A Day out in Lichfield!

Saturday 20th February 2010

Lichfield....a city of 2 halves....

Recently I posed a question on the geocaching forum of when do you stop becoming a newbie when it comes to geocaching...I had many answers, one of which is "when you start to plan your holidays around how many geocaches there are in the area"....Well Mrs Shiltonpig needed to do some shopping, so we looked at which city centre had the most caches and sure enough, there was a whole array of caches for us to look at in Lichfield, certainly more than we could manage with Josh....so off we set.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichfield

Lichfield for us is in two parts, the new part of the city which is pretty much like any town in the country and then there is the old part which is sooooo pleasant to walk around...

So first up was a cache just a stones throw away from where we parked the car, right next to Lichfield train station, took us just a moment to find the cache, much to Mrs Shiltonpigs delight. This cache was very well camouflaged and just goes to show you that with a bit fo effort you can make things interesting. Josh is holding the barkoflage in his hands and wondering what the heck it is.

Next up Wetherspoons, Team Shiltonpigs favourite pub to which we spend our hard earned cache...sorry hard earned cash! (Don't worry the jokes will get better...honest!)

After some gammon and salmon (though not on the same plate) we headed out for some shopping and then much to Mr Shiltonpigs relief we carried on to Beacon park for some pleasant walking.....

Mrs Shiltonpig got quickly into the spirit of it and was soon shoving her hand in all manner of holes, and fighting off branches and beating off twigs and sticks. In fact the second cache of the afternoon saw Mrs Shiltonpig have to face the most twig infested tree we have ever seen and took some getting to, and she did it in all fairness. Not afraid of getting her hands dirty!

It was quite a large cache for the middle of the tree and Josh was just itching to be let out his pushchair and couldn't wait to explore the snow ridden field...

Just look at that gorgeous face to see the genuine happiness in his eyes as he ran everywhere in his new shoes.....

The next cache took us right to the other end of the park, and past plenty of ducks, streams and child play area, full of parents and kids having a good time.....

It was only natural then that despite the next cache quite clearly being not there, that Josh should have his fair share of play time as well.

This blog cannot show all the photos of Josh on a swing and all kind of other bits and pieces...but Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig enjoyed seeing him happy and causing all kinds of mischief as he wondered aimlessly around the park.

Next on the cache list was certainly not a glamorous one, it was on the corner of a supermarket roundabout. In order to find it Mr Shiltonpig had to pretend that he was tying up his shoe laces, the only thing was as he bent down, he realised he was wearing slip ons...oh well. Inside was a toy slug, which had its own suckerpad on...it was cool. We dropped off a geocoin there and started to walk back to the car....

The final cache of the afternoon took us to another railway at the other side of the city, this was a micro cache. Initially the co-ords positioned the cache in the middle of the road, but having done a little research we knew where it would be and after looking for a short while in ivy, Mrs Shiltonpig gave that big smile of hers to say that she had found it! Hooray our fourth of the day and a thoroughly enjoyable cache it was too!

So after travelling all the way to Lichfield and finding 4 caches we were very pleased with ourselves, but this meant only one thing was left to do!! McDonalds large chocolate milkshake and Greggs Belgian Bun (2 for £1)......yum yum yum.....(and a choccy cookie for Josh too!) Lichfield....we will be back!