I went on two weekend trips in May, and although the sole purpose of neither trip was geocaching, I naturally managed to fit a few good caches in there 🙂

The first trip was to the Giant’s Causeway on the North Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland. This was my second ever visit to the area and it’s still as impressive as it was the first time I was there. The second trip was a weekend in Saffron Walden in mid-May. I was there for a family occasion and on the day of said occasion, I was in a bit of a pickle as to how and where and when I would get my cache du jour. As it turned out, I ended up finding 11 caches!

The Giant’s Causeway, county Antrim 

We travelled by car from Belfast on the Saturday morning and it poured with rain the whole way! That didn’t stop us from finding 8 caches along the route – much to my muggle boyfriend’s (well concealed) annoyance.

The highlight of the trip up was a stop off on the Causeway Coast at a viewing point for Garron Point. No doubt it would be a  much more pleasant stop off on a less windy and drier day, but it was nonetheless, quite impressive in the high winds and rain! I even nabbed two caches for my troubles – Garron Tower Viewpoint (GC1MP1D) and the Garron Point Earthcache (GC58BV7) – without which, we would likely not have stopped here to admire the view!

We visited the Giant’s Causeway on the Sunday and the sun was shining! The earthcache at the site was my 500th find almost a year ago. Amazing to think that I have found over a thousand caches since then!

The other caching highlights of the weekend were The Energy of Waves…from a small candle (GC5PJ8P) and The Dark Hedges (GC38KY0). We stopped at the former on the way to Bushmills but couldn’t grab the cache due to a muggle sitting right at GZ! Knowing that we would return this way on the Monday to visit the nearby Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge, we decided to leave it until then. I was very glad we had an excuse to return! The views from this spot are breathtaking and it was all the better in the beautiful sunshine on the Monday.

I have to admit, I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, having never watched the series, but The Dark Hedges is nevertheless, definitely worth a visit while you’re in the area! GoT fans will recognise this road from a scene in Season 2, when the trees line the King’s Road as Ayra Stark makes her escape from King’s Landing. The only problem is trying to get the perfect picture with the never-ending stream of tourists trying to get that perfect shot!

Saffron Walden, Essex

Saffron Walden is a place I have cached a couple of times before, so I didn’t have an abundance of caches for my daily fix while I was there for 3 days. On the day of a family event, when everyone was enjoying a tipple, I had no choice but to walk somewhere to get my daily fix. I decided to walk to Walden Wander #1 – Tree Cover (GC2DF6A) and I did a little research on the next one in the series, just in case I couldn’t find that first one. It was a beautiful afternoon with the sun splitting and the fields of rape flowers looked stunning against the blue skies. I made a quick find at #1 in the series and was enjoying the sun and the walk so much, I decided to go for the next one too.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was doing a circular walk around the countryside and finding 11 caches in total! You know how it goes: “I’ll just go for one more”, then “the next one is just 200 metres away, I’ll just grab that”, and finally “well I might as well walk the whole way around rather than double back on myself”. I didn’t meet a soul the whole way around the walk, despite it being a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed the few hours of caching, and it was made even more satisfying by the fact I found all the caches I looked for. The most enjoyable of the series was Walden Wander #8 – The usual suspect… (GC2DFA9), which really had me stumped for quite a while and in the end, had me lying flat on the ground groping around under a bridge. Lots of fun!

And so, my current streak goes on – today is day 295. Only 70 days left to get to one year. Sometimes, I wonder what I got myself in to but every day it continues, is a little victory!

This weekend, I will be attending the GC43 – 15 Years & Counting (GC5R04A) to celebrate the birthday of Europe’s First cache and am really looking forward to it. I will have a special blog post all about it next week!

Happy caching!

Sarah

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