Wednesday 10 September 2014

Summer Hols - Minehead / Lynton


It's about time that we started to blog again after such a long break.
The Summer hols were full of meeting people and seeing many countries within Europe, we even managed to grab a cache or 2.

We kick-started the holidays with a cheap sun holiday to Butlins Minehead and then added a night at the wonderful campsite "Sunny Lyn" in Lynton.

The caching choice for the Saturday was handpicked as we wanted to grab a couple of Virtuals in South Devon, a Webcam and then a few challenge caches.

The Virtuals - Torquay Round Table & Face it, you're stumped! were very easy and were done in no time. It was still nice to drive around the English Riviera though.


Face it, you're stumped!

We moved on to Teignmouth next and did 4 challenges caches based on having so many favourite points and 1 challenge of completing 100+ caches in a day.

The weather was pretty good down south as it was horrendous in the Midlands so it was nice to pop off to an old favourite seaside town - Exmouth.

Last time we were here was not long after we began caching and at that time we had absolutely no idea how to do a Webcam cache. Thankfully nowadays we do haha.
For those who don't know you have to post an image of yourself that appears on a webcam by taking a screenshot from the relevant website, simple really..

"The Hotspot"
"The Hotspot" webcam is finally grabbed 4 years after wondering what to do.
A few drive-by caches now so that we can get back to Butlins for some Ben-time.

All Revved Up.

Ben loves Butlins, as do most kids as there is that much to do. Thankfully he isn't fussed about the night time entertainment so the rest of the night was spent relaxing outside the pub on site.


Sunday was an easy day with a 5/5 and 2 old caches planned, but they were so worth it.
First off was Exe View (Somerset) which was placed in May 2002. We had to take a short walk up a very overgrown path to GZ and it was a simple find.  The next one A Winters Tale was a multi placed in July 2003. It was easy enough to get the information but the walk to GZ and then GZ itself was truly fantastic, which is often the case for the older caches.

Next up was the highlight of the day Look into the Light which is a 5/5 puzzle cache.
We are not going to say much about it except for that it definitely needs bookmarking.
Here's a couple of pics:

Look into the Light

Look into the Light

By the time we had completed the challenge set and got back to the car it was very warm so we decided to head back so we could grab a couple of Ciders and allow Ben to run around the playground. A perfect way to end the afternoon all round we think.

Monday started off with a huge breakfast before setting off for the lovely Lynton/Lynmouth area. The drive along the coast is just sensational, we did a couple of drive by's on the way and a YOSM in which got Kate appearing on the cache page.

Countisbury Hill YOSM

 
View from YOSM

Next we carried on to the wonderful campsite Sunny Lyn to pitch our tent before heading off to do a simply wonderful series Hunter's Hike.
The views on this walk really are breathtaking, the walk takes you high above the valley, along the North Devon coastline, up a quiet country lane, down through woodlands and along the river Heddon.

Getting Higher up

At the coast

What a great footpath

Don't get many coastlines better than this.

Into the valley

This is definitely one of the best walks we have done and we were fortunate to have wonderful sunshine the whole way. All 25 caches were found and we all went back to the campsite happy.

Sunny Lyn is one of the best UK campsites we have stayed at. We all enjoyed a nice lazy couple of hours drinking our drinks which we chilled in the river at the end of our pitch.

Chilling the drinks

Pre-water fight

We popped into Lynmouth as we had promised Ben a fish and chip tea and afterwards took a walk in the evening to the nearest pub and had a quick drink there before heading back to the tent.

Chips on the seafront

Lynmouth


Tuesday - Our last day, so after enjoying a Full English breakfast in the site café we packed up the tent before taking in one more series and then heading home.

Yer Tis is another series next to the Hunter's Hike one and another lovely walk was enjoyed. It wasn't quite as scenic but still fantastic to walk in hot sunshine.
We had our first dnf on the trip as we did the walk but it turned out that it was missing so not all bad.


More views on Yer Tis series.

So after a tiring walk in the heat it was time to say goodbye to North Devon and head back home to prepare for our next trip to Piratemania on Thursday.