Walking & Geocaching: Speldhurst

Disclaimer. This blog and some of the photo's in it, may or may not include spoilers. I will leave you to decide. All photo's are on the walk and should the cache location be in the photo, then it will be a general area photo. I have no intention of showing close up pictures of cache locations.

Walk Information - Around 6 miles. No steep hills. But due to recent rain, the ground was quite muddy in places. Sensible walking boots are recommended for this walk.

Parking: - The Recreation Ground in Langton Green. N 51° 08.081 E 000° 12.345

A chilly, but bright Sunday morning saw myself meet with three good friends for a wander around Speldhurst to pick up a few geocaches on the route. One other friend was going to join us, but pulled out with a stomach bug.

Although this series is called "Speldhurst Stroll" the walk actually starts and finishes in Langton Green. A short distance to the south of Speldhurst and follows a clockwise direction.

The Start of the walk

Parking in the recreation ground car park which has plenty of space. This walk starts off by following a section of the Tunbridge Wells Circular (TWC). It was just a short hop skip and jump as they say to the first cache. A multi. Gathering the information was the easy bit. Wandering off to the final had us a little confused as we just 'followed the arrow' instead of following the path. The correction was made once we reached a barbed wire fence. Must pay more attention and less gossoping.

Once we arrived at GZ the cache was soon found and we were on our way towards number 2, accross some pasture and a not so muddy field.


Fallen Tree

Pasture

Arable Field

After another quick find at number two it was a short section of raod walking before we agin hit the footpaths, still on the TWC heading north towards Speldhurst. After the third cache we entered woodloand, which was going to be a prominent feature for the majority of this walk. Cache four proved to be a bit an awkward one, but my eagle eyes eventually spoted this one in a place i had already looked. And it it just happened i was holding the perfect retreivel tool to reach this cache.


Entering the Woodland

Crossing a farm track we used a uniquie stile. Two plaques on one side and one on the other. Dedications to oved ones. What a great idea

Next came a tree climb. Now i'm not one for doing verticle trees with nothing to hold onto or stand so was not sure how i would cope here. But i need not have worried. The tree was at an angle, and if i slipped the stream underneath would have broken my fall.

This is not the tree climb

Now in the woodland, we came across the inevitable. Mud, and there was a lot of it on this walk.

Cache number seven was one of five we failed to find on this route. They are either very well hidden, or a couple we expect are missing. The co-ordinates were out on a few which did not help in trying to find them. Especially when the cache has no hint. But we did give them our best shot with four sets of eyes. Some we looked for for over half an hour.

A few more paths took to the outskirts of Speldhurst where we walked past some very fine, and large houses. At the end of one road called 'Ferbies', what an unusal name. We sat on a wall and had a sandwich and a brew while we found cache number 10. Suitably refreshed we carried on down the road, turning left to reach a footpath on our right. This is now homeward bound.

Can someone lend me forty shillings?

Some person with a great sense of humour left half a coconut on top of a post

We soon met up with some of my fellow walkers from the walking forum

Two quick caches in a row was followed by two did not finds in a row. Thankfully we were soon backi on track with a sneaky hide. More mud through the woods. But the colours of autumn are exploding all over the palce and this made this walk look so good.