It was the last day of the Temporary Holiday Site so after going to the DA coffee morning we hitched up and set off. We decided not to go to Cornwall as it would be too long a drive along busy, narrow roads but headed instead to Powderham castle, near Exeter. The journey was very good until the end when I missed the turning. We ended up driving to Dawlish before we found a place to turn round. We set up in the middle of the field with a view of the river,the deer park and the castle.
Tuesday 18th August
After breakfast we set off for a walk along the river. We crossed the camping field and left at the footpath onto the road. We followed the quiet lane to Powderham church which we could not look round as it was locked but did have a chat with a couple with a batty boxer dog. We then went to look for a cache but found another couple in the place we were looking. It turned out they were cachers called HikerCAI. We were wondering how to get the cache which was called Go Commando, and decided we had to "crawl" under the bridge. We made it under, it was very low, pebbly and seaweedy, and found the cache on the other side. Hiker returned under the bridge but we walked North along the shore line and were able to get up onto the cyclepath a bit further on. We found the next cache "Lonesome pine" which John went to get as there were cows nearby. We then walked on to the Turf Hotel where we met HikerCaI again and sat with them while we all had lovely crab sandwiches. We left after Hiker CaI and followed the canal towpath to the next two caches. The path was very uneven and we could tell that it had been very muddy as there were very deep cracks in the path. We followed the towpath up to the Olde Topsham lock, where I discovered we were only 100m from another cache. We found that and then crossed the bridge and headed across fields to the Exminster marshes reserve. We found the Exminster RAF cache and then walked down the lane which took us back to the canal. We walked back past the Turf and back to the caravan talking to some birdwatchers on the way who said there was an osprey in the area. We saw lots of egrets and a heron but no osprey. We walked about 12km.
Friday 21st August
Today we went for a walk in the Haldon forest. We followed the directions to the start of a cache where we found a car park. As we got there it started to rain so we sat in the car and ate our rolls. When it stopped raining we followed the clues for a multicache around the sensory trail. The views from the obelisk were wonderful - across to Dawlish, Exmouth and beyond.
We finished off the sensory trail,dodging the showers and getting bounced by a dog with muddy paws. The final cache turned out to be near the carpark. We left the forest and drove toward Teignmouth. We parked in Little Haldon (NT), as it looked an interesting area on the map, and discovered there was a cache 60m away. It was a small offset so we walked off to do it. My gps said it was 100m E, Johns said 30m N, we checked Johns first and it was definitely wrong. We eventually found the cache and found there was another 500m away. We walked along the path and found Lidwell chapel ruins in a small wooded area in the middle of a field. It was very muddy and overgrown but we found the cache.Saturday 22nd August
We pottered around in the morning and then decided on a walk around Exminster. We parked at Exminster marshes and walked across the marshes for a while, across a field of cows - very brave, and then emerged into Exminster, which was quite a pretty small town with lots of thatched houses. We took a footpath between houses and found a small cache and then walked beside the church but didn't find the way in. We walked across a road bridge, finding another cache. We walked beside the railway and headed towards the motorway bridge. We were in search of a cache called Kerplunk. John found the cache which was a long tube with cocktail sticks, in the bottom was a film cannister. We had to feed a magnet down and pull the cannister back up, feeding it through the sticks. It was more difficult than it sounds and took about 1o minutes to extract the canister and 15 minutes to feed it back in. After playing for a bit we walked on only to find that the footpath under the motorway had been blocked by workmen. We managed to get to the footpath by climbing over the fence but the path had obviously been blocked for a while as it was very overgrown. We worked our way through and then managed to find the way under the M5 and onto the canal path. We walked down the towpath to Topsham lock and then across the fields back to Exminster marshes.
We left for home on the 25th having had 3 weeks holiday for total site fees of £150 - not bad!
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