A while back, I discovered that there were not one but two geocaching events (geo meets) on the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) on the same day. I mentioned it in a previous blog. Today was that day.
Team Balders (our geocaching nomme-de-plume) would consist of myself, Sue and grandson Dainton (a bit of a train buff).
We picked Dainton up and set the SatNav, heading down the M42 towards Bromsgrove. In hindsight this seemed a long way around but I tend to trust Google Maps. As we got closed to Kidderminster, which is one end of the SVR, I reckoned that I must have, probably through habit, programmed the SatNav. with the wrong end.
Sue, hastily, reset the SatNav to find that we were still about twenty minutes away.
When we finally reached the town of Bridgnorth, Sue and Dainton were dropped off at the railway station leaving me to drive to and park in the car park above the station.
When we were reunited, I exchange my e-tickets for IRL tickets (that’s in real life for you un-hip dudes) ready for the later train rides.
From the railway station we descended down (easier than going up) to Bridgnorth low town from where we caught the Cliff Railway to the upper station.
We were a little early for the geocaching event so took a short stroll around town, grabbing a Costa on the way back.
On our return there was a group of people stood around and somehow I just knew that these were geocachers. We exchanged pleasantries with faces old and new before making our way back to the railway station in time for the 12:05 to Kidderminster.
The train was a lot busier that I was expecting but we had our own table.
There is an Adventure Lab with locations along the line. We had already done Bridgnorth on a previous visit but were hoping that the questions for the other stations could be answered from the train.
First location was at Hampton Loade but we couldn’t see the clue but having a rough idea as to what it would be decided to try again on the return.
The locations were completed at Highley and Arley and finally at Kidderminster although this one was just outside of the station building.
Again, we had a little time before the event so nipped over to the mainline station to grab some clues for a SideTracked geocache.
We attended to meeting with many of the same faces as the earlier one and did learn of a forthcoming event in Henley.
After the event, we found the final part of the SIdeTracked and another, Really SideTracked Kidderminster. Whilst searching for the Really SideTracked cache, a man from the chip shop across the road came and enquired as to what when were doing as he’d seen a lot of activity around the area. We explained geocaching to him and he seemed happier as he thought that all these people were, somehow, surveying for a new mobile phone mast.
As the event also had SideTracked in the title, I obviously got the three mixed up when logging the finds/attendance later.
Instead of getting the next train back, we grabbed some lunch then after a short ride on the miniature gauge railway rode back on a four car DMU.
Before we got back to Hampton Loade we saw something similar to what we would be looking for at another station and on entering that answer were rewarded with a correct/completed page on the app.
We arrived back at the start of our adventure and as I retrieved the car, Sue and Dainton made their was to the car park exit to save them the walk up the hill to the car.
The drive home seemed to take ages (even with the correct destination set) as we got stuck behind a number of drivers who must have been, incorrectly, told that it was “National Drive Slow Day”.
We dropped Dainton off at half six before returning home to the doggies.
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