I have been aware of a Tree Climb cache that dangles you over a river in the village of Swallowfield in Berkshire for a while now but just have not had a chance to go take a peek.
A Tree Climb cache does exactly what it says on the tin. The cache is normally suspended high in the branches of a tree and its up to you to get up there to sign the log. Obviously there is an element of danger involved but being a foolhardy kind of chap that just makes me what to it that much more.
Finding a handy parking space by Swallowfield Church, I picked up the Church Micro #2799 – http://coord.info/GC3N510 and made my way do to the tree climb. As you can see from the pictures below the river levels were high. I didn’t think this would be a problem as I wasn’t planning on falling in. However, the tree base was fully submerged and there was no way to get to the trunk without getting soaked through. With that in mind, I retreated to the car to see what others were about. A real shame as the climb itself did look like one of the easier ones I have attempted. I would estimate that the cache was about 25ft up, but the branches of the tree leant themselves very well to tree-climbers.
I managed to snag three more caches in Swallowfield a short walk from the Church, including a couple from the Berkshire Swallowfield Series. Its a nice area here and I will return to complete the series on foot in the next couple of days.
I recommend a journey out to Swallowfield.