Cornwall part 2: It’s all about filling the terrain grid gaps

In this week’s Caching Tales we re-live the second half of our holiday adventures on the South West coast. 

We start with a short drive to St Agnes to do a new series of adventure labs. They proved to be a really nice walk around the village taking in some less touristy features. 

One of the locations was at a secret garden, which had been created on a little bit of waste land by an elderly local man. As we arrived we were a little surprised to find quite a large group of locals gardening and giving it a general tidy up. 

It wasn’t long before I got chatting to some of them, and learnt more about the garden’s history and the man who created it. In return, I told them all about geocaching, and they all seemed really interested. Hopefully, we have some new recruits.

After collecting a couple of traditionals, we headed out of the town to an old mining area, now a large wasteland covered in rubble. Although, part of the old mine chimney is still standing. 

The core reason for our visit, was to collect a mystery cache I’d solved, which had just the right terrain and difficulty rating to fill a gap on my grid. 

I left the other half standing on the footpath, whilst I ventured over the rubble mounds to locate the cache. I thought it was going to be a real needle in a haystack find, but once in the vicinity of the co-ordinates it didn’t take long to spot. Phew! 

Our next day trip was to the most westerly point of England, the infamous Lands End. We’ve been there many times before, but decided to do something a bit different and walk along the coast path to Sennen Cove. 

It was a nice walk and we found quite a few caches along the way, and even a ship wreck - RMS Mühlheim. 

Arriving in the beautiful Sennen Cove, we had a lovely wander about the cliff hugging village, viewed the lifeboat station, grabbed some chips and collected the info for a series of lab caches.  

Unfortunately, we had two DNFs along the way, which ate away at our time, but it was a very nice walk. 

We finished the day with a visit to Cape Cornwall. Whilst the other half used up a bit more energy climbing the steep headland, I popped off to pick up another cache.

One of the great things about Cornwall is the fact that there are a lot of higher terrain caches and most are not tree climbs or water caches like those that dominate the higher terrain finds back home. Hence, I always try to grab a few grid fillers if I can. 

Hence, the following day I had my sights set on a challenge cache ‘200 hidden months’, which I needed to have found caches, set in 200 different months. I qualified and as it was a difficulty 5, terrain 4, it nicely filled another gap on my grid. 

It was located up a very high tor, just off the main road. Parking up on the quiet dead end road, we began our ascent. As we went I picked up a couple of traditionals, one being the brilliant field puzzle ‘Who’s there’. 

I jumped the ditched and soon discovered the nice sized container and pulled out the puzzle box inside. 

Now, I’ve not seen one like that before! I took it back across the ditch to the other half and he hadn’t got a clue how to get into it either. 

Thank god for YouTube that’s all I can say. Minutes later we were watching some puzzle geek demonstrating the secrets of the box and soon the log was in hand!Great puzzle, really enjoyed finding this one. 

It also gave us a decent breather before starting the steeper part of the ascent to the top of the tor. The views from which were breath taking; you can see panoramic views of Cornwall. 

Interestingly, there were a number of cows grazing at the top and they were rather inquisitive. As we started to make our way round to collect the three challenge caches...I only qualified for one so far...they kept greeting us, standing 5-6 strong across the paths. 

Hence, we did a few detours to avoid them and get all three logs signed. 

Our next stop of the day was Padstow. A beautiful fishing town with an array of gift shops and boutiques. It’s usually really nice to have a wander and do a bit of gift shopping, but today it was teaming with people. 

All social distancing rules had completely gone out the window as crowds stood watching entertainers and pushing past one another to get down the narrow streets. 

We felt rather uncomfortable and couldn’t wait to get away from it, so we took a stroll back towards the car and picked up a couple of caches on the way. One neatly hidden on a down pipe. 

Our next caching trip was to Newquay...although it wasn’t the main purpose. We were actually heading there for lunch at a nice pub we’ve been to before, plus a bit more shopping. However, I’d spied an unfound cache overlooking the rope bridge and house on the island, so we decided to stop off for it. 

It was a lovely quick find and again the views were lovely, so we sat down on the grass for a little while to take it all in. 

Just a couple of days of the holiday remained so we decided to make the most of them, visiting as many places as we could on Cornwall’s south coast. 

They included the picturesque Mevagissy, one of mum’s favourite Cornish hot spots. It is incredibly quaint and pretty and unsurprisingly also has a set of new lab caches, at some of the town’s key sites.

We also solved and picked up the church micro multi...great hide at the final GZ....plus the village sign, village hall and war memorial caches.

Next we made a flying visit to Charlestown, made famous by one of my favourite BBC1 dramas of recent years, Poldark. 

A number of scenes throughout the different series were filmed there and you can see why. It’s retained so much of its shipping heritage, and the giant old ships, parked up along the quay, are just beautiful. 

As we strolled around we collected all the information for the earthcache and the letterbox. The later was a really nice custom container and was placed along a quiet footpath just away from the hubbub of tourists. 

Porthpean was next, a place I had never visited before. It was such a warm day, that the sandy beach and shallow waters were covered with bathers and swimmers all trying to catch a few rays of autumn sunshine. 

I left the other half having a little sit down whilst I completed two fun Wherigos. I really do enjoy a Wherigo. There just aren’t enough about, so it was nice to see a few in this area.

The first was called ‘Play your cards right’ and was a fun version of the classic TV gameshow. Somehow I managed to guess the next card right each time, even the trickier later ones, and got the co-ordinates first time. Very happy. 

Before heading to the final GZ for the cache, I also completed the second Wherigo ‘Life’s a beach’. This was all about the history of the cove, and whilst it requires only a little walk about to grab the info, it did take a while to get it started. I’m not sure if it was my phone or a low gps signal, but eventually I managed to get it to load and run. 

After collecting the other half, we took a short stroll to the first cache, which was a great custom stick. Then made the slightly longer walk to the other, which was located high up in an old lookout tower. Such a great final GZ and after climbing up, the cache was in hand. 

The following day we decided to visit a zoo. So many have been badly affected by Covid this year, missing out on the revenue of thousands of visitors and really are struggling. 

Keen to help boost one’s coffers we set off for Dartmoor Zoo, in Devon. It was made famous by the hit movie ‘We bought a zoo’, which is a brilliant film, so I was very excited to visit it. 

We had a lovely day seeing a whole host of big cats really clearly in their big pens and a variety of other animals including otters, monkeys, meerkats and reptiles.

Just outside in the car park was a cache, so I had to go and get it. The container was a tiger...very appropriate, and I’ve not seen one like it before. 

We also managed to grab another nearby cache, which was a baby’s bottle, another great idea for a log container. 

 

Sadly, the final day is our holiday arrived and it was time to head home. As we made our way back up the M5 we made a couple of stops at the motorway services, at Taunton Deane and Gloucester, to grab two final caches. They also, helped to increase the number of English counties in which we’ve made finds - I’m trying to get all for a challenge cache. 

All in all, the holiday was another fun adventure, with lots of caches found, despite all the chaos Covid continues to cause. And who knows how long it’ll be before we’re all able to get away for more holidays further afield. 

Next week, we’re back in good old Suffolk, grabbing a few first to finds! Our first in quite a while.