Icarus

Icarus

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A Bit of Mythology

The beginning of our family holiday to Crete, in search of the mythical Icarus. Well, not really, but it’s a convenient title for the first post of the holiday, when I couldn’t think of a better one.

There are significant differences between our story and that of Icarus, as subsequent posts will show. The main ones are:

  • Icarus was trying to escape from Crete, whereas we were trying to get there
  • Icarus had wings made of feathers and wax. As far as I know, the wings we used were mainly aluminium and kerosene
  • We survived the trip out

So apart from it being totally different, it’s quite similar. Probably. Anyway, Icarus was Greek, and Crete is involved in the story somewhere. So that’ll do for me.

The lesson to learn here is that if you’re interested in actual Greek mythology, then this probably isn’t going to be the most informative location for you.

Setting Off

We’d decided a while back when we booked the holiday that we don’t especially like UK regional airports. Some are OK. I guess Birmingham is OK. But Stansted is a pain in the posterior to reach from our house and going through Luton is one of the most soul-destroying activities known to mankind. So we upgraded our flights to be with BA on a scheduled flight from Heathrow Terminal 5. It wasn’t much more expensive, and promised to be altogether more pleasant.

And then, of course, it became obvious we were still in a pandemic and Heathrow is short-staffed. So flights are being canceled and they don’t always manage to load the bags. So it promised to be a bit of a wild-west experience. But nevermind. We’re booked, so that’s the end of it.

The flight we were booked on is a daily one which leaves Heathrow at 8am UK time, flys to Heraklion, refuels and then flies home again. We hoped the 8am take-off and the fact that it’s the only Heraklion flight of the day meant there was a high chance of it not being busy, and not being cancelled.

We left home at about 3:45am. It’s an hour to Heathrow from our house and we were supposed to check in 3 hours before our schedule take-off.

The drive went well and we were at the Heathrow Meet-and-Greet parking before you could say Jack Robinson. Well, not quite that quick, but there weren’t any hold-ups. We were there so early that the Heathrow T5 Meet-and-Greet wasn’t open. We know from past experience that they don’t arrive until 5am, but that was perfect. After a few minutes of lingering the guys turned up and we were away.

Flying

Despite being asked to arrive three hours before our flight, we couldn’t actually drop our luggage off until two hours before. “Why?” one wonders. Mysteries of the universe. Anyway, we couldn’t drop the bags off until 6am, so we took them with us into Cafe Nero to grab some breakfast. Kas had taken the tactically brilliant move of buying those little sensor things you can put in your bag so you can track them on the phone.

Once we did drop the bags off, the walk through security at Heathrow was not unpleasant. Both kids got stopped and frisked. Neither adult did.
And then we had about 90 minutes to waste inside the departure lounge. It was quite busy in there. We had a bit of shopping to do – we needed sweets to treat popping-ears on the plane, and Venus had forgotten to put her lens cleaner in the suitcase, so it got snatched, so we had to buy more.

The plane was a nice new-ish Airbus thing with over 200 seats, most of which were full. The tags told us that all four bags were on the plane as well as us being there.

The first part of the flight was grey and cloudy, so not much to see out of the window apart from the “top” bits of the Alps poking their heads through the clouds. Once we got over to northern Italy there was a very clear view of Venice out of the right side, and then we flew all the way down the Dalmatian Coast and over Athens before crossing the Greek Islands to reach Crete.

In the baggage hall we could confirm on Kas’s phone that all four bags were, indeed, somewhere in Heraklion Airport. They all popped up on the conveyor eventually.

Driven in Style

I booked a transfer from the airport to our hotel in a private minibus. Partly because I didn’t want to sit on a big bus, and partly because we’d decided not to rent a car for the whole holiday.

The hotel does an all-inclusive package. It seemed wasteful to then book a car for the full period because I’d feel guilty about not using it. And anyway, I didn’t fancy renting a car large enough to take the four of us plus our luggage. That’s partly because the roads in Crete aren’t wide, and partly because the cost of renting a big car was ridiculous.

So we got a private minibus. That meant there was a bloke waiting in the airport for us carrying a sign with my name on it. I’ve never done that before.

He got us to our hotel in about half an hour, which was great. He knew the way, which is good because we didn’t.

Checking In

The process of checking in was unnecessarily painful, in my opinion. We had to fill an online form for everyone. It didn’t seem to work. After 20 minutes of farting around he gave us some paper forms and we filled them in by hand. Job done. We’re staying at the Panorama Village in Agia Pelagia by the way.

And then, of course, because we booked all-inclusive, we are obliged to wear little plastic tags around our wrists for the duration. They don’t come off. Not in a way whereby they can be put back on, anyway. Unless you’re Venus. She can get hers over her wrist and hand.

Enough

And that was more or less enough for one day apart from discovering a couple more things about the hotel.

  • The all-inclusive drinks come in small paper cups during the day but glasses during meal service and in the “proper” bar
  • The air conditioning in the rooms switches off if the balcony doors are open
  • There’s a supermarket down the road (within 100m) that does drinks and multiple foodstuffs at very reasonable prices, for those periods when we’re going to be out of the room

Crete 2022

Crete 2022

Crete

July 21st to August 4th 2022

A family holiday to the tourist-central island of Crete.

Despite the tourists, it’s really very lovely.

We decided to try an all-inclusive hotel for the first time.

We also decided not to rent a car for the whole period, but we did still manage to get around quite a lot.

Heraklion Airport

Panorama Village Hotel

Agia Pelagia Beach

Psychro Cave

Rethymnon

Spinalonga

Samaria Gorge

Achlada

Knossos

Georgioupolis

Caching in the Mountains

Acqua Plus

Rodia

Acqua Plus

Icarus

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A Bit of Mythology

The beginning of our family holiday to Crete, in search of the mythical Icarus. Well, not really, but it’s a convenient title for the first post of the holiday, when I couldn’t think of a better one.

There are significant differences between our story and that of Icarus, as subsequent posts will show. The main ones are:

  • Icarus was trying to escape from Crete, whereas we were trying to get there
  • Icarus had wings made of feathers and wax. As far as I know, the wings we used were mainly aluminium and kerosene
  • We survived the trip out

So apart from it being totally different, it’s quite similar. Probably. Anyway, Icarus was Greek, and Crete is involved in the story somewhere. So that’ll do for me.

The lesson to learn here is that if you’re interested in actual Greek mythology, then this probably isn’t going to be the most informative location for you.

Setting Off

We’d decided a while back when we booked the holiday that we don’t especially like UK regional airports. Some are OK. I guess Birmingham is OK. But Stansted is a pain in the posterior to reach from our house and going through Luton is one of the most soul-destroying activities known to mankind. So we upgraded our flights to be with BA on a scheduled flight from Heathrow Terminal 5. It wasn’t much more expensive, and promised to be altogether more pleasant.

