Belper Hills Walk

Sunday 21st March
We have done some walks recently but most have been short geocaching walks. This walk was a bit longer.
The day started badly as I discovered I had lost an earring. It was one of the nice diamond studs John bought me for Christmas a few years ago. We had a good hunt round but no luck.
The weather was going to be good so we decided to do the Belper Hills walk. This was a series of caches set up for the event we attended last week. We decided not to follow all the cachers last week but to come back and enjoy the walk on our own.
We arrived and parked at about 11.30 am and set off on the walk. Wes tarted off by walking out of Belper and past the church to find a cache hidden in an Alley. We were off to a bad start as we didn’t find this one. The next cache was attached to an information board about a philanthropist who provided a lot of facilities for Belper. We then headed out of the town, past the very impressive weir and along a path beside the river Derwent. We headed up the lane and as there were several people about we decided to sit by a small waterfall and have a cup of coffee whilst they passed. We then headed up the hill, finding a cache and then through a farmyard. As we approached the next cache we saw someone lurking – it turned out to be another cacher mJamezz, so we had a chat and hunted unsuccessfully for the cache. We walked on and up the hill towards the next cache, chatting away. After finding the cache MJamezz left us as he was out for a run; we continued at our more sedate pace. We walked along the Midshires way with very good views across the hills and over Belper. We found the next cache and then as we approached the next one we spotted MJamezz again – he was having trouble finding the cache so we all hunted together again. John clambered up a tree and the cache was soon found. MJamezz ran off again and we walked down the cobbley path a bit more slowly. Surprisingly we met up again at the bottom of the hill where I found the next cache then as we walked down the road, MJamezz came running back towards us as he had left his map back at one of our previous caches. He caught up with us one last time before heading off at a run. We crossed the road and headed up the track towards Farnah Green. We continued along the hills and emerged on a road where we spotted a pub - The Bluebell, so had a break for a pint and a bag of crisps. We then set off for the last stage of the walk. After finding a few more caches we found ourselves surprisingly close to Belper. We walked along the river and crossed back towards the town. We had walked 12.4 km and found 18 caches along the route. We had been lucky enough to have had a lovely warm day with no wind.

Mountsorrel

Monday 22nd February
I had the day off so we went for a walk today. We drove to Mountsorrel and parked and walked towards the river. We had to take a long diversion to reach the underpass under the A6 but once across we joined the Leicestershire Round and headed towards the weir. We headed off beside the river and found the first of the LR caches - anew series that will take us some time to do. We then walked beside the river for some time, watching the swans and ducks until the path passed back under the A6 and then we continued beside the river startling a heron who flew off just in front of us. We walked under the conveyor belt that carries stone from the quarry and stopped to find a cache after which we crossed the river and headed into Mountsorrel walking up Bank lane towards what should have been a bridleway. The map showed the path going through Stonehurst Farm but we could not find it. We wandered around and found a farmer in the farm shop. He said the path had never gone through the farm and was surprised to see it on the map. We looked round the shop and after finding out about the farm practices decided to revisit at a later date to try some of their meat. He told us how to find the correct path and we followed it towards the quarry which we had to walk through dodging the mud and slurry to get onto the footpath. We left the footpath and onto the road. We found a cache near a railway bridge and then walked back along the road to the car having walked 10.6 km.

Markeaton Park to Kedleston

Saturday 20th February
Having had lots of short caching walks recently I decided we needed a proper walk so programmed a decent walk into the GPS –along with some caches of course. We drove to Markeaton park near Derby and after having trouble finding the parking area we finally found it and paid for 4hours +. We left the park, walked up the road and then headed off on a footpath leading to Markeaton Stones – I thought there might be something interesting there, but I think it was just the name of the farm as we didn't see anything. At the top of the lane we stopped to do a cache which was inside a tree and involved standing on a stump and leaning in, I was not tall enough so John had to retrieve the cache. Unfortunately, as he put it back he slipped and the cache fell down a hole into the depths of the trunk – oops, we will have to apologise to the cache owner.
We walked on and diverted off the path to find two more caches. After finding the first we started walking down the path only to have a big dog start barking at us. We stopped and wondered how friendly he was and as he did not come out of the farm drive we continued down the lane. Him, and his slightly smaller friend barked but did not come out as we walked past. We walked down a very muddy fields, found the cache and then had to walk back up the lane. The dogs had gone inside by this time so were no problem.
We followed a very muddy path past the boundary of Kedleston hall and out on to road. We could just about see the hall from where we stopped to have a cup of coffee. We walked up the road a little bit and then down the side of a garden centre. The footpath is missing from our new map but our old map still shows the path, we spent about half an hour hunting for a small cache which we were assured was still near the hedge but we didn’t find it but we did see lots of snowdrops in the area. We followed the footpath across fields and over some of the most dangerous stiles we’ve come across to the A52. We crossed the road and followed a path
through fields which were badly signposted and eventually found our way to the edge of a recently ploughed field.
We stood and watched a heron on a fencepost for a while, until I looked through the binoculars and realized it was plastic and then John walked across the field (so that he could map the footpath correctly) and I walked round the edge as it is such hard work walking across ploughed fields. We eventually emerged at Langley Common and went in to the Bluebell pub. We were too late for lunch but settled for a drink, sit down and a bag of crisps. However, someone else came in looking for a bowl of chips, so they agreed to put the friers back on and we had a lovely bowl of freshly cooked chips.
We left the pub and continued along the road and off onto a footpath at Radbourne Common. It was very slippy and muddy but we eventually got to a bridge where we were supposed to look for a cache but found it out on display and soaking wet. As we knew the cache owner had just broken his hip we did our best to dry the cache and put it back where it should have been hidden. We then struggled over some more stiles to the road.
After a stretch on the road we got to another footpath which went past a farm. Two large Alsatians were very vocal as we went past but luckily they were behind a fence.
We emerged at Mackworth and struggled to find the footpath that we needed to divert off to find a cache. We walked along the street searching; I turned round and could see the finger post hidden in the hedge beside someone’s garden. We went along the path, found the cache and then walked back to the road and off towards the pretty church. We found a cache near the church and then set off on the last stretch of the walk. A last cache was found just before we got back to Markeaton park having walked 18 km and found 7 caches. We had seen lots of snowdrops, robins, bluetits and a plastic heron

A walk from Narborough

Tuesday 16th February
We had missed out on our walk yesterday so today we went to Narborough. We parked by a medical centre and set off trying to find the start of the walk. We were aiming for a disused railway but there were lots of new houses which meant that the map we had did not make sense. We eventually found the start of the railway having retraced our steps to the main road.
We started out by looking for a cache called Tricky Trees. We were not hopeful of finding it having read previous logs. But we had a look. Suddenly I could see the cache, it was attached about 40 ft up a thin branch of a tree which was hanging over the river. There was no way we were scrambling up there. We retraced our steps to the disused railway and enjoyed a peaceful walk along the line. We stopped to find a very nice small cache called the Spider. It was a beautifully made metal insect that was hung on the railway bridge. We continued along the line until it ended at Enderby. The walk then went downhill as it passed a reclaimed refuse tip and industrial park. It was quite interesting seeing all the gas retrieval systems in place at the tip though.
We walked across Enderby Park where we found a cache and then crossed the road and across farmland and then skirted around Enderby College. We crossed a golf course and then mislaid the path as it went across the grounds of the old Carlton Park mental hospital – now owned by Santander. There was security stopping cars driving in, but no problem for us walking out. I wonder if it was so easy for the mental patients! We eventually got back to the car as it was starting to snow having walked 11.7 km and found 4 caches.