Another Day Out
Time for an autmun jaunt out for a big day of geocaching. The plan for this day was to head for Norwich. A part of the reason is that I’d never been there before. Another part was that it has shed loads of caches.
So the plan was hatched, and a merry band was organised consisting of me, Candleford and Ryo62. We met up at Caxton Gibbet. There’s a road around the back of the servcies there which is wide and fairly quiet, so it’s OK for waiting and for leaving cars.
We were very early. I remember it being dark still when we met up.
At the Football
Memory of the day is a bit weak, to be honest. I’m typing this post over a year late. However, I’m in the habit of capturing geocaching finds in exact order, so I’m able to retrace my steps by looking at the sequence of finds.
First up we parked in a big commercial estate close to the Carrow Road football ground. There’s a set of labs round the football ground. We knew there was a match on in the afternoon, so we thought we better get the labs done early in the morning. They were easy and we had a bit of a chat with some stewards as we were walking round.
From there we walked up to the station for a Sidetracked.
West of the centre
We jumped in the car to move it to a better place, but while we were at it we did a random drive-by outside the ring road, as we would otherwise not have gone there. I parked in the Intu car park. I like a good covered, lit car park.
Back at the caching, we followed a few out towards the Catholic Cathedral before turning back on ourselves and heading north. We didn’t really have a plan except subconciously we were skirting around the outside and spiralling inwards. I think that’s a good plan in winter because if you work inside-out then you possibly end up giving up. If you work outside-in then you end up with everything that remains being in the same place.
Big Church
So from the Catholic Cathedral we wandered towards Norwich over the Water, where there were labs and trads in abundance. That ultimately led us around to the Law Courts and then around to the east side of Norwich’s rather impressive Anglican Cathedral. It has a load of open playing fields at the back.
When you get closer, the cathedral is surrounded by a bunch of other medieval buildings and courtyards. It’s one of the most “English” environments I’ve ever been to. It also, of course, means I can tick another one on the list of English Cathedrals I’ve been to. We didn’t really go inside, but I’m not religious anyway. The outsides of these cathedrals are really rather impressive though.
Lunch O’Clock
From the cathdral we wandered back towards the city centre. There were a bunch more caches on the way, but by this time we’d been out for some time and the legs were starting to moan a bit.
We found ourselves a cafe where we grabbed a slice of pizza and a drink and sat outside while we ate them. And then we might have had a second slice of pizza. Some pizza was involved. You get the picture.
Castle Time
After a brief wander north again we headed through some now rather busy streets towards Norwich Castle via the Market Place. Market Place also is overlooked by a rather large BBC building which is presumably the home of Alan Partridge.
Anyway, the Castle was kind of inaccessible. Some renovation works meant we could only really walk around the bottom of it. So that’s what we did. And from there we walked south onto Richmond Hill, almost back down at the football ground before turning and walking back to the car. We were taking a route to cover as many caches as possible though. No “just walking back” for us.
Village People
When we got back to the car to leave Norwich we’d found 86 caches in total. However, we had a bit of time left, so we decided we should visit a couple of villages on the way back.
Our first extra stop was Wymondham, where we drove around a bit doing some awkwardly positioned labs in the failing light. There was also a Church Micro at it’s rather impressive abbey.
Our final stop was a little further on, at Attleborough. I would comment on how nice a village it is, but we couldn’t really see it. It was raining by this time and the light had gone. Seriously though, it was a nice looking village. It was starting to get busy with Saturday night shenanigans at the pubs and restaurants.
Back Home
The drive home was, frankly, awful. It was raining pretty hard, so visibility was bad, and it was dark, and I was really tired. I got home safely though, and so did the other two.
Ovewr the course of the day I’d made 102 finds. That’s pretty decent in anyone’s book.
