Why?
I had an appointment in Lincoln to go fetch Maximus back from university. That happens fairly regularly, to be honest. Anyway, she didn’t want me there until early afternoon, so I decidced I could get up early and go caching in Newark on my up. Might as well. I mean, it’s there, and I had the time.
Newark is somewhere I remember from my youth. My folks lived there for a few years in the late 80s, but it was always just a few miles away when I was a kid too.
Parking Up
It’d been a while since I’d been to Newark, so my memory wasn’t great except for remembering a massive church overlooking an old market square.
So I headed for what looked like a decent parking spot. When I got there, I had a major déjà vu moment. I’d parked here multiple times in the past when we lived in the area. Funny how the brain plays games like that.
A Bit of Geocaching
Newark has a bunch of caches in the centre. I didn’t make any particular plans. I just intended to walk around the town centre until I needed to leave again.
I started at the big church but completely failed to collect all the information required for the church micro there. That was a disappointment and also wasted a big chunk of my time. The theme continued for a while, to be honest,
I couldn’t find another cache near the church, even though I knew the coordinates were correct. So my start was kind of slow.
From here, I walked a sort of clockwise loop that took me through the market area and eventually towards the castle.
Civil War Castle
Newark Castle is the place the town was named after, supposedly. “New Work” upon Trent, which was corrupted to Newark. The castle was a royalist stronghold in the Civil War, and the town was a strategic point for crossing the Trent, as well as being a staging location on the Great North Road. Anyway, the quick summary is that the place has history.
The castle had a couple more geocaches too, finishing off one of the series of labs. It had an earthcache that I took a quick look at, but then couldn’t be bothered.
Down by the River
To finish off, I walked over to the Castle Station for a Sidetracked and then along the river for a while. By this time though, I was rapidly running out of time and I needed to get a move on up to Lincoln.
I’d managed to grab 14 finds while I was there.
