Haltwhistle - Day 1

Last week we were away on our Easter break and stayed in a little town called Haltwhistle. The towns claim to fame is that it's at the centre of Britain although a look at a map quickly shows this to be untrue, however it's a nice little place and we enjoyed our stay (despite the appalling cottage we rented).

As with most of our holidays since we started Geocaching we spent a fair bit of time out and about but tried to keep the caching to places we wanted to go rather than going to places for caches. In the end we managed to log 43 caches and brought four trackables north.

On our first day out we started with a visit to Cawfields Quarry which is located right next to Milecastle 42 on Hadrians Wall. Here there are two caches and we logged both. The first Cawfields Quarry was a traditional cache (despite being marked as a Letterbox Hybrid) and was an easy find next to the Quarry. The other was our second Earthcache Cawfields Great Whin Sill. This involved noting down some information from the boards provided on site, taking photos of the Whin Sill (rock wall) at the quarry, making an observation and then mailing these to the cache owner. The Quarry itself is quite pretty with a nice pond in front of the striking rock face and the proximity to Hadrians Wall and Milecastle 42 meant this was a two for one location!

In the afternoon of the same day we visited Vindolanda which is an ongoing archaeological dig at the site of a Roman Fort and town. This was very interesting and there was a good guided tour of the site. The kids seemed to enjoy the tour as much as us. Just outwith the site myself and the kids went for a wander in order to collect Vindolanda View. This was easier than we made it seem as the GPS jumped around. 

On the way home we made another couple of stops to bag two more caches. The first of these was The Long Stone. On the map this appeared to be maybe 100 metres off the side of the road but when we got there we realised it was also 100 metres (or more) up! This cache was located at the top of a rather steep hill. Not detered by the wind and cold, me and Super Girlie donned our gear and headed off with not a path in sight and headed straight up to the top. The stone itself is some type of standing stone but of what age I'm unsure. The cache was located right at it and we decided to leave a new TB there for the next person brave (or daft) enough to go up there! Good luck Lou the Ewe! Really proud of Super Girlie for not only attempting this climb but also making it look easy!

The final cache of the day was Crinkledykes which is drive-by at a 19th century limekiln. This was quite an impressive structure and sits right at the side of the road. The cache was quite tricky to spot and although I usually let the kids find the caches even if I spot them first I was so pleased to finally spot this one that there was no way they were getting the glory!

First day over we headed back for some dinner and a rest before more adventures on day two!