We finished our trip to Chester today with a few caches further afield from the city to break up the journey home. To be honest, this was the first time away from Kit, our lovely cat, and we’d both missed her muchly. Mrs Pitts’ sister and her partner came to stay at our house while we were away for a couple of reasons. One, they like cats, in particular Kit. Two, with Kit being from a rescue centre – the wonderful Yorkshire Cat Rescue – we didn’t want her to think that we were abandoning her which is what she may have felt going to a cattery. Three, Captain Satsuma also needed feeding. I don’t think Kit has found us being away from her too upsetting. She is still very playful and seemingly happy – after all, she will have been greatly fussed over by Emma and Jon! Still, we missed Kit lots and getting back to her was a good feeling to have.
The trip from Chester was fairly uneventful to be honest. It is day two of August and of the geocaching souvenir a day business. Of course, we got one for logging a cache!
The caches we grabbed were:
- GC2FN57: Side Tracked :- Chester Station View – a simple little cache overlooking the railway lines into Chester. We only saw one train.
- GC2DK1V: Hoole Heath Skirmish – Stray Shot! – this cache was a replica cannon ball with a log sheet inside.
Legend has it that King Charles 1st on the 24th September 1645 stood and watched – The Battle of Rowton Heath from the King Charles Tower in Chester. In fact it was likely that what he saw was the final skirmishes between his Royalist Army and the Parliamentarians on Hoole Heath some 1.5 miles away (NE) and the site of this Civil War themed cache, (Rowton Heath is some 2.5 miles away (SE) and is not visible from King Charles Tower). During this final skirmish King Charles moved to St. Werburgh‘s steeple (the Chester Cathedral tower) in order to afford a better view. It is reported that whilst talking to a Captaine here a sniper fired a shot from the former St Johns Church Tower (now in ruins) narrowly missing the King, hitting the said Captaine in the head, who reportedly died on the spot – a lucky escape for the King. Was it an assassination attempt or a Stray Shot? Make a trip in to Chester city centre and you will be able to visit the Cathedral Tower; the ruins of St Johns Tower and now named King Charles Tower, maybe try your luck with a few other local caches.
- GC27CQ8: Curse of the FTF Cheshire #4 Mysteria Lane – the idea here is that whoever is first to find (FTF) then has to place another cache to continue the series within a month of finding it. We had tried this on the first day down here, but there was a paramedic sat on her break. Little did we know, and would find out by reading previous logs, that this paramedic has been initiated into geocaching by fellow cachers! In fact the previous logger had written “and Adele the paramedic” as they logged!
- GC1D02P: MaxKim’s DNORTY Puzzle Cache – this involved going to the cache location, finding the box, then solving the puzzle inside. It was not an easy task, but with the help of
the internetour brains, we got there…
- GC27NQK: Geocaching at the Fictional Smiling Feline – there are geocaching events which are usually held at pubs… clearly, a few have been held here as the pub has its own cache. It’s not hidden in the grounds, it’s actually inside the pub. Therefore all the usual rules of getting it without anyone seeing you are out of the window. A fun little cache.
- GC2BZV5: The Battle of Rowton Heath – First aid anyone – this cache links in nicely with the earlier one.
This takes our total to 858 overall and 30 over the last four days.
We then visited an ice cream farm – although I didn’t see any ice cream fields – for refreshment before the rest of the journey home.
When we were back home, we formulated a plan to put out yet another cache, hopefully tomorrow. This puts our “caches we have half an idea about but that we haven’t actually placed yet” bank up to 4, and when they are all out we will own 20 caches in total.
A lovely day, made all the better for seeing Kit and Cappy once more.
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