The Lake District getaway – dodgy phone signals, webcams, towers and fells! Part One

Finally, it was time for our first holiday of the year and we were heading north, to the Lake District! And what a great place for finding some interesting and rather different geocaches, we highly recommend it to others, especially if you’re holidaying in the UK this year. 

As we made our way north on various A and M roads I was keen to stop and grab a few caches on the way to help towards an England ‘counties’ challenge I’ve been working on for some time. There were a good number of counties ‘up north’ that I still hadn’t found any caches in so the trip up and back down seemed like a good opportunity to try and get some.  

 

After failing the persuade the other half to go the slightly longer M1 route, I reluctantly accepted that Shropshire and Lancashire would just have to do, and found a couple of suitable, and fairly quick diverts off the M6.  

First up Shropshire, where we managed to grab two caches and dashes on a series called ‘Family at Woore‘, before heading back to the M6. Next Lancashire! 

A bit further up the motorway I’d spotted that Lancashire services had two caches at it, and one was a virtual. Quite unusual to see a virtual at a motorway services, and it sounded rather interesting. 

 

After grabbing the motorway mayhem traditional cache, I set about getting the info for ‘The Pennine Tower’ virtual. I’d seen the unusual landmark from the road many times when I’d passed by, and I had always wondered what is that? It turns out it is a disused restaurant. 

Once upon a time, travellers could enjoy a meal up in the air as it were, taking in the amazing views of the Pennines! Sadly, it closed in 1989…a fact I wouldn’t have known without this great virtual. 

 

I soon had the info I needed then it was a quick walk out of the services and up a very quiet country road to get the required ‘view of the tower’ photo. I just made it back to the car in time for the other half, who was returning from using the facilities. We were then off on the final leg of our journey to the Lakes.  

 

The following day was my first opportunity to start our geocaching adventure in the Lakes. As the sun was out we headed for Keswick to wander around a few shops and to do the two sets of lab caches in the town. Sadly, we quickly ran into technical problems almost immediately.  

 

As lab caches need to run on the phone app they do require a pretty good phone signal, and whilst my phone insisted I had 3G and even 4G at times, I really struggled to get anything to upload at the various GZs. Possibly, it is just 02 that has problems with their phone signals in Keswick or maybe it was just that particular day, but the whole experience became quite an unhappy one.

Lots of annoyed pacing up and down streets and paths followed, with the phone being held up, down and at various other angles in a desperate bid to get the signal needed within the required ‘20 metre’ zone around each GZ. The problem was compounded further by the fact that both adventure labs needed to be done in linear order, so we just couldn’t move on and try to get the next one. 

Both really need to be non linear and have wider GZ zones, to aid those who struggle to get the phone signal strength needed in parts of the Lakes.  

 

In the end, after much angst and frustration, we managed to get one in the ‘Beautiful Keswick’ series and two in the ‘A laal deek about Keswick’, and decided to move on before the phone ended up in the Derwent! 

 

We did however, have a very enjoyable walk along Friar’s Cragg where we picked up the lovely virtual George Hodgson. We found the little stones with the required info by accident as we were walking up from the beach. I actually nearly fell over, as just as I went to put my foot on one I saw the little plaque. What a great way to remember key people of the town.  

 

We also picked up a couple of traditional caches and a multi along the walk and enjoyed seeing the beautiful monument at the end of the crag.  

 

We finished our day picking up some caches and dashes on and off the main roads, stopping at some picturesque spots to admire the stunning scenery and take some photos. 

One of the last of the day was Helvellyn Gill, where we had a really nice 5 minute walk up a tiny trail to a pretty brook, where we found the nicely hidden ‘One Degree of Separation’ cache in amongst the heather. 

The following day it was unfortunately, rather wet! In fact ‘rather’ is probably an understatement. At times the rain was torrential! 

Undeterred, and desperate not to spend the day holed up in the holiday home, we headed to Great Knott wood, a mighty forest on a hillside at the Southern end of Lake Windermere. 

Our thinking was that the canopy of trees would provide some protection from the heavy downpours…it didn’t! But we still found some great geocaches.  

