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| Can you spot Mr Shiltonpig? |
Saturday May 21st 2011
Mr Shiltonpig felt old today, it just seems only yesterday that his parents took him to Dovedale, and now here he is taking his dearly beloved and his own Josh to this most special of places. Anybody who is anybody has been to Dovedale. To be honest the day didn't get off to the best geocaching start as when we got out the car, we had no signal on our phone and our new super duper fangled geocaching app was rendered useless....any tips on how to sort this problem out would be greatly appreciated!!
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| Stepping stones |
However a quick thinking Mr Shiltonpig pulled out 3 printed off paper copies of the 3 earthcaches in the area, so it seemed we were in for a big old geology lesson today! After parking up at the Dovedale and being charged £2.50 for a days parking from a grumpy man...we headed past Thorpe Cloud. You may think I am being silly, but this hill used to be a coral reef, thankfully for us this was about a million squillion zillion years ago. For some reason the earth cache owner must have some kind of sadist mentality about them, because the only way that you could claim the cache was to climb up to the summit!
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| The Gruffalo? |
Now clearly they have never seen Mr Shiltonpig climb a hill before, now we all know he is unfit, but his lungs were gasping for breath looking at the hill. Some people claim Mount Everest is the highest mountain on the planet, but at that precise moment it was clear that Thorpe Cloud was higher. Mrs Shiltonpig and Josh stayed down below, just to rub it even more, but onwards and upwards Mr Shiltonpig climbed. I kid you not that he had to stop more times than you have eaten baked potatoes, but the lure of the cache proved too great, and finally he reached the top, took the necessary photos and sat smugly on the world below him.
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| Won't go anywhere without that cap! |
Smugly that is until he noticed a young lass about 10 years younger bouncing up the hill and reached the top in a matter of minutes without stopping once. Oh well too many wetherspoons breakfasts in my belly! Mrs Shiltonpig was suitably impressed when I got to the bottom to tell her we had another cache! Josh then decided he didn't want to walk, so with legs like jelly we started on the 6 mile round trip to Milldale and back. Dovedale like the previous cache owner had a sadistic sense of humour, as the only hill in the valley appeared straight in front of them and sure enough, this hill also seemed to last forever. The top is called Lovers Leap....more like
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| WHAT!?!We're only half way? |
Mr Shiltonpigs leap. The next two caches provided rather amusing attempts by the Shiltonpigs to measure a series of rocks and holes, clearly they did not realise how awful we were at this, but never mind we did our best. By the time we had reached Milldale, we were exhausted, imagine carrying a fifty stone lump on your back for 3 miles, let alone the picnic, you too would be shattered. In all seriousness this is Mr Shiltonpigs sixth time to Dovedale and Mrs Shiltonpigs second and no matter how many times you come here you can't help but appreciate the wonders of creation! Big thumbs up from team Shiltonpig!
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| Retail therapy geocaching style |
In another stroke of our bad luck today, we pulled in not once but twice at UK Geocachers...this is the only geocaching shop in the whole of the UK. Firstly we pulled in at 9am only to find they were not opne till 10 am and then we pulled in again at 3.30pm after our walk to find they had closed early due to sickness. AAAARRRGGGHHH! Oh well...you can't win every time. 6 miles and just 3 caches to show for it....but some great memories to add to the family database! For those of you wondering why Mrs Shiltonpig isn't in any of the photos today its because there were so many complaints last week that Mr Shiltonpig wasn't in any of them!
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