January 30th Part 2 "No Pain....No Gain"

January 30th 2010 Part 2

How did this photo come to be taken? How did the pushchair get so muddy? and why is Mr Shiltonpig looking so happy with himself?

Read on and all will be revealed....

Bacon and egg sarnies in our bellies, toilet stops had taken place and Josh had come back from the land of nod....we were fighting fit to tackle another round of caches....this time in a village called Ashby Woulds. For more info on this neck of the world, click on the following link...

http://www.nationalforest.org/visit/index.php?fuseaction=location.showlocation&loc_id=1664

The first cache that we started to look for on our afternoons mission to complete at least 3 caches to break our January target was a nano cache. Whats a nano cache I hear you ask? a teeny tiny cache that can barely fit a log that you can write on. If you look on the photo you can see that it is the size of Joshs finger....it was attached to a key ring on some barbed wire and would have been much harder to find in summer than it was in winter.

After a bad morning caching, team Shiltonpig were relieved to find the cache and we were 1 down on our quest to get 3 caches. We carried along the road and started looking for a public footpath. We were fortunate that it had been particularly cold overnight as the ground was frozen....we were able to use an old pushchair to transport Josh around. This walk would be lovely in spring, the trees had bent so far over eah other that it was like walking through a natural walkway...some kind of scenery that you would find in the land of Narnia!!

This was were the pain started...in order to find the second cache...Mr Shiltonpig had to climb through several thorns and brambles and scratched his legs all over....next in a place that was clearly not related to the clue, Mr Shiltonpig found the second cache of the day.

But this is where pain struck again for poor old Mr Shiltonpig, while opening up the second cache....(drum roll please) he broke a nail. Yes he was reduced to being a big old girlie in the woods, as he rolled around the floor in absolute agony...plus (and you may not believe this readers) but he actually drew blood!!!

It was that sore that in a rare moment of affection Mrs Shiltonpig tried to look after the nail....she even put aside the cache for a moment while he acted as Florence Nightingdale....talk about dedication!

Next up we carried along the path....Josh kept crying out "Bird" even 2 minutes even though there wasn't any around....while team Shiltonpig catched up on all the latest gossip for the week.

Now the afternoon was starting to go much better than the morning as the 3rd cache was so easy to spot....another clay pipe! If you look closely at Mr Shiltonpigs nose (and I would advise against it, as its so big and ugly) you can see a scratch on his nose...yet another geocaching injury to add to his growing collection.

The photo is the first that shows all 3 members of team Shiltonpig....Josh is hungry (does that lad never stop eating!!)

But this is where things started to get interesting, the woodland walk suddenly ended and broke out into a new open field...which had a few farm animals around. It was great to see Josh cry out the names of the different animals, as it was the first time he has ever done so.....tears welling up as we speak!

The photo to the right is the second photo that shows team Shiltonpig together....you have Josh on the shoulders of Mr Shiltonpig and then if you look closely in the barn, you get to see Mrs Shiltonpig peeping out.....(Mr Shiltonpig ducks for cover)!!

We were hoping we were going in the right direction as it initially appeared we were going the wrong way...but just when all was lost we spotted a very very narrow footpath, that opened out to the "Moira Wilderness"....the wilderness is quite a strange area and one that we had not seen before...so if you find yourself in this part of the world check out the cache.

As we started walking the frozen mud turned to loose clay and very quickly the pram got so much mud on it that we couldn't push it any further. Mr Shiltonpig was going to give up there and then, but the sensible Mrs Shiltonpig pointed out that we only had 200 feet to go and that we might as well just abandon it and collect it later...I mean who is going to nick a pushchair in the wilderness!!

The photo doesn't really give a feel to the place....but it unlike anything else in the nearby area. Mrs Siltonpig was rewarded for her persistance as she found our 4th and final cache for the day!! So we broke our monthly record by 2 today which was great....January 2010 has been a good month for caching so it has! New records for caches found in an hour, day, week and month have all been broken....only the annual one to break now!

As we headed back to the pushchair, we laughed at the state of it..hence the first photo at the top of this blog was taken with Mr Shiltonpig doing his Geoff Capes impression holding up the pushchair....

The day wasn't over yet, we had been so busy on getting the mud off the pushchair that as we got back into the woodland, we noticed poor Josh was hatless and so Mrs Shiltonpig went back to get the hat!

So in summary 4 caches today, one broken nail, several scrathes on legs, 1 scratch on nose and mud all over the pushchair......was it worth it?

You bet....roll on February!