River Croal - The Lost Arches - GC1YNRN

Bridge over the River Croal

After doing the previous cache in Queen's Park, I crossed the brightly coloured bridge over the River Croal and headed on down past the Driving Test Centre towards this location. On the way I passed some gas storage containers which looked strangely beautiful in the morning mist, especially with the trees in front wearing their autumn colours.

Gasometers in the Mist

As I was walking I got a phone call from my son Robert who told me he'd finished his Theory Test with great news - he had PASSED. As I was so close I decided to pop back and meet him outside the Test Centre before we both continued on to this cache.

Robert with his Theory Test Pass Certificate outside the Test Centre

We walked down a leafy back alley between some buildings towards the river and soon saw the road bridge over it. Staring through the railings I had my first glimpse of the Lost Arches, but I realised there would be a better view on the other side.

Autumn Leaves

After a quick feel around I located the tiny magnetic nano cache almost immediately - I'm getting used to finding these now! But I'd made the classic cacher's mistake of not bring anything to write with and a nano is too small to contain a pen or pencil. So I couldn't sign the log and had to make do with standing on the wall and taking a photograph of the cache location - I'll need to come back to sign the log another time.

The Lost Arches

A good little place - I wouldn't have seen these without this cache being here.

A Red Rowan Leaf

P.S. I wanted to go into Bolton and celebrate Robert's success with a hot chocolate and some breakfast, but all he wanted to do was go back to bed - he doesn't generally see daylight much before 1pm in the holidays, having to get up at 6am every morning to get the college bus. Perhaps he also realised that I wanted to do some more caches in Bolton Town Centre too - "It's so unfair" (Kevin).