Saturday 14th March 2009
We drove to Billa Bara, a local hill, and parked. It was a nice day but there was a cold wind. We found the Ivanhoe Way and followed the path that we had missed on our last walk. The path went over waste land, then over a disused tramway and finally ran parallel to the road running through Stanton under Bardon. We walked alongside some allotments where every one was starting to get ready for the new season; there were some interesting bird scaring devices on the plots. We crossed a couple of pasture fields which had several rather friendly horses who wanted to investigate the contents of our rucksacks. We had to persuade them to move away from the stile so that we could climb over. We crossed the lane and entered a new section of National Forest called Partings wood, so called because it is midway between Stanton under Bardon and Thornton and was where lovers from the villages parted before returning home.
We walked through more plantations and then along a wide grass path by the side of a large field.
We emerged at the disused railway bridge near to Bagworth. We walked under the bridge and then diagonally across a field and round the bottom of a mound (complete with the first cows we had seen on a walk this year) to emerge at the road in Bagworth. Here we joined the Leicestershire Round. We stopped to search for a geocache in a new plantation and then crossed the railway line. We continued over the bridge at Thornton Mill, which had a lovely display of snowdrops and then walked into Thornton where we stopped for lunch at the Bricklayers Arms.
After lunch we walked along to the reservoir where we searched for another geocache. It was bitterly cold in the wind here. We did a complete lap of the reservoir, stopping to have a cup of coffee in a warm sheltered area. The water appeared to be boiling with the movement of loads of frogs in the water, the ducks were feasting on the spawn. We rejoined the Leicestershire Round for a short distance but left it at Manor plantation and walked through more woodland until we got to Markfield lane. We crossed the lane and crossed more fields until we emerged at the school in Stanton under Bardon. We walked through the village and walked back to the car, passing a big area of gorse giving off a lovely smell of coconut. We had walked 15.5km.

A short walk along the canal

Thursday 12th March 2009
We had planned to do a section of the Ivanhoe way today but as John had chopped down a lot of the hedge yesterday we decided we had better shred it so that it could go into the green bins for tomorrows collection. By the time this was done it was a bit late for doing a long walk.
Instead we drove across Swarkestone bridge and parked by the canal. we normally turn left along the canal when walking here but today we turned right and followed along the Trent and Mersey canal towards Weston on Trent.
It was a quiet afternoon and there were only a few cyclists about but we had a nice stroll watching the ducks, swans and barges.
We walked as far as Shenton lock finding two geocaches on the way and then turned back and headed towards Swarkestone lock.
By the time we got back we found we had walked 10 km, not much short of the walk that we had originally planned.

A day of caching

Friday 27th February 2009
Instead of a planned structured walk today we decided to do some caches. Some of these were very fiendish puzzle caches that we had solved some time ago and then not had the opportunity to find. We drove to Great Borden near Market Harborough and parked near the village green. We first set off to do a short multi-cache called Kiddies Delight, where we had to answer a few questions in the playground and then walk over the railway bridge into pasture where there were about a dozen horses; but they ignored us. We soon found the cache location which was very muddy and thorny, but I managed to get through, find the cache, signed the log book and then continued along the footpath towards Market Harborough. We next found “Where the sun don’t shine” one of the puzzles we had solved last August. We soon found Nasty the Gnome with the logbook placed Where the sun don’t shine! and then continued along the road where we found ourselves at Union Wharf, the location for "Confederate Hideout". The instructions for this one were a bit strange. We sat with our backs to Mr and Mrs Bushby, a bench near the canal basin, the instructions said that “if we pulled the chain it would not empty the canal”. We looked around and noticed a chain hanging from a barge mooring rope. Feeling a bit self conscious, I got up and pulled the chain. It was very long and I kept pulling, eventually a film fixative can emerged, which when opened revealed the log book. We signed the log and returned the cache to the water. We continued into Market Harborough and bought a roll from Subway for our lunch and walked back to the car, unsuccessfully searching for another cache on the way.
After lunch we drove along the A6 and parked in a layby to search for another puzzle cache. This had involved answering questions about 60’s tv detectives. I had managed to do most of them, some with the help of the internet. We found the cache which this time included a cd with clips of 60’s tv theme tunes, which we have to listen to and then answer the questions to find the next cache. We also found the "Hermitage" cache whilst we were here.
We then drove on and parked in Foxton where we found 2 more caches before walking along the canal to do another puzzle cache. Here we found ourselves at a Swing bridge on the canal. As we were trying to work out where the cache was, a barge came along and moored whilst the lady opened the bridge, which involved closing the gates to the road traffic and then swinging a section of the road across. The lady could not manage on her own so John helped. Quite fascinating as we had not seen a feature like this before. After finding the cache we walked along the canal and found another 3 caches. We then walked back to Foxton and the car. We had walked about 14 km and had had quite a fun day finding 11 out of 12 caches.