Hi folks,

We’ve just had a fantastic few days with friends Alan and Gilly who travelled from the Gower in Wales and Chris and Lucy who came up from Salisbury in Wiltshire, we meandered from Cannock in Staffordshire. We are staying on Briarfields caravan site just outside Cheltenham, a well manicured site with excellent facilities. We arrived within the same hour and after setting up it was time for a plan…. We decided to do some geocaching in the afternoon, a trip into Cheltenham on day 2, a good countryside walk with a bit of geocaching on day 3, a trip to Gloucester and a boat trip on day 4 and go our separate ways on day 5. 

Day 1 was an introduction to geocaching from yours truly, like I was an expert having been only doing it myself for three weeks! It was a good walk which was quite successful, whilst out we decided to go to a local hostelry for dinner, the food wasn’t the best in the world and we were in a dark corner but refreshments were needed so we all polished off the ‘grub’ and a couple of drinks before we retired to our own abodes for the night, day trip to Cheltenham tomorrow….

Day 2 was a bus trip into Cheltenham and a good walk around looking at a bit of history of the place, some cracking gardens, a geocache and, oh some shops. The ‘shops’ bit didn’t last long as we plonked ourselves at a pub for a drink, the most expensive one of our trip! It was around lunchtime and one local told us there was another place around the corner that did good food, off we went to find Wetherspoons. The local was spot on, food was good and drinks really cheap. Fed and watered it was a meander back to the bus stop for the short trip back to the site for dinner in our own vans. A really good day but tomorrow will be a bit more strenuous, a different set of geocaches and a few miles to cover……

We were heading out across country which inevitably, after a few caches, was going to end at a pub and lunch. All went really well getting to the pub, we had a few drinks, the food was great and the hospitality was very good. We visited the ‘petting farm’ and noticed that there was a camping area at the pub, good to note for the future. We had another good walk back to the site where the ‘Molki’ (a scandanavian skittles game) was brought out, we were all that poor at it that we had to change the rules several times otherwise we would have been playing in the dark. By pure luck and certainly no skill, a launch by Maureen to score us 11 won the game. Off we went back to our own motorhomes for dinner. Trip to Gloucester in the morning.

The bus trip into Gloucester was uneventful but the walk to the quay and docks was an eye opener, there were quite a few locals sitting or walking around drinking and the area was quite rundown until….. we turned the corner into the dock area and what a difference. This is where the money had been spent and the place was full of history. We found the museum and purchased our boat trip tickets. The trip was quite good with the commentary along the way however it was fairly obvious that a lot of the historical buildings had gone to make way for such things as a ‘Sainsbury’s, student accommodation and even the diversion of the canal itself to make way for a roundabout and a ‘Burger King’!  After disembarking we had lunch and a beer and before heading off back to the bus stop we visited the Cathedral which was used for Harry Potter filming. Back at the site Maureen and I did one geocache, just to keep our skills up :) before we all met up again and went for dinner. We got back to the motorhome about ten, early night ready for our trip to Hereford tomorrow

We are now in Hereford for a few days after what has been a brilliant stopover with our friends, plans afoot for a meet up on the Isle of Wight in 2023…….