Just an Afternoon
While we were up in Liverpool again for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon I took the opportunity to go and do a bit of caching on The Wirral. We’d had quite a long day already, as we’d chosen to do a new parkrun in Long Eaton on the way up, so had been on the edge of Nottingham until about 10:30 am and had left home in Milton Keynes before 7 am.
Getting to The Wirral from central Liverpool involved catching a train from James Street Station, just up the road from our hotel, over to West Kirby, which is kind of at the posh end of town.
The Wirral has an absolute mass of caches. If I’d got a few days I could easily spend ages there and grab hundreds of caches. As it happened though, I had an afternoon.
My first stop was over by the seaside, to grab one of the UK’s few remaining webcam caches. Actually there are two of them on the Wirral, but the other one is a long walk from the nearest station and nowhere near any other caches. The one I did was by the harbour in West Kirby.
From here I decided to attack the first few from the massive series that runs along the Wirral Country Park. It was really just a question of how far I could be bothered to walk down there, or, I suppose, deciding what was half as far as I could be bothered to walk because I’d have to come back again.
Too Much of a Challenge
I got down as far as #10, about a mile and a half from the start, before turning inland and walking past a seemingly endless stack of caches I couldn’t find. I eventually descended onto the Saughall Massie Road and then over some fields towards Hoylake Railway Station to get home again. Walking down Saughall Massie Road was rather dangerous. It’s not that wide and there are no paths. There were also lots of massive hedges that meant cars couldn’t see around the corners. I didn’t enjoy that part.
The reason for going that way was because there was supposedly a load of challenge caches in the fields that I was eligible for. Four of them, to be precise. I found two. At one of the ones I found, I initially picked the wrong route. I realised that the cache was on the other side of a ditch from me. So I attempted, and failed, to jump the ditch. The result was wet feet and muddy trouser legs. And a lingering odour. Bum!
Of the two I didn’t find, one was apparently underneath a very rickety old bridge on a farm track that looked as if it would collapse by virtue of me standing on it. The other was supposedly close to a fence at a field boundary. The area there was thick with undergrowth. The hint might as well have said “blade of grass in middle of grass.” Not a prayer. I didn’t spend long there as it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t find it in a hurry.
Travelling on My Own
And so back to Hoylake Station. I was stinking like something very smelly and was leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind me. With my left foot only, though. At least no one sat next to me on the train. Nor, indeed, did anyone stand next to me on the platform.
By the time I got back to James Street Station I was cutting it a bit fine for meeting up with Kas and the kids to go out for dinner. By the time I’d got back to the hotel, had a shower, washed my boots and got dressed again I was well late.
