Today we did a short, fun, adventurous 1.3 mile geocache walk round Helsington Barrows, just outside of Kendal and very close to Scout Scar.

You can park in the small layby at grid reference 494899, on OS map OL7, on the Brigsteer Road.  There’s only space for about 5 cars max though.  The arrow on the map below in the photos shows the position of the layby.

We’re not hugely into geocaching, but our friends are, so we tagged along and joined in the fun.  They use an app called c:geo (used with a geocaching.com account), although there are plenty out there.  We found the first 5 cache’s and then cut short back to the car.

It was lots of fun, following the arrow on the phone and then searching for the hidden stashes.  A couple of them were really quite high up in the trees!  But others were hidden, easily accessible, under rocks and such.

The views were great, the kids walked over a mile without realising and everyone went home with a treasure they’d found in one of the boxes.  Take with you some cracker toys or small trinkets to replace what you take from the boxes.

The area is covered in limestone, with flaky rocks littering the landscape, interspersed with the odd erratic left over from glacial times.  There are also thousands of grass covered ant hills that the kids loved jumping on!  Scenery looks out towards the Coniston Range from the top, and back over towards Kendal in the other direction.

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