Toad, Mole, Ratty & Badger...bringing The Wind & The Willows to life!

So we’ve been teasing you for a few weeks about our brand new trail and finally this week we hit the submit button on 37 brand new caches. 

Based on the much loved children’s classic The Wind in the Willows (WITW) the trail takes you from Toad’s caravanning adventures on the Open Road, to Ratty & Mole’s boating adventures along the River Bank, to Badger’s House in the Wild Wood, to Toad’s escape from gaol and finishes with the battle to reclaim Toad Hall.

A few cachers who have visited it already have described it as ‘epic’...they have no idea! It really has been about a year in the planning...

Summer 2017: Following the success and popularity of our ‘A not so fishy trail’ we wanted to create a new geocache series that brought one of my favourite books to life - ‘The Wind in the Willows’. We also wanted cachers to be able to see the beautiful local landscape and wildlife, from the River Lark, to Mildenhall Forest to the open dusty byways and heathland of Icklingham. 

After planning the route we began mapping out the co-ordinates that would provide some good and varied hiding spots for a variety of caches, large and small.

To our surprise, the whole trail was pretty quiet. On most of our visits we barely met a muggle, which boded well for the life expectancy of the series. The only place where we did meet a few muggles was in the woodland near the lay-by. Sadly most didn’t seem to be there to enjoy the wildlife, but to use the area as a toilet facility! We even saw one chap take down his trousers and begin squatting for a no.2!! We hope all the new caching visitors will help deter this type of unwanted activity in such a beautiful woodland.

Winter 2017: Holed up indoors in the warm we began making the caches. Well the other half did! A carpenter by trade, he has often seen a bespoke cache on one of our caching adventures and commented on how he could make that! Well it was time to put his money where his mouth was! 

Whilst I had the fun job of scouring the shelves of the pound shops and other discount stores, for suitable log containers and items that might make some interesting puzzles, he set about turning them and other objects around the house into the actual caches that would help tell the story.  

Some put his skills to the test, others destroyed his drill bits, and another gave the cat brown paws after she walked across the newly painted surface...! But eventually we had a good number of custom caches to place on the trail - from Badgers Door, to Alfred the Horse, to Toad’s car and a pretty toadstool. 

Spring 2018: We began setting the trail in four stages, as there were just too many caches to carry and some, including the two logs and the final “..The End” box were heavy and bulky to carry.  

All was going well, in the woodland and open road, but we’d left the river bank until last. I’d realised quite early on that the trail could pose a few potential problems in that it crosses several conservation areas including the stretch in the forest and along the river bank. 

Whilst the Forestry Commission’s East of England Agreement covered caches placed in the woodland, providing we stuck to their guidelines, we knew we needed permission to place any caches on the river bank SAC. Thanks to the help of Natural England we managed to track down the landowner but sadly it just wasn’t possible to get permission. 

This came as a bit of a blow and held up publication of the trail for nearly 2 months, until we could work out how to still tell the story minus 8 caches! Plus the awkward issue of a huge 1.5km gap in the trail that might deter some cachers.

As so much work had been done, we decided the only work around was to incorporate a multi and a mystery that could help cover the gap, and be grabbed later along the trail via a diversion.

  

Summer 2018: Finally, we were back out to place the river bank caches, but almost 2 months on and what had been a sparsely vegetated bank was now neck high in nettles! I honestly couldn’t believe the change. So many of our potential cache sites were pretty much inaccessible and with hindsight I really don’t think any cacher, no matter how keen, would have thanked us for making them wade in and out of that for 2.5kms! Fortunately we managed to find a few locations on the non SAC bank that were more accessible and only required a minor battle with the nettles.

It was a huge relief to finally place cache no.37 and return home to start hitting send on each cache page. In no time at all we began receiving a few reviewer queries and after resolving a few rather daft school boy errors, the caches finally went live!

The following day I began getting messages from CaptSlogg who were out on the FTF quest! As pioneers they had the unenviable job of battling the vegetation around the trail and were apparently in shorts...ouch! Between them and other local cachers KateP78, Palmer28, and DanSpurs14 all 37 caches had been found by the end of day one. Including “...the end” with the Signal the Frog FTF geocoin going to the much deserved CaptSlogg. 

We would like to say a very big thank you to our local reviewer ChurchWarden for his help in getting the series published despite our silly schoolboy errors. 

We would also like to thank the pioneer cachers who headed out to grab the FTFs and were faced with a sea of nettles at many of the GZs. Plus thank you to them and all the other cachers who have visited the trail over the past week and have posted some lovely comments and awarded so many FPs. Reading such lovely logs really made our day and made all our efforts so worth while. Thank you to you all :-)