Cycling round Essex

Wow cycling round Essex is a totally different ball game to cycling round Kent! It was much flatter, with the few hills being very gentle. I did a nice little series - Round the Teys. It's near Colchester and around the villages of Little Tey and Marks Tey. I had a great time cycling round, the caches were, apart from 2, very easy to find. I started at number 3o at 8.45am. The highlight of my day was number 11. The cache was nicely placed in the branches of a tree at shoulder height - a nice easy find. What happened just after that was the best bit. I accidently went the wrong side of the hedge, so ended up in the farmer's back garden. The farmer and his wife were really lovely about it, I apologised profusely!! As I was walking along the field next to his garden there was a sheep who had literally just given birth to two lambs. She was licking the gooey stuff of them as I walked past. It was truly amazing - laming live in real life. What a great memory to treasure. The farmer's wife knew all about geocaching and even said that she knew where there was one a few hundred yards from her house, and if I couldn't find it, she would show me where it was. After checking I had enough water for the rest of my trip, we said goodbye. Shortly after, I stopped for something to eat and drink as I was about half way round now. Cycling really is working out for me, as I would never have been able to walk the 10 miles round this lovely little series. I finished at 1.30pm and was still feeling energetic enough to pick up a few drive by caches on the country route to the main road home. I managed to pick up 11 more caches making my total 1234 - ha ha, what a great number. Most of the drive-bys were pretty straight forward and I managed to park within a few feet of them. One of the caches was the other side of a river, not sure if there was a bridge to cross this river as I couldn't reach the cache due to the footpath being totally waterlogged. I only had lightweight shoes and didn't fancy wading through the mud. I was only about 350 feet away - how frustrating. The next tricky one, before I reached the main road, was about 8 foot high at the back of a sign. Fortunately I had my trusty walking stick to hand which I used to pull the cache out and after signing the log, I used the handle end to very carefully place it back. Luckily the cache was magnetic so that made the job a bit easier. A bit of a tricky one for shorties like me! So all in all a really good day, with the iphone battery about to run out, I headed home.