Bridge Over the River Eyre (Canterbury) West Eyreton, South Island, New Zealand
By TheWanglers and Team_Gaters on 05-Jan-15. Waypoint GC5JVNJ

gone

WOW what a cool spot! I managed to get over the prickly bits with only a few scratches, then I managed to not fall into the river that was much closer and higher than I expected, and then I managed not to find the cache! After reading the description - duh! - at least I knew where to look, but I am pretty sure it's not there sorry. The CO may want to visit while the blackberries are still down from my taming and before they recover for spring...

After lunch in Rangiora, StreetWalker and I headed towards Oxford on a lovely sunny day to find a few caches. We didn't clear out the area, and will be back another time for some more caching (no great hardship).
With the amount of water in the river today, the riverbed option was out for us. After trying a few routes, we found the one which had the least blackberry barring the way, but we were glad to be wearing trousers not shorts today. I let SW go the last few metres to the cache through the worst of the brambles . Good to find a large sized container, but the contents were a little too damp to leave a TB.
Didn't know this bridge was here, thanks for bringing me here and TFTC.

#13172. What a great bridge (though now in a state of disrepair)! Working out a route to GZ was tricky. Walking up the river bed was ruled out (too much water in the river for our liking). We tried one route, but the path petered out. We then tried another route closer to the river. It was a bit better, but there was still a stretch of blackberry bashing required. Stamping canes down, and thrashing around with a walking pole meant injuries were kept to a minimum, and once at the bridge the cache was quickly located. TFTC.

The lid of the ammo can is missing and the rock was out of the tin when we found it, log book is a little damp although plastic bag seems sound. Looked around but didn't obviously see the lid (but could easily be hidden by spring weed growth). We left the cache where we found it - not concealed, but not likely to be stumbled across.

We know this area generally but had never been down this particular path, and as we approached the ford on the unsealed road in our definitely not off-road vehicle, I wondered whether this was such a good idea after all. But all was well, an impression reinforced by the grandma who waved as she drove in the opposite direction in her Toyota Starlet. The bridge has definitely suffered a bit from some of the wild weather since the photo in the listing was taken.
Found quite easily, but needs maintenance - separate log to follow.

21/09/2016 4:50:00 PM
7600
I had planned to head out to the Port Hills and find some caches and get some walking done there, but after waking with a splitting headache, and having had next to no sleep, that plan was off, as I barely felt well enough to get out of bed!!! And so by afternoon, though I was feeling a little better, by the time I got some stuff around the house done, it was definitely too late to head out there - so I decided to head towards oxford and find a few on the way there, and that way there wouldn't be any traffic like if I headed towards town.

I was aiming for at least 7, to get today to be a darker calendar day also (at least 11 finds), but ended up overachieving and actually finished the day with double at 14 new finds!

What an awesome bridge!! Love it!! I'm surprised it's still standing though - doesn't look very stable!!

Just as I disappeared into the greenery though, a whole bunch of cars drove by and this became like a highway! Typical!

Consec caching day # 1417

TFTC!!

Found it

Found today with BDP82. He did the walk up to the cache and left my diamond. Very cool old Bridge. Little bits of surprise history all over this part of Canterbury. Would not see it but for geocaching. Lid gone, log book soaked. Thanks for the cache.

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Found without too much difficulty (apart from being grabbed by blackberry thorns!!!) There is no lid on the box, and it had water in it. The plastic box was ok- but still rather damp. Might need a check-up. tftc

An interesting spot. Would like to know the history of the bridge and the reason for it. Thanks for the hide.

Elephoant tracks to an elephant sized cache. A wee detour from the lolly shop to find this. Cache all good. Cheers.

Kiwi Moose was able to arrange a day pass, so we took the opportunity to go travel to North of the Waimak to do some treasure hunting. Had a great day, signed most logs KM+KR or vice versa. 8am to 10pm, a long day.

Thanks to all the CO's for their hides.

A bit of a diversion from the Lollies but well worth it. I remember this bridge from a few drive pasts so I thought I might walk over it for fun - ah, nope, not today. A short stroll up the elephant trail and success. Ohhhh, massive box. Lovely! Cheers

Made a quick find in an interesting spot. Followed te elephant tacks and there she was. TFTC.

Great container, great place. TFTC from Germany

Magnificent. And the Californian poppies (or Johnny-go-to-beds, as we used to call them!) were a beautiful sight in the riverbed.

Found it. Thanks.

The next on our 210 run finding caches for the day with our team of four- HHSS. Working as a team each doing diff. roles we were able to speed up the find rate quite well and we managed to do about the first 100 with no Did Not Finds but after that the distances increased and the find rate dropped but we still managed to finish the day with 210 cache. The seagnoid has planned etc our route so it was all efficient Thank you to The Seagnoid for this pre work and thank you to the different cache Owners for these great, interesting caches. I just loved the huge chuppa chup and all the veges and fruit. . Thank you for the cache and another smiley face.

