Little Legs

Totternhoe Knolls - Friday 3 July 2015

We've moved and we're exploring our new area! It's beautiful and full of lots of new flowers and butterflies to learn to recognise. Unfortunately though we fall on the join between four OS maps so it's been an expensive outlay!

For our walk today we followed a circular walk from the Totternhoe Knolls NT carpark to the end of the village and back again past the lime works and nature reserve. This was a route on the geocaching website called "Totternhoe Totterings";  we managed to find 11 of the 13 caches on this route!

Zoë took a little convincing to go for a walk and spent the first 10 minutes or so asking to home, but after a while she enjoyed herself. She especially enjoyed looking for the geocaches and sitting on the wooden sofa at the end of the walk!


As I mentioned above we've been starting to discover lots of new wildflowers and insects. Flowers are relatively easy to take pictures of, but I've been less successful with the insects as they just don't let me get close enough with my camera phone. Next time I go out I'll take my proper camera and hopefully I can use the zoom to catch some pictures of bees and butterflies. But until then here are three of the flowers we've discovered...

Common Spotted Orchid

Wild Sweet Pea

Birdsfoot Trefoil

This photo was taken by Zoë as she wanted to photograph a bee sucking the nectar from the flowers. You can just about spot the bee just left of the centre of the picture... Zoë is developing a real interest in taking photos; some are better than others, but I like to give her the opportunity when I can. Maybe we should think about getting her her own camera for her birthday so she can snap away to her heart's content?!

This was quite a walk for my little legged Zoë but she walked all but about 1/2 mile. I had to carry her for a short section due to the head height stinging nettles that she very vocally declined to walk past! Caleb also enjoyed walking a short way once we were nearly home. He'd love to walk more but currently has absolutely no sense of direction so is a bit of a liability...

Exhausted little people!

Date: Friday 3 July 2015

From: Home - circular route
To: Home
Distance: 3.3 miles
Total Ascent: 324ft
Route Description: Bridleway, field footpath
Duration: 2 hours 40 minutes
Ave Speed: 1.24mph
Weather: Hot and sunny
Region: Bedfordshire
Walking With: Zoë and Caleb
Path: local footpath

Yellow

AR14 - Dinton village - Monday 20 April 2015

Walk 14

Date: Monday 20 April 2015
From: Dinton
To: Fields near Ford Village
Distance: 2 miles
Total Ascent: ?
Route Description: Field footpaths
Duration: 1 hours 30 minutes
Ave Speed: ?
Weather: Hot and sunny
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring

Friendly locals

AR13 - Ford Village - Wednesday 15 April 2015

Ginger Nut is now going to preschool for the whole day on Wednesdays (with her Cinderella lunchbox!). This gives me a little more time for getting out for my walks around the Aylesbury Ring, especially as I'm having to do more driving at the moment to get to the other side of Aylesbury. So, today we were able to walk for 2 and half hours without clock watching... Pip was chatting away to me all morning; including saying 'Oë' [Zoë]! How cute!

<-- Meet one of the many animals we met on our walk today!! He is a very friendly two year old colt who came to welcome us at the stile. Not being very experienced around horses, Pip and I decided to take a little detour around the field and continue our walk as I have no idea how Pip would react to a horse in his face!

You can tell spring is here as the fields were full of sheep and lambs, and cows and calves. Fortunately I only needed to walk through the sheep field as I have a phobia of cows... phew! Though I did have to walk through a field of two bulls later on in the walk - I hadn't noticed them on the way, but they'd moved on the way back! Eek!


Today wasn't so great from a geocaching point of view; in fact it was appalling! We only found one out of the six we looked for!! The cache owner of the Pochard section of the Aylesbury Ring seems to be known for their sneaky, tricky hides, and I don't seem to have the same caching nose... But the one we did find (AR08 Eider - Bridge Farm) was very satisfying as several people before us hadn't been able to find the stage 1 clues and then the final cache. It was most definitely a sneaky hide - can you see it??

