Silverwood Pit Top

This last weekend, thanks to some wedding or other, we had another 4-day weekend. I spent Friday doing housework in the morning and then socialising in the afternoon and evening. I had Saturday set aside for food shopping and then to lazily settle down and watch the semi-finals of the Snooker World Championship (which is held 5 miles down the road.)

Struggling to balance my weekend time with the children and their hatred of Geocaching, I decided to take them out early on Sunday for a quick walk aiming to get back in time to watch the first session of the snooker final and also giving the kids the afternoon free to do as they pleased.

I settled on the idea of doing Patdhill's nearby Silverwood Pit Top series. (You may recall Patrick as my good friend and a regular member of our Team PADS Geocaching group.) This series was published a while ago but I had deliberately put off doing it so that I would have a nice walk to do one evening after work.

I've since realised that I'm actually busy 6 nights a week so I scrapped that plan and stole the series as a perfect quick-fix for a Sunday morning.

We parked up near Wickersley and spent a steady 90 minutes doing the 3.5 mile circuit. It really is a lovely walk across regenerated land passing by woods, fledgling plantations and views down to a (presumably new) lake.

This was one of my ideal walks...

I've realised as time has passed that I'm not keen on the actual Geocaching side of Geocaching (yes I know that sounds odd) but I do like that it takes me to new places and presents me with walks I would never have found otherwise. The caches here were all easy to find so there were no frustrating delays and we could pretty much just enjoy the steady walk in the countryside listening to the birdsong, taking some pictures and chatting to the kids.

The kids seemed happy enough with this arrangement although I do think the anticipation of a nice slow-cooked stew waiting at home was the only thing on Adam's mind.

Many thanks to Patrick & Donna for the series.

[3.5 miles, 7 caches.]