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.