[green] Out with Hanknstone, Haydn.seek and thestepahine on an awesome 200+ day. We managed to get 210 caches in 11 hours, an average of 3 minutes each. There were a few awesome caches out there, but mostly it was a blur. Thanks to all the cache owners, and my apologies about the cut and paste!
Signed log as HHSS.
River? What river? This is Marlborough - they grow californian poppies in their rivers, not water.

Hanknstone, Haydn.seek, the Seagnoid and I had a challenge of doing 200 caches in a day. We started at 7:30am and finished around 8:00pm with a total of 200+. Apologies for the copy and pasting of the logs but there were so many we found that it would take so long to write them all up individually! Thank you for the find.

Out and about with Team FARKIS (fmz, alpenmilch80, rosmar, kiwi.bug, indianajill, slieschke) finding a great mix of cache hides and cache containers. What a mad bunch of cachers to be with, loads of fun and games with very little sleep over the 3 nights of the MEGA TFTC.

Out and about during the mega event with Team FARKIS (fmz, alpenmilch80, rosmar, kiwi.bug, indianajill, slieschke). This was one of the caches we found during the weekend. TFTC!!!

Our team for the Mega weekend was signing as VYV (Vamber, Yorkshirekiwi83 and Vistra). we found quite a few in the short space of time we were together, where I can I will make comments about the cache. We had teamed up back in Auckland and had been busy planning what we were going to target and in what order, of course plans changed even more so when we were down here, but that is part of what makes it fun and I had a great time over the weekend, thanks to all the CO's for placing.

Quick find TFTC


[u][Teal]New Zealand Geocaching Adventure 2016 Labour weekend in Turangi visit [url=http://www.nzgeocachingadventure.nz/]New Zealand Geocaching Adventure 2016[/Url] [/Teal][u]

Day 3 in Christchurch and I again teamed up with yorkshirekiwi83 and vamber for another big day of caching. We signed the logs as "VYV" to save time and space on the logs. We made an early start to the day as we knew we would be going for 200 caches. We started with the Lolly Scramble caches (which we had begun the night before) and made our way up to Oxford, before returning to Kaiapoi and working on the Horses 101 series, finding a number of other caches along the way. Apologies for the generic logs, but thank you to all the cache owners for placing these caches!

We loved this spot and the large cache hidden here - favourite point added!

[red] For information on the 2016 New Zealand Geocaching adventure being held in Turangi please visit... http://www.http://www.nzgeocachingadventure.nz [/red]

Out hunting today with Team FARKIS (FMZ, Alpenmilch80, Rosmar, Kiwibug, Indiana Jill & Slieschke). Enjoyed my time out and a lot of laughter’s with this crazy bunch collecting geocaches all around CHCH. TFTC

Another quick find on Day 2 of the Mega, hitting the roads of Canterbury with vistra and yorkshirekiwi83, gathering the caches that the area had to offer. A quick find here, thanks for the hide!

This was such a beautiful location that we just admired and took a few photos after finding the cache and before we moved on. Thanks for bringing us here!!

Guwapo's out on the third day of our Mega Adventure with Uncle Granville and the PEGS crew. Salamat!

Found during the Mega weekend on bit of a tiki-tour around the Canterbury back blocks. Great weather, great caches, great fun! Thanks to all the cache owners for putting out and maintaining caches for us to find. All in all, a fun road trip with Boxhill and Yeetrees, we signed many of the logsheets as YGB to save both time and logsheet spaces.

TFTC TheWanglers

Good area for a cache and enjoyed seeing the old foot bridge.
Nice big container. SL TFTC

In town for a “Mega” weekend of caching. I joined up with Yeetrees and gonefishing to form Team YGB. I really enjoyed exploring the country roads of Canterbury. We travelled a fair few Kilometres in the 4 days we were here, and had a great time, with a lot of laughs along the way. Good weather, and good company. It doesn’t get much better than that does it.


Thanks to all the CO’s for all the caches we found.


Cheers and TFTC

Heading towards the Christchurch Mega with tmann421.

Really enjoying the area and the local caches.

TFTC

Out with my sister Chelsea & brother in-law sevren

Quick find.tftc

As with others the ford sign near the main road said closed but the gate was open and not a spot of water anywhere. Choose the hard way to get to GZ and then saw the easy path that Chelzea and IceAngel took. Nice big cache and easily spotted from a distance.

Huge! What a great hide. The ford was supposed to be closed, but we had no trouble getting thru. TFTC

Great spot with zero muggles. Tftc

Great spot, loved the bridge.

TFTC

awesome cache and history. thanks

Nice cache, cool old bridge tftc

A great location. Container a surprise but awesome too. Tftc

Now that is a cache!!! Took travel bug. It was the only one there. Poor old bridge seen better days. No water in the river. I wonder how often there is?

TFTC.
Heading home after a fun hour or so caching and thought just one more.
Pretty dark by the time I got here and was thinking it could be a little testing accessing the cache. But no problems I decided to peruse the area and found a simple access.
Had a look here and there and then wandered a little further - look what I have found - a real geocaching treasure.
Lovely, lovely, lovely and totally prefect for the Tinkler.
Left TB.
A favourite vote from me.
Thanks TW and TG for the entertainment.

