S"troll" around Thringstone

Sunday April 4th 2010

Having a child is never an easy experience (just ask my parents). Josh at times can be a challenge...for example when its time for his sleepy in an afternoon what does he go and do? stay awake...so two tired parents give in and decide to take him out for some geocaching. The photo on the left is captured in desperation as Mr Shiltonpig has had enough (for any social services or concerned readers looking at this, please note that Josh was never hurt, we love him very much and is currently back in his dungeon...oops sorry cot sound asleep).

Have you ever drove through a village, thought "mmm thats a nice village" carried on driving and never thought of that place again? you have I am sure of it. However today we broke a trend, we have made a stand and said no more! We must visit a village properly...and so we did and were glad we did. Thringstone has pages upon pages on it on wikipedia if you don't believe me click on the link (can't believe you don't believe me) and so is obviously a village with a lot of history to tell. The cache in question, was a multi cache, one that requires that you go and collect info around the town before you find the cache. Mr Shiltonpig points to a sign that says "Please clean up after your Dog"...in our case we have to clean up after Josh (yes thats right he poo'ed again).

One of the interesting places that the cache took us was to a graveyard and to the final resting place of Charles Booth he helped document working class life in London and changed government policy on poverty in the early 20th century. His gravestone is one of the nicest we have ever read...I would quote it, but then some things you must see for yourself. From time to time carrying Josh on my shoulders can be a challenge, so we like to let him down and let him run on his own for a while. Problem is to a 1 year old everything is exciting...Josh has 3 things at the moment that he likes....sticks, he will chase us pretending the stick is a snake. Next up, stones...nothing exciting about them, but he will just carry them around.

Lastly he loves flowers, he could spend ages looking at them...he takes after his dad in that respect (hopefully he will take after his mom, and be actually be able to name them all). Now for regular readers of this blog you may remember the exclusive we brought you about the troll on Sinfin Moor, well it seems we have been able to capture another world exclusive...the wife of the Sinfin Moor Troll captured in photo for the 1st time. Puts the "troll" into the word stroll (Clever ah...we thought it was good too!!) The cache took us to Grace Dieu woods and we were just a little early as bluebells will blossom here any day now.

The cache should have taken about an hour to complete, but clearly this was without the Josh factor. Changing nappies stop, cake stop, juice stop, trainer falling off stop, kicking daddy stop...this all adds up to extra time and in fact it took 25 hours 42 minutes and 3 seconds. But the fact is we did find it...and by now Josh loves to open the cache and empty all the contents out...he is very helpful, and teach them while they are young thats what we say! This was a cache unlike others that we have done before, reminds you that caching is about digging that little bit deeper and finding out about the history and places that you live around. So wherever you live, take some time out to learn about you town, village or city, you may be surprised by what you uncover.

So for all you froggy fans out there as promised an update on how they all are. Within 24 hours half had hatched fully and within 48 hours all of them had. They have grown so quickly that we now have 3 pots with them all in, some of them are getting so big now and have grown so quickly that you can start to see some kind of froggy face on them. A few even have very small legs on them....its crazy we have only had them 4.5 days and yet the speed at which they are growing has even amazed us. Josh loves them, he can even say tadpole now, and makes fish noises whenever he sees them.

The Sinfin Moor Troll

Saturday March 27th 2010

Be Warned Avid Readers! Deep in the moors of Sinfin, south of Derby lurks an ugly troll that lives in a bridge. In an exclusive for this blog, we have the only known photo of this hideous creature and it is there for all to see to the left. Well before we get to this bit, lets rewind and start the story at beginning. Sinfin is a suburb of Derby and was mentioned in the Domesday book, but for me and all the others...it is home of one the most well known brands...Rolls Royce. The site of Rolls Royce is so big it could have it own caching series, however I am not too sure they would be happy for us to be snooping around, so instead we went to the nearby moors.

So this was a series of 11 caches set around the area, all of which had no hints and we didn't know what size they would be. We didn't have high hopes, as we never seem to do well on these sorts of caches. However we were in for a surprise...the first one being that Mr Shiltonpig forgot to write down the co-ordinates for one of them, plus he was telling some awful jokes. Mrs Shiltonpig had, had enough and ordered Mr Shiltonpig to start digging his own grave...thankfully by the time he had dug the hole she had forgiven him, so if you walk through the woods and see a hole, please think of poor old Mr Shiltonpig. There were some crafty hides on our finds today, some were tucked in all manner of holes and trees...but unlike the other day Mr Shiltonpig was on fire and finding all kinds of difficult hides.

As we walked through the wood, which isn't part of the National Forest we ended up on another detour and ended up at somewhere we shouldn't have been and the usual climb over barbed wire took place. We really should learn to navigate better or upgrade our gps...but I doubt either will be happening soon. Of course the inevitable happened today and we came across a cache that we just couldn't find, we even texted a friend, but to no avail, we still couldn't find the blinkin' thing. It supposed to be on a bridge but the evil sinfin moor troll must have got to it before we did. Oh that evil troll! Josh was shattered at this point and was starting to fidgit and fidgit on poor Daddys shoulders.

Of course the nearby river would not be complete without the resident trolley....some have claimed that this is yet more evidence of the troll, others would have you believe that the local vole population go shopping with it...we however just think whoever is using it that Tescos have a long way to come and collect it. Sadly despite Mrs Shiltonpig investigating the pound had already gone! One of the easier caches we found today was near the housing estate that we had started from, we were a good 50-75 metres away from the cache and we could see it. Very crafty the hide was...Josh however by this point was getting tired of Mr Shiltonpigs jokes, he though they were lame...so much so that the inevitable happened...

Josh fell asleep on his shoulders, the subsequent pain on Mr Shiltonpigs shoulders increased by the pressure Josh was creating. So a good morning was had by all in a quiet spot of Derby city...lots of horse muggles today. We met one that was scared of the picnic bag we had brought? whats that all about? Another man stopped to talk to us about the wildlife in the local stream (we didn't mention the trolley or the troll) and then just stood and stared at us for ages...very strange. Plus one of the houses on the estate had a boat the size of the Titanic on its drive...very bizarre...so with 10 caches in the bag...it was time to move on....time for lunch!