In search of pirates and caching treasure on the Cornish coast
But it’s always good to get away and recharge the batteries, so when Covid seemed to be in retreat in the summer, I made the brave decision to book a fortnight away in Cornwall.
As the day arrived to depart for the South West coast, I was quite relieved that so many business and leisure facilities were open again and life had, in some way, returned to a semi-normal state.
On the six hour road journey down…which inevitably turned into nearly 8 hours due to heavy Friday traffic…we stopped off for a late lunch at Gordano Services on the M5. All pre-planned of course, as I’d spotted an unfound cache there.
As the other half adorned his mask and prepared to join a long takeaway food queue that ended in the car park, I headed off in the opposite direction for the cache. Entering a little copse of trees right at the back of the car park I quickly spotted the nice sized box and did a swap for an unactivated travel bug tag - always nice to find one of those in a cache.
The following day, after settling into our temporary home amongst the sand dunes, not too far from Newquay, we set off for Perranporth and our first proper caching adventure of the holiday.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and despite all the restrictions around Covid, the town was pretty busy. There were fewer families than usual, but quite a number of middle aged couples and pensioners strolling around the streets and shops.
Our first stop was to grab a Merry Christmas cache at the war memorial, which was nicely concealed underneath a metal plinth. We then walked to the big recreation ground to grab another cache on a Christmas theme, before attempting to grab a church micro hidden in a mass of undergrowth…sadly we didn’t spot it.
We finished with an uphill stroll to grab another traditional and then a mystery cache, which I’d solved on the journey down, a fairly straightforward jigsaw puzzle.
Our next trip was to Falmouth on the South coast. We decided to visit the national maritime museum, somewhere we hadn’t been before.
Whilst the exhibits were interesting enough, wearing a mask for over two hours really wasn’t pleasant, so we rushed the last few exhibits so we could get outside and breathe some fresh air again.
After a well earned sandwich and drink from a nearby minimart, we went for a walk to pick up a couple of caches around the harbour. They included ‘Rescue Me’ at the lifeboat station, which was brilliantly hidden.
The cache page said it was a small container, but on arrival all I could see was a brick wall and a gutter down pipe. As I stood humming and haring, trying to decide if we were in completely the wrong place, the eagle eyed other half spotted a little handle on one of the brick paving stones, and there underneath was the well hidden cache.
Just brilliant…although my delight was short lived when seconds later a low flying seagull decided to poop on me! Just one of the perils of caching on the coast!
With a few more caches in the bag we got back in the car and headed to the pretty little coastal village of Portreath. I’d spotted some new adventure labs around the harbour plus a few other caches along the way.
Like Perranporth it was bustling with older tourists, however, the route I had planned would take us away from most of them for a while. But first I wanted to grab a traditional on a signpost not far from the car park.
There were quite a few pensioners loitering in the area, but I managed to grab the little cache and get it signed without being spotted.
Just as I returned it though, another low flying seagull deposited its load on a pensioner who had been leaning against another signpost nearby. Its aim was so good that the poor lady had it dripping from her hair, down her face and top.
Ever the prepared cacher, I whipped out my anti bac wipes and offered them to her. She was most grateful and after some frantic wiping and guidance from us as to where she’d missed, she looked a lot better. And when her husband arrived upon the scene asking, ‘what happened to you?’ they laughed about the whole incident.
The adventure labs were set all around the harbour and took us to some interesting historical buildings including a pub and the old Bickford-Smith building, which looked like it had come straight out of a fairytale.
Gathering the info for each cache was nice and straightforward, and we soon had all 5 in the series, in the bag.
Whilst admiring the beauty of the ornate Bickford-Smith Scientific and Literary Institute building, I collected the information for the virtual cache and snapped a selfie in front of it. And grabbed the nearby Church on the Pier cache, which was cleverly hidden on a lamp post.
We then walked back around the harbour to pick up the information for the Lifeboat Station multi, and enjoyed the cliff top walk to the final cache…although it took me way longer than it should have done to spot the nicely hidden box.
Being a fan of earthcaches, we also made our way down onto the stony beach to admire the Giant’s Quoit.
It was a huge rock sitting in the middle of the beach, and looked like no other stone or rock around it. After a bit of less than scientific measuring and a close up examination of the rock’s surface, I had all the info I needed to log it, and took another selfie as proof of our visit.
