Yorkshire Part 1 - Caching under steam

As I sit writing this week’s blog, I am looking out the window of a turn of the century train carriage, admiring the beauty of the North Yorkshire Moors as steam billows past. Yes this week we are holidaying in Yorkshire and no visit to the stunning dales and moors would be complete without a trip on the spectacular North Yorkshire Moors Railway. 

Setting off from Pickering, we are travelling to the beautiful seaside town of Whitby with a few stops in between, before heading back to Pickering again. 

A drive back along parts of the line later on enabled me to pick up some railway themed caches, including the Sidetracked cache at Grosmont. 

But the best steam themed cache had to be the virtual ‘Film set 10 Harry Potter’. It was located at Goathland Station, which was the real life set for Hogwarts station in the Harry Potter movies. Looking about I recognised buildings and features on the platform that appeared in the film, even though the station now looks a little different as it was repainted specifically for the film and then changed back again afterwards. 

Interestingly Goathland’s celebrity status doesn’t end there, the station and village were also the set for long running TV series Heartbeat.

On Saturday as the Tour de Yorkshire rolled into the area and right past the holiday home, the other half was incredibly excited by the prospect of seeing Chris Froome. Leaving him to follow the race, I headed to Brompton to complete the SLDW series. And what a brilliant series it was. 

Every cache was unique and inventive, and brought a smile to my face. The walk through the beautiful countryside was just brilliant, with an array of wildlife spotted along the way.

First up was a giant reptile, sneakily hidden behind some utilities. The next at a signpost had me stumped, but I soon realised I was looking way too high and spotted the sneaky hide. 

As I headed off the road onto the very quiet country lanes more great caches followed including a cheeky gnome, a woodpecker, a hanging golf ball, a hedgehog, a CCTV camera, a frog and a cute cat. 

As the good dry tracks winded up and down the hilly Yorkshire countryside, old stone walls lined the route and grassy fields lay beyond them. At one point the route went through a sheep farm and I met a number of the friendly woolly residents as I crossed one of the fields. The scenic valley was just beautiful, sweeping down to a row of trees and back up again. 

As I finally emerged onto a village road and picked up a fun hen cache from behind a utility sign, I then had the dilemma of whether to carry on with this series or venture onto another. As id made such good time, and the other half was still stalking famous cyclists I decided to  head onto the next series. 

Many great caches followed including a parachutist in a tree, tractors near dry stone walls, and a bird in a tree. 

Fortunately, I didn’t have to make the long walk back to the first village as the other half turned up to collect me, just as I found the last cache...good timing! 

The following day we headed to Robin Hood Bay and picked up four caches on The Rocket Series. Number two was just brilliant. I noticed a few DNFs, but persisted in my search finding the little grass camouflaged nano cache in amongst some grass. It blended in very well. 

Another was a brilliant field puzzle, one of those little wooden boxes, which require a bit of squeezing in the right place. I let the other half do his magic on that one.

Our next stop was Scarborough where we wandered around the historic castle grabbing a couple of nearby caches, before heading down to the town and harbour front to grab three virtuals. 

Two were on the pier itself. The first ‘Tunny’ took us to a beautiful statue which had been placed to recognise Scarborough’s long fishing industry. The second, ‘Pier End’, located down the end of one of the three piers, took us to a piece of historic maritime equipment, where we had to gather some information. 

Our third virtual ‘Smugglers Quest’ was located at a lovely statue of a smuggler and his young apprentice landing barrels of brandy. I definitely don’t think we would have seen this if it wasn’t for geocaching!

We then headed back to the harbour to collect all the necessary info for the earthcache, before making our way around the headland - which had been filled with cycling enthusiasts and famous cyclists just a few days earlier - to grab a few more caches.

In our next blog we’ll be hunting for Count Dracula and taking a trip to the beautiful city of York.