And then, of course, it became obvious we were still in a pandemic and Heathrow is short-staffed. So flights are being canceled and they don’t always manage to load the bags. So it promised to be a bit of a wild-west experience. But nevermind. We’re booked, so that’s the end of it.

The flight we were booked on is a daily one which leaves Heathrow at 8am UK time, flys to Heraklion, refuels and then flies home again. We hoped the 8am take-off and the fact that it’s the only Heraklion flight of the day meant there was a high chance of it not being busy, and not being cancelled.

We left home at about 3:45am. It’s an hour to Heathrow from our house and we were supposed to check in 3 hours before our schedule take-off.

The drive went well and we were at the Heathrow Meet-and-Greet parking before you could say Jack Robinson. Well, not quite that quick, but there weren’t any hold-ups. We were there so early that the Heathrow T5 Meet-and-Greet wasn’t open. We know from past experience that they don’t arrive until 5am, but that was perfect. After a few minutes of lingering the guys turned up and we were away.

Flying

Despite being asked to arrive three hours before our flight, we couldn’t actually drop our luggage off until two hours before. “Why?” one wonders. Mysteries of the universe. Anyway, we couldn’t drop the bags off until 6am, so we took them with us into Cafe Nero to grab some breakfast. Kas had taken the tactically brilliant move of buying those little sensor things you can put in your bag so you can track them on the phone.

Once we did drop the bags off, the walk through security at Heathrow was not unpleasant. Both kids got stopped and frisked. Neither adult did.
And then we had about 90 minutes to waste inside the departure lounge. It was quite busy in there. We had a bit of shopping to do – we needed sweets to treat popping-ears on the plane, and Venus had forgotten to put her lens cleaner in the suitcase, so it got snatched, so we had to buy more.

The plane was a nice new-ish Airbus thing with over 200 seats, most of which were full. The tags told us that all four bags were on the plane as well as us being there.

The first part of the flight was grey and cloudy, so not much to see out of the window apart from the “top” bits of the Alps poking their heads through the clouds. Once we got over to northern Italy there was a very clear view of Venice out of the right side, and then we flew all the way down the Dalmatian Coast and over Athens before crossing the Greek Islands to reach Crete.

In the baggage hall we could confirm on Kas’s phone that all four bags were, indeed, somewhere in Heraklion Airport. They all popped up on the conveyor eventually.

Driven in Style

I booked a transfer from the airport to our hotel in a private minibus. Partly because I didn’t want to sit on a big bus, and partly because we’d decided not to rent a car for the whole holiday.

The hotel does an all-inclusive package. It seemed wasteful to then book a car for the full period because I’d feel guilty about not using it. And anyway, I didn’t fancy renting a car large enough to take the four of us plus our luggage. That’s partly because the roads in Crete aren’t wide, and partly because the cost of renting a big car was ridiculous.

So we got a private minibus. That meant there was a bloke waiting in the airport for us carrying a sign with my name on it. I’ve never done that before.

He got us to our hotel in about half an hour, which was great. He knew the way, which is good because we didn’t.

Checking In

The process of checking in was unnecessarily painful, in my opinion. We had to fill an online form for everyone. It didn’t seem to work. After 20 minutes of farting around he gave us some paper forms and we filled them in by hand. Job done. We’re staying at the Panorama Village in Agia Pelagia by the way.

And then, of course, because we booked all-inclusive, we are obliged to wear little plastic tags around our wrists for the duration. They don’t come off. Not in a way whereby they can be put back on, anyway. Unless you’re Venus. She can get hers over her wrist and hand.

Enough

And that was more or less enough for one day apart from discovering a couple more things about the hotel.

  • The all-inclusive drinks come in small paper cups during the day but glasses during meal service and in the “proper” bar
  • The air conditioning in the rooms switches off if the balcony doors are open
  • There’s a supermarket down the road (within 100m) that does drinks and multiple foodstuffs at very reasonable prices, for those periods when we’re going to be out of the room

Agia Pelagia

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Early Morning Walk

We spent the day in our holiday resort of Agia Pelagia, and indeed, mainly at our hotel. Well, it was our first day, and everyone was a bit pooped after spending most of the previous day traveling.

I’d sort of set myself the target of going for a walk each morning on this holiday on days when we’re not going somewhere else. This was the first of these. The plan was to walk to nearby geocaches first thing in the morning. That way, it wouldn’t be so hot (I hoped) and the ladies wouldn’t miss me.

There’s a beach about 500m from the hotel as the crow flies. However, I’m well known for not being a crow, so I had to take the road. The walk down is a shade over a kilometre, but of course it’s all downhill. This is true of most of Crete. The journey to the actual sea from anywhere more than 100m away invariably involves going down a steep hill. There are some slightly flatter bits, but not many. Crete is mainly composed of mountains surrounded by sea. Wherever there’s a relatively flat bit, there’s a large town.

Agia Pelagia isn’t on a relatively flat bit, and therefore isn’t a large town. It’s more of a spread-out village. I suspect most of the buildings here have low occupancy during the winter. Maybe we should try coming back then. It might be cooler and easier to get around.

Going Downhill Rapidly

Back at the plot, I walked down first to a little church that should have been the start point for a geocache. I couldn’t find it and was a bit spooked by loads of workmen nearby, so I left it. From here it took about 10 minutes down to the beach, and there I found my first ever geocache in Greece. 5 minutes later I found my second one, at the location of the first photo on this post. By this time it was beginning to look a lot like breakfast, so I started my way back up.

The walk up took somewhat longer, even without me stopping at the church to have a second pop at the multi-geocache. On the way up, I did a Bono ‘cos I still couldn’t find what I was looking for. I did find the container, but sadly it didn’t contain all the required information.

Before Lunch

By the time I got back up to the top of the hill it was well into breakfast time, so I met up with the girls and we went off to see what the restaurant could offer. As with dinner, it was a substantial buffet affair with multiple options. Plenty of choice for even the pickiest of eaters, of which we have at least two.

After breakfast the kids fancied a dip in the pool. I didn’t. So off they went and I laid on the bed for a snooze. I guess that’s an advantage of being in a resort hotel with slightly older kids. Everyone is at liberty to do what they want, even if what they want is to snooze.

By midday the girls had obviously had enough of the pool and wanted to relocate to the restaurant again. That was fine with me.

More of the Same

After lunch I needed some more snoozing. I’d been suffering from an industrial strength headache since we arrived. The kids went for the snoozing option too until about 4pm.

We discovered also that my phone company’s “unlimited” data allowance doesn’t cover when you’re abroad. If you want that, then you have to pay them a fiver a day once you’ve used 12Gb. That’s not a problem for me, but it means that the ladies of the house will be purchasing lots of upgrades to allow them to keep streaming videos.

At about 4pm we decided then it was time to walk down to the supermarket for some ice creams and more water for the rooms. On the way, we went down to the little church to put the proper set of information into the multi-cache I’d attempted earlier. The CO had given me permission to replace it (and had told me what information to add).

