of mist at times.

Our adventures started with a quick stop at the M5 services, where we picked up two TBs. We’ll be piling on some miles during our trip and dropping them off somewhere back home in about 10 days time. 

Our first full day in Cornwall saw us bag a number of caches at the National Trust’s Penrose estate on the south coast. Beautiful gardens and some great cache hides: our favourites included negotiating some cows to retrieve a cache from a well and a multi which had us in a right muddle with kms and mins, but we got there in the end. 

We had a lovely walk along the Loe lake to Loe Bar, a fantastic coastal landform, where we spent a while collecting info for the earthcache. Unfortunately the route back was less straightforward! The coast path was closed so we had to back track quite a way, until we spotted another path heading in a westerly direction. The plan was to pick up the rest of the caches in the series, albeit further down the path we should have been on, however, what we hadn’t bargained on was the slightly rough terrain & a trip over a barb wire fence! Ouch! 
One badly slashed leg later (mine of course) we were finally able to collect the rest of the caches in this great series. As it turned out, the bonus cache alone made up for the painful leg, it really was good fun. Even though we were missing a few no.s we managed to spot the out of place object towards the end of our walk and had great fun retrieving the cache. With a nice haul of caches & two more TBs, we headed back to the holiday shack. 

The lovely warm bank holiday Monday brought more smiley faces - & I’m not just talking about the holiday makers! A trip to Britain’s most southerly point, The Lizard, saw us complete another two earthcaches and we bagged a letterbox and another TB. After admiring Trinity Lighthouse - yes the one that featured on a £2 coin not long ago -  we set off for one of my favourite Cornish spots Kynance Cove. 



Like The Lizard, parking was free thanks to the NT membership, so we were soon heading down the beach path to investigate the Serpentine, taking fastidious notes & lots of pics along the way to help with the answers to another  earthcache. It was a well timed trip as the tide was out, so for the first time ever we were able to visit the tombolo, another rare coastal feature. 



In order to get to asparagus island, we had to negotiate a small watery crossing so it was time to take off the shoes & socks again. The water was freezing, but we managed to make it across without getting too wet, that was until I dropped one of my shoes! Oops!  

Once on dry land again, I began measuring elevations & the dimensions of a large stack, for yet another earthcache, whilst the other half began exploring the nearby caves. A few minutes later he emerged shouting, “you’ve got to come & see this!” What I had to “come and see” was actually brilliant! Not one, but two lengthy arches cutting deep into the rock face. Something you rarely see in any other part of the British Isles. 

Anyway back to our caching exploits! After deciding the cache atop asparagus island was just a rock climb too far (whilst the terrain rating appealed as a much needed grid filler, I didn’t fancy breaking a leg this early on in the hols) so we headed for Poldhu. Keen to see where the first Marconi wireless transmission across the Atlantic was made, it was also a great opportunity to pick up two more caches. The monument to Marconi was an interesting spot, and the nearby cache was another fun find.


Right I’m off for a tetanus injection & to find a shoe dryer! More on our Cornish caching exploits next week. :-) 


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