We love Marl Lane it's our favourite place to wander when we're close to home. It stretches from Station Road in Fordingbridge to Rockbourne Road on the outskirts of Sandleheath. Along its route you can find all sorts of things such as an old WW2 bunker, an old raliway bridge, lots of lovely houses, a rather posh school, some beautiful woodland copses and loads and loads of lovely nature to wonder over. It's also an old lumpy and bumpy beast of a public bridleway it can be a dust bowl in summer and full of muddy puddles when it rains which makes it the perfect place for a geocaching stroll. Having said that the terrain isn't too bad, our little geocacher always enjoys the walk with us.
Parking options are provided in Marl Lane Meander #1 cache description.
This is a straight(ish) run of 8 geocaches from one end to the other, we've built in a a slight detour from Marl Lane to avoid a cache that's already in place but to ensure there are lot's to find on the walk. At the Rockbourne end you can take a short stroll into Sandleheath and find some more caches or do an about turn and head back the way you came.
Please NOTE sadly the Bonus cache has been archived so collecting numbers from relevant caches is no longer necessary
Don't forget to pick up the couple of caches that are not part of the series but are on the route.
If you choose the there and back approach it's a journey of just under 3 miles and should take around 1.5 hrs to complete, with little legs in tow.
Number Eight
Well the walk to 8 is a bit longer as again we are dodging a cache that already lives in these woods Scooby Drew's Sandleheath Adventure. It's one of ours, it's nice and big and has space for swaps, it also has a sad but heartwarming backstory so why not visit it if it's not already a smiley face on your map. On the way to cache 8 you'll also get a choice of paths to take, choose the muddy one it's more direct and mud is fun right? Once at the cache same rules apply thigh whack or tool will be required..........oh and bring a pen.
Please rehide this one well otherwise it becomes very visible from the path.
So you're nearly at the end of Marl Lane, bad planning and poor measuring (by us) meant we couldn't quite squeeze in a ninth.......but hang on maybe we've found another spot for a ninth bonus cache but did you grab all the required info.
We hope you've enjoyed this series of caches and the lovely walk that is Marl Lane.
CONGRATULATIONS TO SALMON AND TROUT AND BADCATS ON THE FTF