Dinner

We had dinner sitting outside on the terrace, staring out at the sea. We decided to make a bit of a plan for the rest of the holiday, so we knew what we were intending to do (or not do) on each day. Venus prefers it that way. I do too in some ways, if only because it allowed me to think about what days we’d need a car and what days we wouldn’t. To be honest though, we were all still too tired to organise any of it, and there was a hint of grumpiness in the air.


Beach and Back

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Early Morning Walk

This was another full day that we spent in and around our resort. We didn’t have a car, so no real possibility of going anywhere else. It was a day where I ended up walking to the beach and back twice in one day. Different beaches though.

I persuaded Ami to come for a walk with me this morning. We walked downhill to a nearby promontory that had a geocache right on the end of it. I nearly chose this location to host my caching event but eventually decided against it. That proved to be a wise move, because in the event there’s nowhere to park nearby and not really much space to stand. And I wouldn’t like to be caught down there in fading light.

Anyway, the walk down included a very, very steep bit of road. The locals seem to go in for very steep roads, and just surface them with barely finished concrete. I guess this enhances grip and maybe lasts a bit longer than tarmac when it’s extremely hot. But anyway, I wouldn’t have fancied trying to take my car down there.

When we came back, some enthusiastic runners were using the same part to do some hill training.

When we got back to the hotel, we treated ourselves to another lavish breakfast.

Bookings

Next on the agenda was to make some bookings for other parts of the holiday. I booked a car for the following three days (Sunday to Tuesday) and then a bus trip to Samaria Gorge for Thursday. There’s no point in having a car for Samaria Gorge – it’s a one-way trip, basically.

For some reason I still had a horrible headache. It was refusing to go away and I began to wonder whether I was suffering from caffeine withdrawal, as I’d not been drinking a lot of coffee so far on the holiday. I’d ruled out alcohol, as I’d not been drinking much. It might have been heat exhaustion, but I’d not been out much. And it could have been the hotel’s apple juice, of which I’d drunk quite a lot since we arrived. But I think it was most likely caffeine withdrawal.

Anyway, after a bit of lazing around, it became lunchtime, and another lavish meal was consumed. By “lavish”, I mean “mainly chips” in the case of our two kids. But they don’t seem out of step with other kids in the hotel, so what the hell?

Afternoon

After lazing around for a while to let the lunch settle, Kas and me went for a walk down to Agia Pelagia Beach in the late afternoon. I failed to find a geocache there – it should have been obvious but I couldn’t find it. It was supposedly around the far side from our hotel and was a bit too far for the previous morning walk. Whilst walking back from there we retired into a beach bar for cold coffees and milkshakes. The girls decided not to come with us because, whatever. I’d left them some Euros to buy ice cream, but apparently that was too much effort too, so they’d both just stayed in their room.

We had a slightly later dinner than the previous two nights, after which the kids gave up and went back to their room again. That left me and Kas to discover the upstairs cocktail bar.

I was hoping very much that a new day would see the end of my headache.


Psychro Cave

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In the Morning

The plan for today was to drive to the Psychro Cave, which according to legend is the birthplace of Zeus. However, as is often the case with mythology, more than one place is reputed to be the birthplace of Zeus. So let’s not get too hung up on that part of the story.

We had a substantial breakfast, as is becoming the habit, and on the way out I went to collect the keys for the car. It was a little white Fiat Panda.

By the time we were ready to leave it was more or less 10 am. The initial challenge with the car was getting used to the controls. Obviously it had the steering wheel on the left side, but also it had a manual gearbox, which I’m not really used to now. And in comparison to my own car, it was a bit underpowered. That meant it took me a few goes to figure out how much welly to give it to reverse up the steep incline of the hotel car park. After that initial issue, I tried always to park at the top, where it was flat.

Anyway, we hit the main road heading east and after 10 minutes stopped to fill the car up with fuel and to buy some water to carry with us. We continued on past Heraklion and Malia before heading uphill.

Lasithi Plateau

The Psychro Cave is on the edge of the Lasithi Plateau – a high endorheic plateau in the middle of the island. Endorheic means that there are no natural outlets for water. The plateau is about 890m above sea level, and we climbed all of them in the car, naturally. In fact, you have to climb over a mountain pass and then descend into the bowl that holds the plateau. It’s quite strange to see. After a couple of days on Crete we were used to everything looking a bit parched, but here it’s an oasis of rich vegetation. They have snow up here (sometimes until May) and all that water stays here because it doesn’t have anywhere else to go. That means in summer it’s warm, sunny and the soil is wet. Perfect growing conditions for numerous crops.

Anyway, enough geography. Psychro Cave is around the south side of the plateau (we entered at the north side), so we had a bit of a drive around. Then in the correct village we headed up a steep bit of hill to park in a fairly tightly packed car park filled with marshals, tat shops, and other cars.

I was aware that the cave itself was uphill from here.

Psychro Cave

Psychro Cave is significantly uphill from the car park. It was maybe 600m across the level, but a good 150-200m of climbing were involved. The walk up was a struggle to be honest, because it was our first major venture out in the daytime sun, plus Venus wasn’t feeling great. It took us a while.

Thankfully, when we reached the top and paid the entry fee, we were treated to a deep limestone cave that was dark, damp and cold. That was quite a relief after the strain of walking up the hill.

The cave contains several chambers and is accessed by a steeply descending (and then ascending) set of concrete stairs. It’s filled with some reasonably familiar limestone cave formations – stalactites and stalagmites (“c” for ceiling, “m” for mud). We’d seen something similar a few years previously in the Grottes de Medous in the Pyrenees. As with the Grottes de Medous, you’re not supposed to use flash photography inside. However, there was nobody here to check whether you did or didn’t.

The walk back down from the cave was a bit quicker and we took the opportunity to sit at a cafe to have ice creams before jumping back into the car.

Driving Home

On the drive back, I’d planned that we stop to grab a few geocaches as we drove back around the plateau edge. That seemed reasonable as we weren’t in a hurry.

The first we stopped for was in a restaurant. Whilst technically it wasn’t necessary to buy anything, we took the opportunity to grab some lunch. It was a beautiful setting.

We grabbed four more caches in the valley floor before beginning the climb back out. I ignored one cache at the base of the climb because it was going to involve doing some hill climbing. So we continued up the hill to a pull off at the top of the mountain pass. This was at the windmills of Seli Ambelou – several ruined windmills on the very top of the mountain ridge, presumably where the wind is strongest. The windmill buildings were stacked up along both sides of the ridge. We decided here would be a good place to take a few landscape photos, so Kas and Ami wandered off to do that while I went for the only cache in the village.

That was enough caching for the day though. Venus still wasn’t feeling great, so we decided to jack it in and go home.

On the route back we took a different road, which brought us out past the “Acqua Plus” waterpark that the hotel advertised day-trips to. This bought us out on the main road somewhat to the west of where we’d been in the morning, and as a result the drive along that road was rather shorter.

