Next day was a trip to the Apedale mining museum and country park (well the country park is actually just the slag heap, but it’s not the only one of them like this, in fact it’s about all you can do with slag heaps as they are industrial waste and perhaps inherently unstable (remember Aberfan) and so planting them with grass, trees and shrubbery keeps the surface together)
3rd August 2022 – Mined How You Go! GC9MDXT – cache #5984
There is a visitor centre with a cafe and that so that’s where the event was held
3rd August 2022 – Apedale Country Park Lab Cache – Holditch colliery explosion – cache #5985
Of course there was also a set of Lab caches to do
3rd August 2022 – MINI SideTracked – Apedale & Silverdale GC9QEQ5 – cache #5986
And a Heritage railway (of a sort – with another underground)
Jen (Wright Girls) had popped over for an hour as she lives close by, and was still in her dog collar and vicar outfit, so we made her go and find the cache so we could photograph her.
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – A gang of Silver Birches GC9RVTB – cache #5987
I then walked around the country park with Fiona, Matthew, Xander and Warren (FM1906, MatthewGibbs, TeamXW) so we could find the Lab caches and the real caches that were there… I was counting them carefully so I could stop when I reached 5998
3rd August 2022 – Apedale Country Park Lab Cache – Art installation. – cache #5988
3rd August 2022 – Woody GC9A737 – cache #5989
Hidden off track in the woods, it’s a good job there was a few of us as it took a wide area search to locate it
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Mined how you go here GC9RVTH – cache #5990
Not so hard to find this one, base of fence post etc…
3rd August 2022 – Apedale Country Park Lab Cache – Ventilation Chimney – cache #5991
A rather short chimney, a ventilation shaft really, like the ones you get over railway tunnels
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Watermills Chimney GC9RVTM – cache #5992
Always nice to find a cache by a bench so you can sit down…pity there were several benches and the cache was not at the first one we tried
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Feeding time! GC9RVTP – cache #5993
Feeding time for the squirrels I presume, maybe a bird table I suppose, anyway the cache was hidden nearby
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Is that tree climbable? GC9RVTR – cache #5994
Yes, relatively so, not that we climbed it, we arrived to find another cacher up the tree who was going round on his bike
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Conservation Area GC9V3CH – cache #5995
Many caters were wandering around so it was often easier to see where other people were stopping further down the path than to follow your GPS to the cache location
3rd August 2022 – Apedale – Wheely good! GC9RVV8 – cache #5996
At the highest point on the slag heap is a replica mine wheel which gives the cache I’d name, and a real coal tub wagon where the cache is hidden
3rd August 2022 – Apedale Country Park Lab Cache – Top of the park – cache #5997
There were other caches in the park and the others went off to find them, but I could only find one more cache here and there was still one Lab to go, that by the gate on the road in, so I headed back to the visitor centre and car park
3rd August 2022 – Apedale Country Park Lab Cache – Commemorative stone. – cache #5998
And there we were, Lab caches finished and 5998 caches found, just the evening event and then I was ready for the 6,000th
3rd August 2022 – We want your Brains! GC9MDX – cache #5999
Another well attended quiz, run by some bloke who made a name for himself putting on online quizzes during the lockdowns (never heard of him myself), quite an entertaining evening