My next planned stop of the day was to Cadgwith, a tiny village on the Lizard peninsula. On the way there I managed to persuade the other half to make a few quick stops to grab some roadside caches, mainly those in the Lizard loop series.
Parking up in the little carpark at the top of the hill in Cadgwith, we made our way down a small path to our first cache, a church micro multi.
The church was a tiny wooden structure painted blue and had a tiny bell tower, all very much in keeping with the remote setting of the village.
After muddling some numbers and ending up with co-ordinates in the sea, we recalculated them a few times to get something much more feasible. The final cache was tricky to spot and again it was the eagle eyed other half who found the sneaky hide.
As we got to the bottom of the descent and admired the views out to sea, we realised we now needed to go up again to get to our destination, another earthcache called the Devil’s Frying Pan.
It was quite a steep trek up, and at one point I thought we’d gone wrong as we seemed to be in someone’s garden, but it turned out to be correct, and eventually we arrived at the stunning coastal landform.
It was basically a large collapsed sea cave, but the entrance arch was still standing and the sea had swelled the size of the basin, so it did in fact appear to be a giant frying pan. Once again, something we would never have found or seen, if it hadn’t been for geocaching.
The following day, the sun was out again, so we decided to take a drive along the northern coast road, up to Boscastle and Tintagel.
As many my age will remember, Boscastle was made famous when a flash flood swept through the village, taking many of its residents by surprise and destroying some of its beautiful riverside buildings.
Today, there is very little evidence remaining of that awful event. The river’s walled defenses and damaged bridges have all been repaired, as have the properties that sit along it.
Our first stop was to grab a virtual cache on an outcrop of rocks high up above the right hand side of the harbor.
It turned out to be rather an old virtual cache, and quite a challenge for me. It required finding an old piece of graffiti on the rocks, and the date it was written.
It took me ages to find it, mainly because there was so much graffiti. Clearly, many past visitors had felt the need to leave their mark on the rocks, hence so many of them were just covered in scratched names and dates.
After almost an hour of hunting, I spotted the correct one in a place I’d supposedly already searched 4 times! Very glad to get there in the end.
Next up was the earthcache Boscastle Blowhole, which was best viewed from the other side of the harbour. It wasn’t quite the geographical landform I had been expecting. It was more of a low lying sea cave that throws water back out horizontally as larger waves hit it. Not the usual blowhole - a hole in a cave roof – that shoots water into the air. But it was still nice to see it.
On to Tintagel, a village made famous by an ancient castle, who many believe was once the home of King Arthur. Usually, the village is packed full of tourists, but it was much quieter than other places we had visited, which made grabbing the first cache, on some benches near the old post office, quick and easy.
After a poke about in some of the gift shops we began the descent and then the ascent up a huge hill onto the cliff top. Upon arriving I discovered there was a car park at the top, so we could have saved ourselves all that effort, but nevermind, exercise is always good and the views were well worth it.
There was a rather nice church nearby and another church multi, which we puzzled over for a while. Some of the answers were harder to find than others we’ve completed.
Finally, we had what looked sensible co-ordinates for the final cache and decided to collect it on our way back to the car.
At the cliff edge, overlooking the brand new bridge to the castle, was an interesting virtual, which again required more work than most others we’ve done.
One question in particular really taxed my brain and required some mathematical equation to get the correct answer and an bit more tech than we had to hand to calculate our current elevation.
The other half came to the rescue, downloading an app to help calculate the height of the cliff top from sea level and after writing it all down I decided to do the calculation later that evening, when I had a bit more time.
We took the coast path away from Tintagel as there was a series called ‘Slate Quarrymen of Tintagel’ along the cliff path. It actually turned out to be a brilliant series with lots of inventive custom-made caches, like nothing I’d seen before.
We also bumped into two fellow cachers and joined forces to find some of the caches. There was a great bird, hidden amongst some of the heather, which took way longer to spot than it should have. Another was a lovely custom made box with a sliding lid, and there was also a fun rodent in a cute camouflaged coat.
The walk was also really nice with some beautiful views of the clifftops, secret bays, copper mine ruins, and the glistening ocean. I highly recommend it.
Next week, we’ll be reliving part two of our trip, until than happy caching.
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