Dinner

We got back to the hotel at about 4:30, which left us quite a while before dinner.

While the girls were getting ready, Kas and me retired to the terrace bar for a cocktail or two. I tried ouzo with lemonade and lime juice. It was kind of like mouthwash that gets you drunk. Not entirely unpleasant.

Dinner was fairly quick as the girls were pooped, so Kas and me both retired quite early too. The plan for the following day was an afternoon drive over to Rethymnon.


Rethymnon

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First Thing

The plan for the day was to make a trip to Rethymnon for a wander around the old town. We planned for the afternoon only. That meant a lazy start to the day which I decided to fill with a bit of geocaching.

We went for breakfast a bit earlier (at 8:30) and because of that we weren’t joined by Ami. As I’d got a car and the ladies weren’t desperately keen on spending all day out, I decided I’d head up into the mountains behind Agia Pelagia to do a set of lab caches in the village of Rodia. It looked quite close by, but thankfully I quickly realised that the roads in Crete meant that “close by” was actually a long way, and mainly uphill. So I took the car.

Disaster

Rodia was a (seemingly) traditional village of buildings of mixed ages. The streets were narrow and generally there wasn’t a lot of space anywhere. This caused me a problem. I still wasn’t really very experienced at driving the Fiat Panda at this point. Combining that with narrow streets and parked vehicles made for impending doom. The doom in question manifested itself in the form of a Toyota pickup truck. It was parked (badly) on one side of the road and there was a solid concrete wall on the other. The concrete wall was protected by a bunch of plant pots stuck in the road.

Anyway, you get where this is going. In my efforts to avoid the plant pots I managed to trash the passenger-side wing mirror on the back of that Toyota pickup truck. This drew an amount of arm-waving from the builder it belonged to. I had nowhere to stop really, so I drove on until I found somewhere to park. I then walked back down the road to sort it out.

Sorting it out was very quick. He seemed pleased I’d come back but basically waved me away as if nothing had happened. One look at the back end of the pickup indicated that nothing had indeed happened to the pickup. Nothing you’d notice anyway. The back end already looked like it had been banged, scraped and rammed into several brick walls. So something happened to me, but not to him. Bum! I guess that’s going to cost a few quid then.

Back at the Plot

Back at the main target of the morning – the geocaching. The ad labs were pretty easy to do despite it being punishingly hot up there. There was a bonus physical cache for them which I found easily, even though it involved walking well off the road and into some closed courtyards around what looked like a ruined church. Oh well! At least I got that bit finished.

So back at the car, I managed to push the wing-mirror housing loosely back onto the door frame. It was just about secure enough to drive back to the hotel (slowly). I’d decided by this time that the car wasn’t safe, and I ought to go and own up. The car rental man was very accommodating, but he later told me that was because I didn’t attempt to argue or duck out of responsibility. Anyway, he had another Fiat Panda sitting on the hotel car park. He gave me that one under the original lease. The plan was that they’d just take to cost of the wing mirror out of my original deposit. The option would be to cancel the original contract and make me sign a new one. That would have been a bit tedious.

So I got the keys to my second somewhat-aged Fiat Panda in as many days. I must try not to break this one.

Driving to Rethymnon

By this time it was lunchtime, so the four of us had a quick lunch in the hotel before getting all covered in suncream and heading out to Rethymnon.

Rethymnon was about 50 minutes away to our west, driving mainly along the North Coast Highway. The new car seemed to have a rather noisy air conditioning unit which made driving it a bit more musical than the previous one. I guess that was my punishment for breaking the first one.

Back at the plot, Kas navigated us into town and we parked in a massive car park next to the port. That was some way away from the old Venetian town centre, but not far enough to be much of a problem.

We walked around the back of the harbour to the Old Harbour area, which is where, many years ago, I made a proposal of marriage to the Good Lady Wife. Obviously she said yes, because otherwise she wouldn’t be the Good Lady Wife. Anyway, we spent some time discussing which particular restaurant we were sitting in on that evening. We couldn’t really remember, and I guess things change over a period of 23 years anyway. I seem to remember also that on the night of that proposal both of us were somewhat the worse for drink. Never make big decisions whilst sober. That’s my policy. I think we eventually plumped for one of them without being either sure or bothered by the subject. It was one of the restaurants here. That’s the only part of any relevance.

Separate Ways

I’d partly wanted to come to Rethymnon because there’s an interesting selection of geocache types there. As we walked from the Old Harbour to the Venetian Fortress it became obvious that I wasn’t going to have time to do “touristy” stuff and go caching as well. The girls don’t like caching at the best of times, and especially not when it’s boiling hot, so we split up for a while. They went into the Fortress and then wandered around town doing a bit of shopping and then crashing in a bar in the Old Harbour for some cooling drinks.

Meanwhile, I dashed from the west of the Venetian Fortress, through the old town streets, down to the main square and then out to the east, picking up various geocaches on my way. I finished to the east of where we parked, and left myself at least a 1km walk back to where Kas told me they were waiting. Never mind. By this time the sun was losing some of its strength and I’d kept my fluid intake up, so I was good to walk back at decent speed.

I met the girls at about 6 pm in a bar at the very west end of the old harbour and treated myself to a milkshake, which was spectacularly tasty. The girls had had milkshakes and also some desserts, so they were suitably sugared up and cooled down.

Going Home

We had a leisurely stroll back along the seafront whilst being regularly accosted by restaurant owners trying to get us to go for dinner. They all ended up being disappointed by us. We had a free meal waiting for us back at the hotel. Obviously it took us most of an hour to get there and then most of another hour to get cleaned up. That meant we went for dinner a bit later than previous nights.

After dinner, we all sat on the terrace bar for a while playing with technology and watching the fading light. It made for a good end to a good day.


Spinalonga

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What’s the Story?

Spinalonga Island is towards the east of Crete near the resort of Elounda. There’s an old Venetian Fortress, which later became a leper colony and then a prison. It’s now a tourist hotspot.

I’d actually been to Spinalonga before, but that was about 10 years even before I met Kas. I went to Crete for a week with one of my old school mates in between finishing university and starting work. We stayed in Elounda, so Spinalonga was nearby. However that was nearly 35 years ago, so I didn’t really remember much about it. Much water has passed under the proverbial bridge since then.

In the Morning

Because we’d got quite a way to drive we had breakfast a bit earlier than previous days. We hopped into the car at about 10am, assuming this would be more than comfortable to make our scheduled boat journey at midday. I’d booked boat tickets online the day before. The drive across was easy but a bit slow.

When we got to Elounda the car park at the port was already very full, but there’s another one up the back where all the tourist buses go and park. There was loads of room up there. We had plenty of time to walk back down and find our boat.

Spinalonga Island

The boat trip out was pleasant enough and we got to Spinalonga in good time. That’s where we hit the “issue” for the day, though. They’d only allowed for us to be on the island for an hour. That didn’t seem very long and it immediately made us start wondering what to do with our hour. I didn’t check the small print for the boat trip and had wrongly assumed we’d have a couple of hours at least.

