This cache is located along a disused section of the
Bristol and Gloucester Railway that used to run between St
Philips and Yate. It is hidden near where the line used to run
under Lodge Causeway in Fishponds, adjacent to the former site of
the
Pountney
& Co Pottery. The location is now much better known for
being along the
Bristol-Bath
Cycleway and this is the main reason that we go past
frequently.
Cycling from Bristol to Bath and back is a truly enjoyable
experience that takes in all sorts of different places on the way
and, fortunately for the cachers amongst us, there are plenty of
opportunities to make some finds. If you want to go further, the
cycleway continues on the other side of Bath city centre to
Bradford-on-Avon (follow route 4 signs) along the Kennet & Avon
canal - which is also lovely and comes complete with caches.
This is our first, long overdue, hide and is intended to make
the route into/from Bristol more enjoyable by filling in part of
the cache gap between the city centre and Staplehill. Finding is
intentionally easy as we wanted to encourage use of the path to
make the longer trip to/from Bath and back so it shouldn’t cause
too much of a delay on the journey - just time to catch a breath
and stop pedalling for a while.
The area can be busy at times but it shouldn’t be too hard to
prop your bike up and pretend to fix something while fishing out
the container. We have not visited the site much at night and so
can’t vouch for its character in the dark. At night the biggest
risk probably comes from getting rundown by cyclists with candles
for front lights as this part of the path is not well endowed with
lighting. For cache and dashing the nearby supermarket makes most
sense for parking and access to the path.
Take time to have a look under the bridge that carries Lodge
Causeway which was widened in 1926 - you can see the remains of the
old bridge, and the brickwork on the underside of the new bridge is
impressive.
After getting muggled this cache is going Micro for a while
until confidence in ability of the location to hide caches is
restored. We are not big Micro fans ourselves so apologies if the
container is a dissappointment - just remember that you probably
wouldn't have noticed the location if you weren't trying to find a
cache.