The caches we were targeting all formed a trail along the River Irvine and were placed by GoofTroopUk. All except one were camouflaged and a lot of effort has obviously been put in so a huge thanks go to them. I've lived in Irvine for 10 years now and had no idea this walk was even here. That's one of the things I love about Geocaching!
The first cache A Trip Across the River was close to where we parked at the bridge across the river. It took a little bit of a delve into the unknown but after a fumble in the dark we had the cache, signed it and returned it to where it was found. The GPS coords were a little out here but there's not many places to look so not a big problem.
Next came Bramble Ramble another easy find. Following the clue you'll see there's only about three places the cache could be and it was third time lucky on this one. This is the biggest cache in the series and was where we were lucky enough to discover the Remove Before Flight 2010 (100 Jahre ILA) travel bug. Left a lovely little Russian doll in return (see our treasure page for a photo!). Didn't see the brambles though!
Third of the evening was Terrible Two's. Again the GPS coords for this cache are slightly out and like most people we spent a while looking in the wrong place (the obvious place!). It wasn't there so we had a look elsewhere nearby and soon found the GZ. This is a really sneeky camo'd cache. I won't give any more away for fear of spoiling it, but I had already picked the cache up and put it down again without realising!!
Blackberry Marsh was a doddle and Eilidh found the GZ in full view of the path. Without the clue you'd never know it was there however! Very nice camo!! We liked this one!
By now it was starting to get dark. When we got to Summit About This Place we saw that it was in the open, whilst the next cache appeared to be under tree cover. With failing light it made sense to move on as we could come back and tackle it using the GPS.
On we went to Hand of Nature and as we suspected had no GPS signal whatsoever. There was also very little light. After a short look on the wrong side of the path using the light from my mobile phone we tried the other side and it was pretty obvious we were on target. Finding the cache was a bit more tricky but in the end we spotted it right in front of us. Again this is a camouflaged cache and at first I didn't want to touch it so probed at it with a stick. Log signed, we trekked back to the previous cache.
As it's name suggests, Summit About This Place involved a little climb up a hill. If you're looking to do this there *is* a path, it's just hidden in the grass! After a short look around without success, we dug out the GPS and homing in found the GZ in seconds! Again the camouflage on this is excellent! The clue for this is spot on, we found it by moonlight!!
We really enjoyed this trail. The caches are very well hidden yet are not impossibly difficult. It's obvious that a lot of effort has been put in by GoofTroopUK, so a big thank you to them.
6 caches out of 6
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