I quickly gave up on the idea of doing all of the geocaches on the island. Two were right up at the top, through a maze of passageways and paths not visible from below. Trying that would have taken our whole hour, so I didn’t bother.

Instead we walked around the perimeter pathway just above sea level. That took us past one of the geocaches as well as taking us through some of the more interesting bits of the old fortress/colony/prison. It was pretty hot again so the walking was quite slow and we welcomed whatever breeze we found. The loop around the island took us to about 50 of our allotted 60 minutes, so while the girls say under some trees waiting for the boat I nipped round the corner to grab a second of the four caches on the island. That one involved scrambling over rough rocks at the base of the fortress walls, but there was evidence plenty of other people did it, so why not? I think it’s a way of getting into the fortress without paying the entry fee.

The boat back again was also swift and pleasant.

Dry Land

Back on Terra Firma we popped into a nearby bar to get some refreshments. These were mainly milkshake-based and were most, well, refreshing. The bar we were sitting in was showing the England vs Spain game from the UEFA Women’s Euros. We’d missed the end of that because it was played on the evening we were getting ready to travel. I think I gave up watching it not long before Spain scored, so basically missed all the fun. When we arrived at the bar the re-run was at the point where Spain had scored by England had yet to score. So we made a point of sitting in the bar at least until Georgia Stanway’s winner went in. Anyway, if got us in the mood because we’d realised that today was the England vs Sweden semi-final. That was due to kick off at 10 pm Greek time.

With only having 1 hour on the island we were done a bit earlier than expected, so we drove back home, arriving at about 4:30pm. That gave us some time for snoozing, which the ladies seemed to appreciate. Well, I appreciated it too, if I’m honest.

I went to hand back the keys to the car at about 6pm, when the guy came back. He was relieved to discover I hadn’t broken this one. So we promised to meet again at some later point so I could rent another one for 3 days in our second week.

And then we retired for dinner at about 7.

Come on England!

To watch the football we set up iplayer on my laptop and after dinner I had just enough time to walk down to the supermarket and buy a handful of beers so we could watch it in our room. The beer was cheap (and pre-chilled). OK, we were at an all-inclusive hotel, but that didn’t include stocking the mini-bar with premium beers. They didn’t allow drinks to be taken away from the restaurant/bar.

The England Team did rather well. A comprehensive 4-0 victory with one completely scandalous goal from Alessia Russo. Game on. When’s the final? Oh! Sunday evening. Cool.


Samaria Gorge

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What’s Going On?

When you visit Crete are two excursions which are more or less mandatory. One is to go for a wander around Knossos. There’s more on that subject later in the holiday. The other one is whether you’re “hard” enough to have a go at walking all the way down the Samaria Gorge. It’s possible to visit Samaria Gorge the lightweight way (by catching a boat to the bottom and walking up a bit) and that’s actually what I did when I first came to the island. When I came in 1998 with Kas we did the full walk. We had fond memories of that day so persuaded the kids to come and have a go at it too. Isn’t it strange how your memory filters out the bad bits and just leaves the good bits.

An Early Start

Samaria Gorge is a long way away from anywhere. Well, I guess it’s not that far from Chania, but that means it’s a long way from anywhere else. Even from Chania it’s about 30 miles over ridiculously small and winding roads. But that means it was about 100 miles away from where we were staying.

We’d booked a trip by bus (you can’t do the walk with your own car) through the hotel reception. It was a package trip with a local company and the local pickup turned out to be the last one. Heaven knows how early people had to get up for the first pickup. Anyway, we were due to be picked up at 6:30. That meant being up the top of the hotel car park by about 6:20, just in case. It was so early that we got to watch a lovely sunrise while we were standing and waiting.

When we eventually were picked up, it turned out to be just a minibus. I thought that was a bit weird. The minibus scooted down into Agia Pelagia. It apparently had a couple of other pickups to do before heading off. After this, the reasoning for the minibus became clear.

The minibus was in fact just a local “hoover” that was collecting people and then dropping them off up at the main road. We pulled off into a layby on the motorway junction and sat for a couple of minutes until a somewhat larger bus appeared behind us. That was the “real” one. It was close to being full when we got on, so we found ourselves a few seats (not all together) and settled in. It was still only just 7 am and the tour guide said we’d likely arrive at the gorge around 10:30.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

The next several hours were spent in a state of boredom, interrupted by occasional tedious phases. The bus didn’t seem to be going very fast. I know the roads are rubbish, but the bus still seemed to be going way, way too slowly. Because some people had apparently been on the bus since last night, they had scheduled a stop somewhere to get breakfast and use the toilet. That place was only 25 minutes from where we’d got on. The bus waited there for the best part of half an hour.

From here, the bus continued along the north coast highway until we were nearly in Chania before turning up into the mountains. And then we made a second stop, in the village of Omalos. Omalos is the proverbial “last village before the gorge” – it’s only a couple of km further up the road to get to the gorge entrance. I guess we’d been on the bus without stopping for a shade over 2 hours when we got there, but another 30 minute stop felt a little excessive. By the time we got to the top of the gorge it was getting close to 11 am, and then we had to queue to buy tickets to get in. That took another 15 minutes. So all-in-all, it was somewhat after 11 am when we started walking.

The tourist guides say to allow 6-7 hours to walk down. If you’re quick, you could maybe do it in 4-5 hours. Our tour guide told us two things which turned out not to be entirely true. Firstly, he’d be walking behind us as a “sweeper” and secondly, he’d be handing out tickets for the ferry home at 5 pm in a bar at the bottom – don’t be late…. More of that later.

Walking Stage 1 – Down to the Agios Nikolaos Checkpoint

Before the rest of this post turns into a moan-fest, it is worth noting that the Samaria Gorge is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on the planet. Let’s get that out of the way. You can read about it, and the National Park around it, at https://www.samaria.gr/

We began walking down without any real sense of urgency because (in mine and Kas’s minds) we’d still got absolutely ages. A whole 6 hours, when surely the tourist guideline of 6-7 hours was meant for “slow” people.

What became apparent is that our group fell into the “slow” category. For any number of reasons. None of us apart from Kas is as fit as we ought to be, and indeed the kids hadn’t really even bothered trying to prep. At least I do long walks whilst caching on a fairly regular basis. So whilst I can’t run very fast, I can keep walking for a very long time at a reasonable rate. The kids can’t. Secondly, the walking was what you’d describe as challenging. There’s no more than 1km out of the total 14km in the gorge itself that can be walked without looking downwards at every single footstep.

Going Downhill

Even though its downhill, it’s very steeply downhill at the top. Steep enough for steps, but irregular ones amongst tree roots and loose rocks. In the valley floor some of the downhill is uphill, and it’s equally uneven. The challenging walking conditions were the main thing that Kas and I had forgotten.