Maybe one day I'll return and have another look for: 

• AR03 Eider - Unzipped Letterbox (which I'm pretty sure I was in the right location for!)
• AR04 Eider - Spinney Field Puzzle (didn't get close enough to look due to the spikes on the bushes)
• AR05 Eider - Horse Field Multi (again, I was in the right location but Pip is just getting in the way when I'm trying to look)
• AR06 Eider - Aand another letterbox (the friendly horse's owner was too close, plus it hasn't been found for a while so I wasn't going to spend too much time looking)
• AR07 Eider - Memorial Multi (this one was a frustrating DNF, even though it hadn't been found for a while. I felt I should have been able to find it!)

Look at that blue sky!

Walk 13
Date: Wednesday 15 April 2015
From: Fields near Ford Village
To: Fields the other side of Ford Village
Distance: 3 miles (I think - but my route tracker decided to stop tracking halfway round!)
Total Ascent: ?
Route Description: Small roads/tracks and fields
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Ave Speed: ?
Weather: Hot and sunny
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring
Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zbgVN-iW56BQ.kaNBoT9lLlXY

19lbs and counting

AR 12: Kimblewick and around - Monday 23 March and Wednesday 25 March

I love my Monday morning walks with Pip, especially when the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Today it was even warm enough that I didn't need to wear a coat! Pip is getting heavy - he now weighs about 19lb which is significantly more than when I started walking with him back in September!

Today was an ok caching day... It's definitely getting harder to actually search for caches with Pip on my back - I can't get down low and I can't get through bushes! I'm anticipating more DNFs as I progress around the Aylesbury Ring. Caches today included:

• AR20 Pochard - Piped Music
• AR21 Pochard - Manor Farm
• AR22 Pochard - Kimble Wick (DNF due to dogs and Pip)
• AR01 Eider - Kimble Wick Multi (DNF)
• AR02 Eider - Kimble Wick Letterbox
• AR03 Eider - Unzipped Letterbox (DNF)

This photo is the location of AR20 Pochard - Piped Music. Things didn't go quite to plan here as I dropped it in the stream while trying to climb back to safety and sign the log! This meant that I had to take the cache box home to dry it all out and then return and walk the same route again on Wednesday!

Walking is exhausting for me, but it always seems to completely wipe Pip! He was so tired he didn't even wake when I took him off my back!

"A host of golden daffodils" - spring is on its way!

Walk 12
Date: Monday 23 and Wednesday 25 March 2015
From: Middle of a field near Kimblewick Farm
To: Stream
Distance: 3 miles
Total Ascent: 325ft
Route Description: Small roads/tracks and fields
Duration: 1 hour 20 minutes
Ave Speed: 2.2mph
Weather: Warm and sunny
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring
Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zbgVN-iW56BQ.kaNBoT9lLlXY

Caching crazy

AR11: Fields around Kimblewick - Monday 9 February 2015

 Pip was distinctly unimpressed about going walking this morning! It's probably because he was happily napping in a warm car before I decided to put him in the carrier out in the cold! I do need to reassure you that his mood did improve and he chatted to me most of the way round, though I have no photos of him awake today.

The walk started at The Swan pub in Great Kimble and then crossed through two very muddy fields. It was very slippy and very hard work, especially as my boots gradually collected more and more mud - I must have been carrying a lot of extra weight!

After the mud there was a lovely stretch down the entrance road to a farm - I tried to take some photos of the buds on the trees but couldn't get the camera to focus properly. After this road there was yet more fields and mud - definitely a theme this month!

Can you spot it?

Today was a very successful caching day with 4 caches found:
- AR15 Pochard - Grove Lane: a nice quick find in a multi-trunked tree near the railway (that I was unable to pass on a previous walk). Part of the tree had been felled but the cache was still tucked away in it's hiding place.
- AR16 Pochard - New Farm: this cache was the reward for traipsing across the huge muddy field!
- AR18 Pochard - Stile-ish: I love finding caches after the previous cacher logged a DNF (did not find), there's something very satisfying. Though I do need to admit that this find was more luck than skill...
- AR19 Pochard - Kimblewick Farm: This was the furthest cache of today and was under a stile. There was a surprise bonus as it contained a bright orange rabbit travel bug - these are items which travel between caches with an aim or journey.
On the way past I also revisited AR17 Pochard - Kimblewick Road to pick up the bonus code. Each cache contains a letter and number which are then used to work out the co-ordinates of the Bonus Cache. I just need one more letter/number now and have 7 possible caches in which to find it!

