Rutland -Saints caches

Saturday 6th February
There are a series of caches on Geocaching.com which are very fiendish puzzles. We solved and found a couple of the caches a few weeks ago but having solved a few more we decided on another trip to Rutland. Finding the cache is usually easy (having found where to go) but it is following the instructions included in the cache which causes the problems. We had found "Hobnail Staith" -St Botolphs a few weeks ago but had struggled with finding the hidden coin that gives extra information. So today we started off by visiting Wardley and taking a walk down the muddy lane to find the coin that we missed two weeks ago. The cache owner had told us that it was still in place we went to the co-ordinates and I spotted it straight away this time. We noted the details and returned to the car. We then drove to Ridlington to do the next cache – “Neat Stripe and Apian Lust”. For this we had to find some information in the church and then add it to the co-ordinates we had worked out at home. These led us to Preston, which we had visited a few weeks ago. We followed the footpath and found the cache. We took a copy of the Saints Blessing and tried to work out where to go to complete the puzzle. It had us foxed, so we drove to Lyddington to find some lunch and see if we could solve the puzzle. We had no luck with the puzzle but did have a nice lunch at the Old White Hart. We then walked to the hiding place of the third Saints puzzle "CatsFire". I had solved the location for this yesterday, but we did not have co-ordinates,just a rough location. We chose what we hoped was the correct direction, and walked down the lane towards Thorpe on the Water, we knew we were looking for a footpath and a stile, 1.15 miles from Bedes house! We found a footpath and a stile and hunted for the cache but no luck. We nearly gave up but decided to follow the footpath a bit further. We crossed the river Welland which was very full; the foot bridge vibrating with the force of the water as we waked over it, and then spotted another stile a bit further on. Bingo – we found the cache. This time we knew what we were doing with the additional clues – 2 vials of herbs, that we had to identify and then use to gain the co-ordinates for the last bit of the puzzle. We headed back to Lyddington and off on another footpath, which we slipped and slid along as it was very thick with mud. After a bit of a hunt we found the last bit of the puzzle. We have now solved 4 out of 8 of the Saints puzzles and have collected information from 3 of them. It was getting late so we headed home, leaving the 5th puzzle for our next visit. As soon as we got home we managed to solve the clues from Neat stripe, so that will be found on our next visit too. We had walked 9km on our various trips today.