So when we got to the first checkpoint, which seemed to take an eternity, we saw the tour guide and he gave us a pretty stern “you’re late” kind of comment. I know we were late. We were going as fast as we could though.

Venus was suffering the most. She suffers from floppy-ligament-itis. I think it has a proper medical name, but basically her ankle joints and the soles of her feet aren’t very resilient to long walks, even when she has supportive boots on. She gets pains akin to being stabbed in the bottom of the foot. I know when I walk too far I get something similar and have to rest, but usually for me it doesn’t start until I’ve walked 12-15km. Anyway, on this day I’d tried my walking boots on first thing and they didn’t feel right, so I swapped them out and wore some walking shoes instead, so my experience was not what it might have been.

And then Ami. Ami gets blisters on her feet, even with boots that fit properly. So we were a bit of a sorry bunch even at the first checkpoint, which was only 25% of the way in. It was starting to look like it would be a difficult day.

Walking Stage 2 – To Samaria Village

After sitting around at Agios Nikolaos for 10-15 minutes and consuming some of the food we’d bought we had to head off again. At least there’s drinkable water at multiple points, so you don’t have to carry buckets of water with you, but you do have to carry food.

On this second stage was the point where the fun disappeared and it became, I’m afraid, a constant race against time. We could really have used an extra hour or two to do the walking, and maybe that was the problem with the tour company we used. We’d been at the top at least an hour after we were expecting, but because the final boat of the day leaves at a fixed time, you either catch the boat or you stay overnight and then try to figure out how to get home on your own the following day. So we basically had 6 hours. We’d used more or less two of them getting to the first checkpoint.

Samaria Village

At the second point we met up with the tour guide again. There were plenty of others from our bus still there when we arrived, and he told us we’d caught up to the schedule, but we could only really afford to stay there for 10-15 minutes again. That’s certainly not what Venus wanted to hear. The guide also told us that it’s possible to get a minibus the final couple of km from the gorge exit down to Agia Roumeli. That was beginning to look like the preferred option.

The fact that the guide was already there when we arrived, but hadn’t passed us on the path, revealed that somewhere there is a quicker walking route. There are no roads, so either he went a different way, or he has a twin.

Anyway, back at the plot, V had a few things to eat. Ami also grabbed a couple of snacky things. I was munching my way through the European Sandwich Mountain that was in my backpack. Nobody else seemed to want any of them. Anyway, 15 minutes rest and off we go again.

Walking Stage 3 – Down to the end of the Gorge

Minibus or no minibus, we still needed to walk down to the southern exit of the gorge.

We gained a false sense of security from the fact that the stretch to the south of Samaria Village is the easiest part to walk on. In the hour after lunch we covered the best part of 4km, and thought we were getting back to the “comfortable” stage with the time. This was despite the fact that both kids were in obvious pain. Both soldiered on. I guess the fear of missing the boat was stronger. I felt much the same. To be honest, it wasn’t the best day of the holiday because of the constant need to keep walking. I found I was progressing more quickly than the kids to try to set a pace that would get us home, while Kas was bringing up the rear and keeping the girls going.

Anyway, the brief flirtation with comfort soon disappeared when we hit the bottom stretch. That’s the part where the path goes through “The Gates” – a narrow section no more than 4m wide at the base but nearly 300m high. It’s spectacular, if you have time to look. However, that narrowness also heralded the return of the uneven, undulating pathway that was, at times, quite difficult to follow. At least most of this section was in the shade. Heaven knows how we’d have felt if it was in direct sunlight too, but by this stage it was mid-afternoon and the sun was behind the cliffs to our right.

The Final Stage

We finally, finally reached the exit gate at the southern end at about 4:40. There was a rest area there but we frankly didn’t have time to stop. From the exit gate it was another 500m or so to the place where the minibus goes from. We weren’t sure how often the minibus goes, nor how much more walking there would be, to be honest, so while we were inbetween those two points I suggested to Kas that maybe I should hot foot it down the road to Agia Roumeli to make sure I was at the relevant bar to collect the ferry tickets. The ferry wasn’t until 5:30, so most of an hour was available, but the guy definitely said to be at the bar to collect tickets before 5pm. There was no way the girls were going to walk there that quickly.

So off I went. I had about 15-20 minutes to walk the final mile or so, find the bar, and get the tickets. The girls waited for the minibus.

I made it down to the village pretty quickly (I have to admit I jogged some of it though). The route down was a concrete road (the only road in the village). I could move quickly across it and it was welcome relief after a day of uneven plodding. But of course, I hadn’t taken the map of the village so I didn’t know the whereabouts of the relevant bar. Damn. I also think I took a slow walking route which lead me further than I needed to go. I reached the village at fractionally before 5 pm. Rather luckily, I found someone else off our bus who pointed me at the right place. And at the queue.

Do what, Ioannis?

When the boy said he would leave the bar at 5 pm, what he actually meant was he would start giving the tickets out at 5 pm. Loads of other people off the bus were in a queue, and I joined the back of it.

I was sweating profusely after running or power-walking much of the way and I was out of water too. That momentwas the worst I’ve felt in many years. I definitely made a mental note that I’m never going to attempt that walk again. Ever.

I also resolved internally that we should listen to the girls a bit better. V said she’d struggle, but we persuaded her to do it anyway. It was too much for them. The stress of that all day meant that neither Kas nor me really enjoyed it either. If you’re young and fit, and have some experience of walking over rough ground, it would all be fine. When you’re unfit and haven’t practiced it’s too much.

Anyway, all of this thinking was done whilst standing in the queue. When I got to the front I got a bit of a “oh, you made it then” comment from the guide before accepting my tickets and being told I needn’t have rushed down. I could, in fact, have waited for the minibus. The last one is at 5pm. The girls caught that one. It cost €3 each but that’s a lot cheaper than spending the night in the village. I suspect that’s what we’d have been doing if they hadn’t made the minibus.

Anyway, tickets in hand I went down to the ferry dock and waited for the girls to appear. They sauntered up at about 5:15, having had time to stop and buy some chilled drinks in the village.

Ferry Time

Now reunited, we went straight onto the ferry and looked for some seats. I suggested we make the tactical move of sitting on the sunny side. Why? Because the boat was going the other way from how it was pointing at the dock. So the sunny side would become the shady (and land-facing) side as soon as we pulled off. So we found some bench seats and crashed. Venus sat on the edge, in the sunshine, looking like she could easily kill someone who said the wrong thing. Kas sat opposite her and I sat next to her. Ami sat in the shade next to me and removed her walking boots with some degree of pain.

The ferry back took 40 minutes or so (I think) and involved a stop at an intermediate village before dropping us off at the end of the nearest road – the village of Hora Sfakion. This is the place where all the tour busses sit and wait for people who’ve done the “long walk” so it has a massive bus park. It also has a new pier since the last time I visited. Anyway, I’d previously checked with the guide and his answer was essentially that we’re leaving as soon as everyone is on the bus. I took that to mean he’d take a dim view of me climbing a nearby small hill to go find a geocache.

