Friday 9 May 2014

Madhouse diaries : Geocaching at Gravelines Riding School


At the weekend, we decided to drive down to the fortified town of Gravelines to do - you guessed it ! - some geocaching. Our first attempt within the walled city had us walking round in circles and getting nowhere - we kept coming up to a moat or a wall with the GPS wanting us to go straight on and trying to get around to the other side took us constantly further from the coordinates we were trying to reach - so after half an hour of fruitless, not to mention frustrating, roaming, we decided to cut our losses and head over to the other set of coordinates that I'd jotted down, in a local riding school.


This was a lovely short circular walk amongst grassy fields and woodland. Some of the caches were well off the beaten track.


But Madhouse daddy was fearless, even when he got stabbed by a hawthorn bush and made his finger bleed.


Sometimes you need little fingers to get into the small gaps though !


Some were well camouflaged - I walked past this one twice thinking it was a discarded piece of rubbish before Madhouse Daddy spotted the cache inside it !


But the caches weren't the only attraction - the horses were also very friendly.


They came right over to the fences to be petted. Unfortunately my camera batteries ran out but the final cache took us to a fabulous free petting farm, with everything from rabbits, goats, ponies and llamas to peacocks and (tamed) wild boar. It's a fantastic place that we never knew existed so we'll definitely come back here again. This is what we are learning is the best part of geocaching - discovering lovely locations that you'd never have found otherwise.


Pierre was very proud of his haul !


Champagne capsules (for a friend who collects them), a Pog, a Hello Kitty keyring, football stickers, a grape-scented rubber and a little digger.

We'll need to start restocking our bag of treasures to exchange soon !

2 comments:

  1. well done on finding the petting zoo, yes there are lots of things out there we just never bother with and wonder why when we find it to be a wonderful place.
    Poor daddy getting stabbed, but doesn't seem to have put him off.
    Thank you for linking up

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's great for getting off the beaten track without getting totally lost !

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