Our next section of the Ridgeway was one of the loftier sections. We would be following the high ridge line for most of the way, with views in all directions.
Our problem, given that we were geocaching the Ridgeway was… there weren’t many geocaches to find! We had to leave the Ridgeway a couple of times to find a cache! (In fairness, we had cached part of our route back in 2016, and many of those caches still remain).
Our walk started into a cold North East breeze, and we both remarked we should have worn more layers. (The only upside of not having many caches to find was that we would walk a bit quicker and keep warm rather than slowing down and getting cold at a cache site)
It was Friday of half-term week and the Ridgeway was busy. There was a group of 4 ladies on a 5 mile circuit, a gentleman doing a ‘there and back’ as he only had one car, and another 2 ladies walking the Ridgeway over 4 consecutive days (that’s 20 miles a day!). There were a few cyclists too, including a largish group of 10.
With few caches to find, it was odd therefore we didn’t look for the first one. Previous finders hadn’t found it, and those that had remarked it was covered in barbed wire. We moved on.
Our first real find was arguably ‘the two millionth cache to be published’. This was however an approximation, as the cache was submitted prior to this historic event, but following the cache review, the publication occurred after the two millionth cache – a valiant attempt by this cache’s setter. A valiant attempt too by Mrs Hg137 who ventured into the nettles to retrieve the cache. A few stings ensued, including some in places that were very difficult for stings to reach.
We were less successful at a multi at Segsbury Fort. The Fort or Camp is an Iron Age Hillfort, only a few yards from the Ridgeway. The cache description asked us to visit various noticeboards and fingerposts. Sadly for us the noticeboards were sun-bleached and unreadable, and the fingerposts were surrounded by high weeds. Unbeknownst to us, the cache owner had changed the questions away from the noticeboards, but not fully removed the text ‘on the noticeboards’ from the description. We spent fruitless minutes at the Fort, and were told of the error when we got home. Grr!
Later in our walk, we passed by Scutchamer Knob an Iron Age barrow. There were no caches near to it, we attempted to walk around the barrow – something we have undertaken in the past – this time however our route was blocked by stinging nettles and other dense foliage.
Between the two Iron Age structures we saw a monument to Lord Wantage (Robert Lord-Lindsay) erected in 1903 by his widow following his death in 1901. Lord Wantage was the founder chairman of what became the Red Cross.
A few yards beyond that was a more recent memorial to John Betjeman’s wife, Penelope. We had cached at Penelope Betjemans’ stone before (back in 2016) – thankfully the cache hidden within the memorial stone has now been removed. Our previous caching visit back in 2016 was of course the reason why we had so few caches to find this time, but even so there were huge tracts of footpath which would have supported a geocache.
As we approached the car park at Bury Down, we were in ‘puzzle cache’ territory. We had solved a couple of the puzzles (one based in Didcot power station, another based on fictitious sports results), and realised the 4 other puzzles would form a circular walk, of which only one would be in the Ridgeway. We found this (under a very prickly hawthorn tree) and arrived at our car.
Nearby was one other cache – mounted on a road sign. We had thought of undertaking this cache on our next walk, but with no-one around, we attempted and found the cache with only a certain amount of stretching to reach the 7 foot height required.
We walked 9 miles, found just 5 caches, saw 2 Iron Age structures, 2 memorials and innumerable great views.
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