When we made it to our bus the nearby hill was actually even more nearby than I’d imagined. However there was a big crowd around or getting on the bus, so I thought it would be either impolite or dangerous to wander off. At least we managed to get pairs of seats this time. Kas sat with me and the girls sat together somewhere behind us.

Driving Home (but not for Christmas)

The drive up out of Hora Sfakion is pretty dramatic. Many moons ago I’d descended into here on a bus and I’d wondered why the flat plain below us still had loads of hairpin bends in the road. That’s because it’s not flat. It’s just flatter than it is higher up. Anyway, you get the picture. Bends. Lots of bends. See the embedded photo here from https://www.picturesfromgreece.com/ – that’s a photo of the steep bit.

© picturesfromgreece.comOne advantage of the drive home compared to the drive up, though, is that it rejoins the north coast highway about 30-35km closer to home, which meant 35-40 minutes less on the bus.

We did still stop on the way home because some of the people on the bus had still got a long ride in front of them. While we were stopped it occurred to me that it was possible we might just get home in time for dinner at the hotel. I checked with the tour guide. 35-40 minutes more to Agia Pelagia, he thought. And it was not long after 8 pm.

What I’d forgotten, of course, was that we would be abandoned at the roadside and then driven around Agia Pelagia in that minibus again. That took 10-15 minutes and we were last on the drop-off schedule. Eventually we got back to the hotel at 9:30 and we walked straight to the restaurant, assuming we’d got half an hour left for dinner. We hadn’t. Dinner closed at 9:30, not 10. Damn.

Reflections

So having failed with dinner, we also concluded we couldn’t be bothered with queuing for a cocktail either. So we just gave up and went back to our rooms. We invited the girls round for some crisps we’d got in the room, but they weren’t interested. Ami was suffering with blisters and a bruised knee from where she’d placed a foot wrong and fallen over.

So Kas and I had a relatively humourless beer from the fridge and some crisps whilst unpacking and complaining a lot. And that was that for the day. We got up at 6 am and went back to bed just after 10 pm. We were all exhausted. Had the kids not been with us, or had we all been rather more fit and able to walk long distances, I’d have enjoyed it much more. The reality though was that the day had mainly been a stressful slog, albeit in the beautiful surroundings of the Samaria Gorge.

Remind me never to try that again.


MKGees on Tour

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I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself

Saturday. Our second Saturday. The day of my MKGees on Tour geocaching event down on the beach. But that was in the evening, so there was quite a lot of day to fill up.

We had another slow start. We were still suffering quite a lot after the Samaria Gorge walk. It took quite a lot out of the kids. I was tired and my little toes were a bit sore, but otherwise OK. So there wasn’t a great deal of enthusiasm for anything and certainly no enthusiasm for going out in the morning.

So we had a slow breakfast again and then the kids retired to their bedroom again for more lazing around. I’d had a day of doing nothing the previous day though, and frankly I was bored because I’m not really one for reading books and I wasn’t tired enough to spend all day in bed. So I went back to the reception area to see the man about renting a car. He’d got one available that I could take straight away, so I rented it for three days, got the keys, and then went back to the room to sort myself out.

The sorting out involved getting extra insurance in case another accident should befall me. And then, of course, the packing of a day bag and the head-to-toe application of sunblock. I was ready to go by midday. As far as I knew, there were no other plans until my event at seven, but I’d already decided that going out for 2-3 hours would be enough.

Facing Your Demons

So I headed off up the road in another Fiat Panda to see what I could see. This car was bright red and had done about half the distance the other two had. It was a noticeably smoother car to ride in and the engine was nothing like as gruff.

My plan was to go hit the multi-cache up in Achlada that I’d started on our first day.

That cache was away up in the hills again in the next village along from the one where I damaged the other car. So I approached with some trepidation in case it was a similar village. Anyway, first job as ever was to fill up with fuel and buy soft drinks for the day.

As it turned out, the road up to Achlada was better than the one to Rodia, and there was a big wide street right through the centre with no parked cars. There was also a big parking area right by the church, which was sort of where I needed to start from.

First of all I headed west of the village for one of the multi stages and for another cache in some abandoned buildings. Those were fun.

From there I decided I was already as close as I could get the car to the actual multi-cache final location, so I just legged it. The walk took me onto the top of a hill that had a fantastic view over Agia Pelagia down to the sea. The view in the picture below, as it happens.

Moving On

So, flushed with success after not totaling a car in a Greek village, I decided to move on. My next target was in the seaside village of Palaiokastro. That name means “Old Castle” as far as I’m aware. It is so named because there’s an old castle there. It’s on top of a hill. There’s a cache up there but I couldn’t see how to walk up there or where to park. However there was a multi that started by the beach. It finished about 10 yards from where I’d parked, so that was a bonus.

I decided on one more from here so I drove a few miles along the north coast highway to grab one in the car park of a service station. There was a random church there too, but fundamentally it was a car park.

And from there I decided that was enough. So I drove back to the hotel to see what the girls were up to.

Take Me to the Beach

It turns out that the girls were planning to walk down the beach and have a dip in the sea before my caching event. That was fine with me. They were planning to set off a couple of hours after I’d got home, so I had time for a quick snooze beforehand. Result!

We spent an hour or so in the sea and then retired to our new favourite cafe for some milkshakes, beers and snacks. The beers and milkshakes came quickly. But there seemed to be a problem with getting food ready. It took ages and ages. They told us it would, but nevertheless….

Eventually our food arrived about 5 minutes before I needed to be at my caching event. I figured I better actually go, on the basis that someone else had said they were coming.

Eventing

My event was located along the path in the car park at the end of the beach. I’d called it MKGees on Tour, because that’s essentially what it was. Two others had said they were coming, but one wasn’t sure whether he’d make it.

I stood at the given location for a couple of minutes before I was approached by someone. I thought (from his appearance) that it was the “maybe” guy. But it turned out to be the “definite” guy. And his girlfriend. That was good. So we stood there chatting for an hour, looking out over the beach and watching the sun go down. They’d raided a travelbug hotel in Heraklion earlier in the day and had bought the contents with him. I thought he meant three or four, but he had actually brought 18 trackables with him. OK, those are going to have to go back to the UK, because I hadn’t been finding many big caches on the island.

Kas and the girls joined me once they’d finished eating and paid the bill. We talked for about an hour but then decided to call it a day. The other two cachers wanted to go find a couple of caches while the light was good. I’d concluded that the other guy (Mr Maybe) wasn’t going to come. So we left.

When I got back to the hotel I checked my phone and he’d texted me at 7:30 to say he was on his way. He must have passed us as we were walking back up the hill. So I felt guilty for about 10 minutes until I concluded that arriving 5 minutes before the end of a one hour event that only two others were attending was pushing the limit a bit.

