I bought a Garmin eTrex Legend last week so off we went geocaching at the weekend. Our first ever geocache was All Aboard at Lamport Railway just to the north of Northampton. We often walk there but I never knew there was a hidden cache a few metres from the path. The walk is along the route of the railway that used to connect Northampton with Market Harborough which was finally shut down in the eighties. Some enthusiasts have painstakingly restored some of the track and now run steam train trips up and down it. The smell of smoke and steam and the thunder of the train as it trundles past is a great nostalgia trip. There's only about 1.5 miles of track which was recently extended with the aid of a grant to rebuild a bridge over a stream. Unfortunately they're limited by the abandoned Kelmarsh tunnel to the north and urban sprawl to the south so I think it'll forever be a tiny view back in time.

The cache itself was fun to find, although I misread the GPS and scrambled down a bank in the wrong place. When we finally found it there were all kinds of interesting items in there and a very full logbook. We took a baseball card and left a 1916 british penny. Plenty more caches around here and when we've got a bit more experience we've got just the place to set our own!