Rother Valley

I went up to Sheffield to spend the weekend with Sarah. We planned to meet near M1 Junction 31 where I got a quick cache and dash Motorway Madness cache. We met at the south entrance to Rother Valley Country Park with the plan to do a big 7 mile circle. It cost £3 to go to the middle of the CP to park the car, but we decided to start one end rather than in the middle.

We said goodbye to the boys who went home for a game on the PS3 and a nap! Sarah and I set off with our backpacks on, feeling fresh and eager for a fun day of caching.

At the start it was spitting a bit with rain, but thankfully that soon cleared up and we stripped off our cardiagans and rain coats as the weather warmed up throughout the day.

We were attempting the 17 caches in the RVCP Rother Valley Country Park series (GC2E4H8). Most of the caches were at the base of posts and the pots were very similar, so it was quite an easy run to be honest. We walked along the edge of a golf course and then started to walk uphill. In the middle of the series was a stand alone cache called Rother Ramble (GC2CGAZ). This was the higheste elevation of the day. It was quite a climb, but the views were amazing. Sarah spent some time looking for this one. It was a little confusing, but did have good idea attached to it. There is a sculpture with a hole at the top that, if you are 7feet tall, you could look through and about 50 feet away would see the smiley face of the cache. Unfortunately Sarah and I are a little vertically challenged so didn't get this one straight away. After following the cachers trail though, we got there in the end.

We carried on, more posts. Then we attempted the Waleswood Wander (GC2B77Y) which to be honest wasn't as good, despite being set by the same cache owner. In fact one cache was laid in the open, quite easily muggable. Sarah wasn't too impressed!! Near one of the caches was some orange water - Yuk!

We carried on, down into the valley and stopped for a nice ice cream, which was made difficult to eat by the number of midges flying around. I took this crazy view whilst having a little lie down. Throughout the series of 16 caches you had to collect six numbers, three black coloured ones for the northings and three blue coloured ones for the westings. Sarah and I very carefully checked each one, and seemed to have been the only ones to have successfully collected all of these numbers and found the right co-ordinates this weekend, which was just as well, as we didn't have a "phone a friend" up here! There was a group of 5 people and two pairs of cachers doing this circuit this weekend. So I was pretty chuffed with our prowess! hee hee. It did take a while to find the actual cache though!! The grass is quite long and tufty and the cache was lying just under the grass at the side of the path, with no obvious stone or post or anything to give away its location, so we fortunately had gotten lucky with this one. We ambled on to find two more. One of which we couldn't get because there were about 8 lads hanging around nearby with no intention of moving. So I staggered back to the car with Sarah slowly ambling beside me! I was knackered and could barely walk.

Whe we got Sarah made a rather lovely dinner of jacket potato skins with some yummy filling and a gorgeous butternut squash risotto. After a bottle of red wine I was practically falling asleep by 9pm so clambered into bed and slept in till late. It was brilliant not having to get up early to let the dogs out!! After a very nice cooked breakfast we drove up to Meadowhall and got Andy's birthday present. A North Face puffer vest. It actually makes him look slimmer!

Then Sarah and I got a few drive by caches on the way home, with Andy being a wonderful chauffeur.

When we got home we sorted out Sarah's first cache and went and laid it. We both had great fun walking backwards and forwards checking out the co-ordinates using our Garmin GPS'. Then we set off to lay a Church Micro one. When we got back Sarah sent off her cache for review and before Andy I had even set off to go home an hour later, Sarah's first cache had been published and found by two cachers!!! I couldn't believe how quick that was! Typically it was raining when we left, but I managed to get one last quick cache before we joined the motorway. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disappointing one as it did not have the promised trackable in it and indeed it was only a 35mm case so a lot smaller than I expected. I couldn't leave my last trackable behind. I had spotted the cache and was standing in the rain, when along came a friendly rottweiller who wanted to say hello. I was trying to shoo it off and her owner was trying to get her to come with him whislt I stood there like an idiot in the rain!! LOL We drove the long 4hour journey home, with me sleeping most of the way. What a great end to a fabulous weekend.