After failing to get the FTF near Ohoka this morning I decided to carry on out this way and clean up a few more unfound caches. Going from finding all these park and grabs today, I was a bit worried when I pulled up to this one and saw who had put it here.... oh no what devious clever hard to find cache am I in for... turned out to be easy to find but nevertheless didn't disappoint! I wonder why this river needed a swing bridge, you usually see them over gorges instead of braided rivers... TFTC (1818)

I was out visiting my friend at her parent's farm. She was over from Alexandra. I asked her if she wanted to do some caching after lunch and she was keen. So off we went.
What a strange bridge. Very mysterious. I wonder if that river ever gets any water in it? Where on earth did you earth such a massive, old, cool container? The mystery of the bridge and the cache. Thanks for the hide.

Having an Easter "it's all about the numbers" weekend. Day 2.
Completed the Lolly Trail. Then the Spelling Challenges and then cached my way back to Oxford.
Now doing a last few on the rail trail before dinner and then I came across this one. Cool
Find #106 of 107 today.
TFTC

Great spot. Just need some water in the river. TFTC.

Sweet cache. Local find for me, never knew this bridge was here so cheers. Enjoy the jelly babes

Bridge needs bit of attention. Tftc

Cool bridge

Quick find.

Mr Sharpe braved the blackberry bushes in his jandals to find this cache! What a bridge! But where's the water???? Thanks

#4612 @1050
Back in town for a couple of nights (and one in Nelson in between) for my father's 80th. A quick find after dropping my son off at a friend's place for the weekend (just down the road from this cache). This is an impressive cache - a pity I didn't have anything on me to leave. TFTC.

Nate found it. Awesome bridge.

Wow, beautiful bridge, easy find once we were here

A really special find and a joy to unlock something that wasn't a micro!!! Found Ed's (BaldEd) history lesson fascinating. The bridge was amazing and privately built. Now I wonder where the water went?? A fav from us, thanks.

6510. We were out for an afternnon's geocaching with granddaughter Stella (9) - login name now Starza. The cache was found quickly in a very cool spot for a gigantic cache! This was a case of deja vu as one of our very early cache finds was here. Thanks for the cache. Rodney and Iris.

Found this cache while out geocaching with Grandma and Poppa (Sallies). I have been geocaching with them since I was a baby.Poppa let me find it so that I could log it as a find, now that I am an official geocacher myself. We loved the great big container but not the blackberries! Poppa is going to go back through all his thousands of cache finds and find out which ones I am able to claim as found! Stella.

I had to smile when I received notification of this cache. This, for me, is a quite familiar spot. I had been here 2 times before, for this cache is the 3rd cache placed here. The first cache, Wolffs Bridge (GC1059), I found on my first day geocaching. That cache was my 2nd geocache find. Unfortunately, this cache was muggled after only 7 finds and was archived. It was found again shortly afterwards and GC was unable to un-archive it, causing much frustration to the CO Geoffzone. So, in Feb 2002, rediguana created a new cache (in Geoffzone's name) called Wolffs Revival (GC3C2D) and this cache remained active until it was archived in 2007 when rediguana couldn't find time to maintain it. I just wonder now whether that cache is still there (S43 20.184 E172 17.529, between two trees)? Maybe someone could check?

Back on my first visit here on 22nd Septemeber 2001 I was lead here by the Trimble Scout GPS that I had borrowed from a friend. The Trimble Scout GPS was a mid-1990's, 3-channel gps capable of storing, I think, only 50 waypoints. It had a 4 line LCD display. As it had no compass display, when one navigated toward a waypoint it showed "L" or "R" or a "right-angled arrow symbol". These indicated that your desired waypoint was either to the "left" or to the "right" or was "behind" you . The only other thing it displayed was distance to the waypoint. After using this device to find my first two caches, I was hooked on geocaching and went and purchased my own - the far more capable Garmin 12XL gps .

Today's cache was a quick find due to the elephant tracks. I just hope that that this cache will have a longer longevity than the others.

That is some bridge there must have been a lot more water in the river when it was built. Pedro was the one to brave the blackberries to get to the cache. TFTC

A bit of a scramble TFTC

Who should we meet as they were leaving and us arriving,but Little Horrible.Had a nice catch up,and admired her new Toy.It certainly looks very clever and will make Caching a lot easier with all the Caching Bells and Whistles,but we will stick to our GPS.
Found quickly but declined to walk up there and across the Riverbed Lol.TTB TFTH

This was my FTF cach so very happy. What a cool place.

Published

With TW when the spot was spied on our wee detour after being first on the scene of a car crash (on the main road, one lane bridge, over the Eyre river just out of Oxford) - the crashed car was blocking the bridge, still blocked when we finally left - so we had to take a wee detour through the Ford to head home. A cool spot that deserves a cache...and as BaldEd points out, there have been a couple here. Cool to now have another. TW rather keen getting up there though - very rotten boards!
Watch for blackberry - we tried to trample most of it that was in the way of the cache!
Logging with permission.

bug drop