Epping Forest, Essex.

We only felt like doing a couple of caches today (although we are trying to collect the Carnival souvenirs), so we headed off to Epping Forest to complete two multi caches and a ghost cache as these had a few favourite points to add to our friends league scores.

We parked easily enough and headed into the forest where I discovered some forest guardians – standing proud, old tree stumps.

After collecting the clues,

We found the first cache.

Next we headed along the road to find some figures on a nearby Masonic lodge and once The man had done the calculations we were again in luck with a magnetic micro cache.

Finally we headed off to collect the virtual cache at the nearby Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge.

This is the only existing royal hunting grandstand in the world. It was built in 1543 for Henry VIII and is free to visit. Inside there are cool displays explaining life in Tudor and Elizabethan times.

You can even dress up in Elizabethan fashion.

Most fascinating to me was that they had found an apotropaic mark on the wood. Typically these were marks scratched into door or window frames to stop witches from entering.

The house also had several stuffed deer.

We didn’t do too badly today and I have over 100 souvenirs and so have gained four souvenirs.