Further Malawi Learning and Hiking for Geocaches

Another week, another meeting. But this one was the last before Half Term. It's only a week off but we do miss it.

But anyway, what did we get up to? First up, the younger sections: Squirrels & Beavers.

They continued to learn about Malawi as part of the expedition badge. There were running games and building houses with construction blocks.

There was also a little bit of bittersweetness because Annalise and Poppy, our very first Beavers, became the first of our original gang to move up to our Cub section. They'll be missed in Beavers, but we're looking forward to them being full time Cubs!

Working together to build a house

Another team build

Admiring the tallest tower

Running games

Awarding Poppy her Moving Up badge ahead of her leaving Beavers to go to Cubs

Poppy shakes hands with the group to say goodbye

Annalise's turn to be presented with her badge

Annalise says goodbye

The Cubs and Scouts' meeting was a little different than usual because we were out and about. Not just to a Geocache around the corner from the meeting place, but this time it was to the local country park!

We met in the car park for Alver Valley Country Park, luckily avoiding most of the rain. Once we had all arrived, it was time to look for the first cache.

The clue was "Under a gorse bush"

Sadly, it wasn't a very productive walk. The first cache we couldn't find under the big gorse bush or the small gorse bush, despite our best efforts. We looked for ages but due to the time limit of our meeting, we couldn't spend as long as we'd have liked.

This cache was part of a puzzle. Mongoose recognised the song, but we still couldn't work it out.

The second cache started at the top of a hill and encouraged us to head north to solve a series of puzzles. There was a song to listen to and Mongoose was able to identify it as being Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and our guess was something to do with the diamonds on the chain link fence, but we got stuck from there.

The final one was another puzzle which involved reading a story. We couldn't work that one out either! But we'd also run out of time so we needed to head back to the meeting point for them to be collected.

Some of us logged the difficulty finding the caches on the app and the creator of these specific caches got in touch with us. It turns out that not only are they a local cache creator, they're also on the Geocaching UK committee so they've offered to come out to our group after Half Term! How lucky are we!

Our walk tracked: 1.78 miles!!

Although we did get caught by the rain a little bit, it wasn't too heavy and didn't last too long which was a good thing as it was a really long walk! The group did amazingly well and it's triggered a new hobby in some of our newer members who weren't with us for the initial meeting.

So, it's Half Term next week which means there's no meeting but when we go back, it's a very special meeting: our 2nd birthday!!

See you in June!