Linton, Derbyshire, From Beer to Eternity cache walk

Thursday 16th October 2008
We drove to Linton, just inside Derbyshire to do a walk and hunt for a series of geocaches based on Breweries. We parked near Bee Hive fishing lakes and set off for our walk. The first cache was found as we reached the first stile for our walk. We climbed the stile into a field which had only just been planted with rape plants. The footpath had not been reinstated but there was the beginning of a trail of footprints so we followed that across several fields to the edge of a patch of woodland. The stile here was in a dangerous condition and collapsed as we tried to climb over. Luckily there was a very stiff and heavy gate next to it so we were able to continue. We walked beside some farm buildings with lots of large containers outside. We saw that each one had a run attached and contained a young calf. We continued walking through several new areas of National Forest. Top wood and Potters wood were quite advanced, with the trees being about 10 years old. We sat for a while beside a trig point on the top of the hill where we had a snack and then diverted off from the walk to find a cache. The diversion was very wet and the fields were squelchy but we found the cache and retraced our steps back to our route. We continued walking through the woodland which was lovely –it was a bright sunny day, with just a bit of a chill wind, and the colours of the trees were wonderful, especially the spindle trees with their bright pink berries. We finished the walk alongside the fishing lakes as we approached the car park. We had found 13 caches along the way and had walked 13 km.