Leri River Crossings – A New Idea for a Geocache Series

Whilst on out walk from Talybont to Borth with Scouts on Friday night, Morgan and I came up with a new idea for a series of geocaches.

We crossed quite a few bridges over the River Leri and decided we could hide a cache at every bridge over the river. After some research with the maps we hatched a plan. Suitable containers were prepared, log books were printed, stash notes laminated and pencils sharpened. We loaded up a bag, charged my GPS and set off to find all of the bridges over the Leri. I actually knew and had been to most of them before but never with a plan to visit them all.

The River Leri is a river in Ceredigion, Wales. It rises at Llyn Craig-y-Pistyll then flows downs through a steep sided it has a mountain stream feel. It opens out a little as it flows through Bont Goch and over a little waterfall before being joined by the Afon Cyneiniog in Cwmere. It continues along the valley to Talybont where it is joined by Afon Ceulan.

Next it makes it way through the steep-sided tree covered valley in Talybont Woods. Continuing on it’s journey to the sea it passes through several caravan sites and under the hump-back bridge in Dolybont before flowing towards the holiday village of Borth. From here it heads directly North through Cors fochno (Borth Bog) one of the largest and finest examples of a raised peat bog in Britain and finally flows into the estuary at Ynyslas and out into Cardigan Bay.

It once flowed into Cardigan Bay at Aberleri, to the south of Ynyslas. In 1824 its route was diverted to provide a harbour for the local shipbuilding industry.

The river is full of life with dippers, otters and plenty of fish.

In June 2012 the Leri was affected by serious flooding causing property damage in Talybont, Dolybont and Borth following torrential rain in the area.

All geocaches in this new series are small containers located on or very near to bridge crossings. There are also a number of fords across the River Leri, some of which are close to the bridges but we haven’t placed caches next to these.

The series could be divided into several linear walks, or one longer walk which often coincides with the Borth to Devil’s Bridge Footpath. The caches are also accessible indiviudally by car with a short walk to most. Parking isn’t great by lots of them so if accessing them by car please park considerately. The walk from Talybont to Borth is particualrly nice with varied terrain and lots of interest. Some of the footpaths run through caravan sites, but there isn’t necessarily vehicle access through the sites.

We started hiding caches halfway along in Talybont and planned to do a few before lunch to see how we got on. The first was on the road bridge in Talybont, then we headed off upstream to a footbridge about 1km along the valley on the southern side of the river at Braich Garw. We’d actually found a geocache here a few years ago but it doesn’t seem to exist anymore so there is now a new one in its place.

Next on the list was another little footbridge a little further upstream near Cerrig Mawr. This required us to drive around to the other side of the valley and we were now on the road to Bont Goch. With geocache number three hidden it was off further upstream to hide number four at another little footbridge near to a small waterfall close to Coed y Parc.

Leri Waterfall

The next river crossing upstream was in Bont Goch itself. The trouble with this was that there is already a cache nearby called ‘Across Wales Walk Check 5 (Bont Goch)‘. We hadn’t looked for it before though, so found it and bumped into a local who knew about many of the geocaches in the area. We told him what we were up to and had a hat about some of the bridges we were visiting. We decided that the rusting cache was too close to the bridge to hide another one here, so that was the end of our morning plans.

There are still two more crossings upstream from here, a small footbridge in the middle of nowhere in the hills and one at the dam were the River Leri emerges from its source at Llyn Craig-y-Pistyll. These will take a bit of trekking and it was now easily lunchtime so they will have to wait for a day when we are feeling adventurous. Morgan and I will probably mountain bike to them one day.

Instead we headed off to Newman’s Garden Centre and lunch in Poppy’s. We hadn’t been here since it changed hands and it felt much brighter and airy and the food was really good.

After lunch it was back to hiding geocaches. This time along the lower stretches of the River Lei between Talybont and Ynyslas. These bridges were all ones that we had crossed on Friday night but rather than walk between them we drove today. There’s a bridge in Riverside Caravan Park, one in Dolybont, one in Glanlerry Caravan Park and another by the sewage treatment works behind the Animalarium at Ynysfergi in Borth. There are now caches at each of these.

We still have one to hide downstream at Ynyslas where both the railway and the road cross the Leri, but we’ll hide one here soon.

For now, there are 8 new caches along the Leri hidden by us and a 9th in Bont Goch that we didn’t hide. There are plenty of others nearby along this route too, so they should keep geocachers busy for a while.

We hope you enjoy looking for them as we had fun hiding them.

Tags: Geocaching