We headed to Ashbourne and to the UKGeocachers shop located in a caravan park, where we bought a few items and they kindly allowed us to leave the car in the shop car-park while we went for our walk. We had some problem finding the beginning of the walk as the footpath was not marked correctly on the map, but eventually we found our way out of the caravan park and across the field to a bridge. This walk had been set up during a Geocaching camping event, Piratemania, in the summer and so contained lots of geocaches.
We found the first one under a bridge and then followed the Bonnie Prince Charlie walk and the Centenary way towards Osmaston. One cache was found in a military type air-raid shelter, the woods that we walked in seemed to have several of these war-time buildings.
When we got to Osmaston we walked across the cricket field and continued along the footpath which passed though a field of 8ft tall maize. As we crossed into the next field I realised that it was full of young bullocks. As always happens they decided we were fun and decided to surround us, luckily the stile was close and I managed to hop over before we were cut off.
We passed through a short stretch of woodland and out onto the road before heading into another field. The cows in this field were happy to ignore us and then as we passed beside Osmaston lake a very large herd of cows decided to follow a couple going in the opposite direction to us. We waited by the side of the path as they all passed us by and then we walked on and through a natural wetland that had been provided with walkways to rise us above the boggy areas nd out to the road.
Shirley was a pretty village with several thatched cottages. The track through Shirley park led down to a water mill, and we realised that we had walked in this area some years ago, but from the opposite direction. (See April 4th 2007). Just past the mill we realised we had a cache to find. It was obviously hidden at a large tree but there was a family playing near it. We waited until they moved off and then went to find the cache, we realised that the cache was not hidden in a hole in the tree but was actually up in the branches. John nobly decided to climb up and found the cache after a short search – I don't think he had climbed a tree for donkeys years.
This was a figure of eight walk and so we passed back through Osmaston and then headed off through fields and woodland back towards Ashbourne and the end of the walk. We had walked 15.5 km and found 28 caches which I think was a record for us.
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