Enjoying the walk!

Walk 11
Date: Monday 9 February 2015
From: Grove Lane
To: Middle of a field near Kimblewick Farm
Distance: 2.6 miles
Total Ascent: 164ft
Route Description: Fields
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes
Ave Speed: 2mph
Weather: Cold and sunny
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring
Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zbgVN-iW56BQ.kaNBoT9lLlXY

Mud!

AR Walk 10: Aylesbury Canel near Puttenham - Sunday 8 February 2015

 This was a beautiful Sunday afternoon stroll to collect a few caches whilst walking along the canal... Or that was the aim! In reality the path was so slippy and slidey that the pushchair nearly slid into the water several times so we had to abort and go home for hot chocolate and a film!

The colours were amazing and the canal was still frozen over so we watched a bemused duck walking along trying to find some water.

We managed to pick up one cache, AR01 Mandarin - Canalside Multi, which required collecting clues from near the bridge to work out the final location of the cache. I had hoped to make it further along to collect AR02, AR03 and AR04 but it was not to be.

Walking on the water

Walk 10
Date: Sunday 8 February 2015
From: Puttenham Bridge on the Aylesbury Arm of the Grand Union Canal
To: not very far!
Distance: 0.78 miles
Total Ascent: 39ft
Route Description: Footpath next to canal
Duration: 40 minutes
Ave Speed: 1.2mph
Weather: Cold and sunny
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Steve, Ginger Nut and Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring
Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zbgVN-iW56BQ.kaNBoT9lLlXY

Frozen

AR Walk 9: Great Kimble - Monday 2 February 2015

So, after two months of no walks Pip and I finally made it out to attempt the next section of the Aylesbury Ring. Well it wasn't the next section as that wasn't particularly pushchair friendly so we went for another section. Unfortunately a mile of the walk was alongside the busy Risborough/Aylesbury Road - I'm pleased to have got this part of the walk out of the way!

It was nice to finally get on with finding some caches too... We had a list of 4 possibles to look for. The first one we got to was a Church Micro in Little Kimble church - the instructions said to go to the furthest corner but I couldn't see a way of easily getting the pushchair across the graveyard so decided not to continue. The second cache was AR13 Pochard - Great Kimble: I had a good idea of the location from my drive-by a couple of weeks ago but was stumped as to which road sign to look on. The one on my side of the road was for 'Little Kimble', whereas 'Great Kimble' was across a busy road. But the CO had been kind and did not expect us to recross the road and the cache (pictured) was quickly found.

 Once I made it off the road there was a long field section. As the temperature was subzero (car thermometer registered -2oC) the mud was frozen solid making it pretty easy for the pushchair. Kissing gates and stairs were what foiled us though!

 Although we were unable to make it any further, I was pleased to pick up another cache this side of the railway. AR14 Porchard - Off the Rails was another easy find though I had to be careful as there was a lady walking her dog near by (known as Doggles in the caching world!).

 On the return leg (one of the disadvantages of doing this walk alone) I stopped off in Great Kimble church to gather information for another Church Micro. While I was wandering around the church I noticed some beautiful snowdrops poking up... Such a delicate flower!
Most of the information was gathered, though I will have to look for some on-line as the rain obscured some vital details. I'll return to pick up the final cache another day.

Walk 9
Date: Monday 2 February 2015
From: Little Kimble All Saints Church
To: Railway line
Distance: 2 miles
Total Ascent: 72ft
Route Description: Footpath next to road, fields
Duration: 1 hour
Ave Speed: 1.8mph
Weather: Cold and sunny (-2oC)
Region: Buckinghamshire
Walking With: Pip
Path: Aylesbury Ring
Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zbgVN-iW56BQ.kaNBoT9lLlXY