As my knee(s) is preventing me from walking anywhere near the distances I used to, my ‘bus days’ have become fewer and further apart.
My other half would do dinner with my youngest daughter on a Friday and I used to make full use of my concessionary bus bas to go exploring, often grabbing a few geocaches and Adventure Labs on the way.
A little later, Sue added Wednesdays to the mix as she would ofter go out with an ex-work buddy or two. This, sometimes gave me another day to go and play on the buses.
However, as I have said, I can’t walk anywhere far and I was worried about sitting in the same position for protracted periods. Luckily, after recent experiences sitting on trains for hours at time with no adverse effects, I’ve decided that the riding on buses / trains shouldn’t be a problem. But, once I get off public transport, I need to keep the walking distances short.
With this in mind, I ventured out yesterday, primarily go find a few Adventure Labs as my geocaching hit rate had fallen recently.
Back towards the end of 2025, Team Balders (the name Sue and I cache under) achieve an average of one cache per day (see earlier post). Until recently, mainly through my weekly trips out, we have maintained the one a day (often with a fe in hand). Unfortunately, primarily because of my knee, this has dropped and as of yesterday morning (30 September) stood at MINUS THIRY FIVE. I needed to do something about it.
Checking out the Adventure Lab app I spotted a small cluster in Aldridge. Switching to the National Public Transport Information (National PTI) app (formerly TravelLine) I discovered that I could easily get to Aldridge.
Just after half nine, I walked, literally, to the bottom of my road and awaited the first bus, the number 96. This I rode for less than ten minutes to Kingshurst where, after a short wait, switched to the 71 for Sutton Coldfield.
I had a bit of a wait at Sutton but used the time to make use of the public loos, nip into Boots for some painkillers and grab a veggie slice from Greggs.
Whilst waiting for the number 6, I overheard a couple of old dears as a bus pulled up.
“Where does that one go to?” asked one of them.
“71, Chelmsley Wood,” came the reply.
“Oh,” the first answered, “I don’t think I’ll bother going there!”
A few minutes late, the number six arrived and on I got for the twenty five minute journey to Aldridge. I alighted just before the town centre for my first AdLab – the weather vane atop the parish church.
A short walk (0.7 miles) around the town gave me answers to the other four locations so I had brought my deficit down to minus thirty two.
If I’m going to get back to one a day and hold it during my post-op recovery, I’m going to have to venture out and get enough for a sizeable buffer.
From outside the Wetherspoons renovated Avion cinema (AdLab question – when was the last film shown here – 1967) I caught a 36A to Walsall bus station.
It’s normally a short walk between the bus and train stations but due to some major rebuilding, I had to walk around the building site but finally came to the station.
I was going to get a train to Wolverhampton then tram back to Brum. I saw a train was about to depart from platform 3 for Wolvo so jumped on that onto to discover that this service was via Birmingham New Street instead of direct. Plan B – get off in Birmingham, tram across town then 94 home.
Plan B worked fine and I was back home by half two with five more caches in the bag.
The knee was aching but not too badly (the Co-Codemol probably helped) and I had managed nearly a mile and a half of walking without my stick.