 

Parking up at a rather deserted Lakeside, we picked up the nice Sidetracked cache and the clever custom Lakeside Kiss, and then headed up the lane to the forest trail.  

 

First up was the brilliant ‘Great Knott geocache trail’ cache. It was cleverly hidden in what I can only describe as a wooden equipment or bat box. I actually didn’t even consider that could be the host for the cache as it looked like something only the Woodland Trust rangers should access.

I merrily searched the huge tree nearby instead. It was only after a few minutes of finding nothing that the braver, or perhaps more curious other half, lifted the lid and found the nice sized container inside.  

 

The next part of the walk was quite a steep hike upwards, and of course just at that moment the heavens opened. It made the going very tough, as even my supposedly waterproof jacket decided it couldn’t take anymore and began to let water in.  

As we waded through mud and water, we managed to grab most of the caches on the fell. Most were straightforward finds, but a couple took a few minutes to spot with the dense cloud and tree cover.   

 

It was great to see the wooden charcoal sculpture of a miner and the giant bobbin, we definitely wouldn’t have seen either without geocaching.  

Back in the dry car we made a quick stop to grab the fun mystery cache ‘Tudor Mansion’ that I’d solved at home a few weeks earlier. Based on Cludeo, it took me a little bit of time to work out, but the cache was a much quicker find.  

 

The following day it was dry again so we headed to Near Sawry and Hawkshead to see Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top house and pick up the nearby lab caches.  

 

The quickest route from our holiday home in Windermere was via the small car ferry, which gave me the chance to pick up a rather different mystery cache Councillor C B Ross. I’d wanted to get it the last time I was here, but the ferry was just so chaotic, getting out of the car to find it just seemed like mission impossible.  

 

Today, the ferry was virtually empty - just 6 cars on it - and I could actually see the plaque from the car, but did hop out and take a closer look just too make sure I got the info right. The final GZ was obviously on dry land, so I had to wait a couple of days until I was in the right place to get it.   

Hill Top was a delight as always and quieter than usual, so I had plenty of time to get some nice photos of Peter Rabbit and his friends’ favourite haunts around the house and gardens. 

We enjoyed our amble around Hawkshead, and it was nice to collect the five lab caches, which took us to some interesting spots including the church, courthouse and Ann Tyson’s House.  

 

After a spot of lunch we headed to Coniston, picking up several great caches and dashes as we went. 

My main reason for visiting Coniston was to get the webcam cache. I’ve never done one before and there are actually very few in the UK – just 4 currently enabled. 

I was a bit worried it was going to be complicated to do and might require a bit of technical knowledge or gizmos, but it didn’t at all.  

 

All you need to do is load up the website with the live image/video on your phone, and then stand at GZ and wave at the nearby building for a minute – much to the great embarrassment of the other half. 

Why a minute? Because that’s how long it takes for the image/video to refresh and take a new snap. That done, you quickly check that the live image/video on the website caught you and take a screen shot of it. Bingo! Job done. Our first ever webcam cache was in the bag!   

 

There were quite a few other caches in Coniston that we hadn’t picked up on previous visits so we wandered around the town collecting those, including a couple on the path up to the Old Man of Coniston. It was at this moment in time that I began regaling the other half with tales from 25 years ago, when I, and a motley group of friends, climbed the mountain. 

Feeling inspired and seeing a sign that said it only took 90 minutes to get to the top he decided he wanted to walk it.  

 

Fortunately, I managed to deter him, as it was nearly 4pm, and I knew given our current state of fitness that there was not a cat in hells chance of us making it up to the top and back down again before nightfall. And I didn’t really fancy making the 9 o’clock news as two stupid tourists that needed to be rescued!….although, I only managed to deter him by a day! More on that later. 

 

Hopping back in the car we made our way along some more small winding roads to pick up a few more caches and dashes. 

They included the interesting Earthcache at Brown Howe Quarry and  mystery caches ‘Elementary My Dear Watson’ – which was based on a puzzle technique I’d used many times before – and ‘The Old School/Blelham Tarn’ in the Wordsworth Way series.  

 

As we found too many great caches during our Lake District trip to cover in just one blog…we’ve split it in two. Pop back next week to find out if we actually made it up that mountain and to hear about more of the great caches we found!