We picked up a travel bug on Saturday, under a gravestone in a little park by St Paul’s. I already knew where the cache was hidden, as I’d dug it out before, but Rich had never seen it, and as he walks past it on his way to work every day without even knowing it, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

So today we headed out to move it on, and help it complete its mission. There’s a string of caches hidden along the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation Canal, which runs east out of Chelmsford town centre and on past Maldon to Heybridge. The first seven sit between us and the A12 on its wide, graceful diversion around the town, so we took out our bikes, dug out the GPS and printed out the six that were still open for business.

They’d been very cleverly hidden. One was a small lunchbox, but the rest were slim canisters, like elongated film containers around which the owner had wrapped camouflage tape. They’d been slid into the the ironwork supports of bridges across the river, hidden in the hinges of heavy gates, and stuck using magnets to the backs and bottoms of fences.

Only one had any treasure in it, and that was just an orange rubber fish that we left in place and supplemented with a little parachuting soldier, but it made for a good ride out through the fields along the river and down by a little knot of young horses who seemed interested in our bikes.

We still have the travel bug, though, so will have to move it on next weekend. The perfect excuse for another session of cache hunting.

1. Geocaching setbacks
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