To avoid you embarrassment, I’ll start off with a very useful tip – its pronounced Luck-silly-un. Fortunately we had this from a taxi driver early on which certainly helped!
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The weather forecast forced us to change our plans for Day 2 and we opted for a shorter walk so as to not to be too far from the car should the worse occur. We decided to visit the Luxulyan Valley first and then to take in some more of the HALO series later.
The Luxulyan Valley was certainly the find of the week and somewhere we would never have found without the excellent Luxulyan Valley series of caches. We originally had no intention of bothering with the Earth Cache as well, but as soon as we saw the area, it became a must to do!
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The Luxulyan Valley is probably the most fascinating area we have encountered since moving to the south-
west just over 3 years ago. There’s no point in me writing too much here but to point you to this site which gives an excellent overview: Luxulyan Valley The series of caches was brilliant and took us all around the Valley and the earth cache asked a few questions, both a real must for anybody visiting the area.
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Having completed our walk around the Valley we took to the road to link up once again with HALO. No roads this time, but some nice footpaths through a lovely area. A total of 13 caches took us back to the car, only 8 of which were HALO, so not really a HALO day at all! Just before we got back to the car we crossed the Treffry viaduct, which carried the tramway high above the valley. However, this amazing structure is also an aquaduct as it carries a leat below the tramway!
We then drove to the pub at Luxulyan where the bonus cache is for the Luxulyan Valley series. However, we had two bonus letters missing so were unable to solve the bonus which will have to wait for our next visit to this lovely area. In total we walked 7.3 miles, taking 6 hours 20 minutes to find and log our 21 caches, plus 1 earth cache and 1 DNF on the Luxulyan Valley series.
After reading Dave’s Halo stories with interest today I finally set off to do an almost identical walk through the Luxulyan Valley. The preparation was time consuming for me as I attempted my own form of paperless caching. I think another topic for discussion will be around how other cachers plan and prepare for long walks with lots of caches.
The sat nav was reliable today and got me to Black Hill car park via a road so narrow that the hedgerows either side brushed against the car and there was the little strip of grass in the middle of the road which I hoped indicated infrequent use.
Today was one of my ‘dizziest’ expeditions for a long time. For the valley series of caches I seemed to be going around in circles always choosing the wrong path, my GPS doesn’t seem to function well with Cornish co-ordinates. Out of 30 possible caches on my list I ended up with 15. I cut my walk short because I’d taken so long to do the valley caches and yet at the end of it all my phone app told me I’d walked 17 miles! The whole route was only going to be 8 max, and whilst I said I went around in circles it wasn’t quite that much. No, the only logical explanation is that I was what I believe is called pixie-led.
After the valley experience I did get to pick up a few of the Halo caches; had a glimpse of the Gribbin and got inside an adit. I was pleased to get that one as I thought it might be a problem being by myself with a dog but Ebony was happy to come inside too.
So all in all a good day out caching and as this is only an hours drive from Plymouth I will probably return for another attempt at some more of the Halo caches.