Trad: 1 Puzzle: 5
Walked: 4.1 miles

It’s been about 7 years since I started on McWomble‘s linked Church Micro series, scattered about on the Dengie peninsula. I’ve had a few of the numbers safely written down for ages, but made a concerted effort to gather a few more a couple of months ago. Then I promptly forgot about them again.

Today I decided to see if I could finally put the series to bed. Several Bonus churches needed collecting, and the Bonus Bonus! (McWomble doesn’t do things by halves). Actually, most of these have now been adopted by Bean & Sprout, but they remain evil and pretty much in their original locations.

The first target was CM541 Mayland which I found eventually after barking up the wrong place for several minutes. It’s a nice neat little church quite a way from the village centre.

I stopped for another puzzle by Bean & Sprout next, Joker – which required a bit of bog snorkelling, but I had come prepared! It’s not a T4 for nothing… Then a quick trad on the way to CM538 Asheldham. Thankfully this was a quick find.

CM536 Tillingham was next, which led me a bit of a merry dance. Eventually I spotted it somewhere where I should have noticed it before.

One more bonus church to go – CM545 Bradwell St. Thomas. It’s a notoriously difficult one to find, even though it only gets a D2 rating. I’m sure the older ones are harder than some now! Anyway, after much grovelling all I came away with were damp knees and stung hands. Drat.

However, undeterred, I was only missing one bonus number, so I headed off to CM546 Bradwell St. Peter and sat in the car park to think about where it might be. Luck was on my side – the number I was missing was only going to be one of a couple of values, since it would be in the sea otherwise! So I made a guess and headed off to my GZ.

I was delighted to find the pot, exactly where it should be. Hurrah! So, just the one cache in the series still to find, but I’ll come back for that another day.