Night Time

Nobody else wanted dinner in the restaurant because the snacks at the bar were a bit bigger than expected. So I grabbed a quick one-plate special alone and then met Kas in the terrace bar for a couple of drinks before going to bed. Tomorrow was going to be “tourist central” potentially


Cretan Mountains

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The Sketch

A day of geocaching, starting with a few on the beach and then heading up into the Cretan mountains. The girls weren’t in any way interested, even though it was essentially a series of drive-by caches in spectacular scenery. No walking would be involved (or at least, no strenuous walking). And I would happily have taken someone riding shotgun and stopped for multiple ice-creams, but no takers.

Georgioupolis

My first target for the day was to drive across to Georgioupolis. There was a wherigo geocache there. That was the only type of cache available on Crete that I’d yet to find. So I figured it was worth the effort of going into the town. Anyway, it was in the same part of the island as the main loop I planned to drive around. The proverbial stars were aligned.

It was a straightforward hack west along the north-coast highway to get there. It’s about 20-30 km the other side of Rethymnon from where we were and it took me about an hour to get there.

I left the main road a little early to allow me to do two caches on the run into the town, then I parked up for the wherigo.

Wherever I Go, so does she go!

The end point of the wherigo turned out to be a restaurant near where I’d parked. They weren’t open but the hint said that the cache itself would be on the bar at times when the restaurant was shut. The place seemed to have three bars. I have to admit I felt highly suspicious as I was searching around.

After a few minutes, a woman came out of the kitchen at the back and asked me what I was doing. When I said I was looking for the geocache she opened a cupboard behind the bar and got it for me. She asked me if I’d like a drink while I was playing with the cache. I wasn’t in the mood for the beer she offered me (I was driving anyway) so I had a coke whilst sitting outside on their front terrace on my own.

She pointed me at their toilets so I could turn my bike around. When I tried to pay for the coke she sort of waved me away and said it was fine. Probably too much grief to open up the cash register and then account for why I’d been served at a time when they were supposedly shut. So off I went. Whereigo cache completed. Full set available on Crete completed.

Running Up That Hill

Well, driving, but anyway…..

My next target was the “Myths and More” series up in the mountains. I’d solved them all some time previously but hadn’t correctly transcribed all of the hints from the puzzle checkers, and that caused me some grief with some of them. It was a series of about 30 caches around a loop of roads up in the mountains. I’d visited the locations on Google Street View and it looked OK. All  of the caches had somewhere to pull the car off the road. No stopping in the middle of the road.

As it turned out, stopping in the middle of the road wouldn’t have been a problem at most of the locations anyway. Once I got above the last village on the road was deserted. I think at least one of the roads used to be the old main road for buses going to Hora Sfakion, but they’ve built a new one of those so the old road is now quiet.

The problem with deserted roads in Crete though is that the road surface can be dodgy. Such was the case here. Whilst the scenery was undoubtedly spectacular, the roads were verging on unpassable in places. Where climbing up the sides of the steep hills (much of the outbound leg) I had cliffs on both sides. The uphill sides were all shedding rocks onto the road surface, and the downhill sides all had big cracks in the tarmac where the road was slowly going over the edge. I guess the route isn’t maintained very regularly. It was a fun drive, to be honest, and I was glad that it was an empty road and that I was in a small car. I wouldn’t have liked to meet anything large coming the other way.

Nuffski

The final bonus for the series was back in Argyroupoli and required a bit of a walk. Technically I could have taken the car up. But it would have been the steepest and narrowest road of the day, so I decided to park on the main street and walk.

On the way there I passed a local bakery, so on the way back I stopped in there to grab some cold drinks and an ice cream. Greece seems really cheap when you’re not on the coast. The proprietor of the bakery was very keen on me trying some biscuity things (a bit like speculoos) that she’d made that morning. I took one and nibbled at it. She insisted I take another as I walked out. They were lovely, but because I was pretty thirsty at this point they were a bit like eating sawdust. I didn’t make it through the second one. The ice cream was nice though.

I had a few roadside items on the radar as I drove back down but at this point I was in “havering” mode. Ultimately I decided only to stop for caches accessible from the coastal highway. So I dropped downhill as fast as possible and started making my way east.

I found three by the roadside on the way home. All of them required me to park and take a short walk. I was happy with that though. I’d been in the car all day so a leg stretch was good.

Where’s Captain Kirk?

I got back to the hotel at about 5:30. The ladies of the house had gone down to the beach some time earlier. I decided not to join them. Instead I typed up all my caching logs and had a refreshing shower while waiting for them to get back.

I also waited until 6 pm so I could go and give the car keys back. He was pleased again that I’d had his car for three days and not broken it. I elected not to tell him where I’d driven it. But it was a marked road, so I was within the bounds of the insurance policy. It was a bit dusty on the outside though.

For the evening we had a quick dinner and then I retired to the terrace bar with the kids and we played cards for a while. All-in-all I’d had a great day out.


Final Fling

One More Walk

Our final fling in and around Agia Pelagia. All holidays come to an end eventually. If they didn’t, it’d be called unemployment or retirement rather than holiday. But I digress, as I often do.

I couldn’t sleep so I ended up getting out of bed earlier than I had on other “do nothing” days. I had in my sights the proverbial Moby Dick – a geocache called Agia Pelagia at the far end of the Beach. It had so far evaded me, and this morning was the last chance saloon. As is often the case I spent way too long in the saloon. I was about to give up again when I thought it might be worthwhile to read through other logs and look at other people’s photos. A couple of them, thankfully, gave the game away. But even armed with this new information it took my fingers a while to find the necessary. And even then it resulted in a sharp stabbing pain as I made contact with a bit of a cactus. But anyway, at the second visit, and after maybe 30 minutes searching in total, I’d found it. Good. No Moby Dick for me.

A Quiet Day

I legged it back up the hill and was back home in time for a fairly early breakfast. I can’t remember who else came to the restaurant for this meal but I suspect it wasn’t all four.

The kids never seemed enthusiastic after the first couple of days and to be honest they were probably in shutdown mode anyway. So I had some breakfast but don’t remember who else did.

Then for the rest of the morning, there was some snoozing and some packing of suitcases.

The girls managed to get up in time for lunch, so all four of us went over.

Most of the afternoon was also spent alternating between packing and snoozing. We’d asked the kids to pack everything except for stuff they’d need in the evening or morning. I didn’t want there to be any time pressure getting out of the room on departure day. I’d already spoken to the minibus company that was fetching us, so I knew when they were due and we supposedly had ages in the morning. But it never takes much for ages to turn into a rush around. So by mid-afternoon the majority of everyone’s stuff was back in the suitcases.

One More Trip to the Beach

We had some cash left in Euros, and there was a place that did nice beer and milkshakes, and we were technically still on holiday. And generally, you get the picture. So at about 3:30 we left the hotel and walked down to the beach one final time.

Before going into the sea we did a bit of souvenir shopping and I finally posted the postcard we’d taken out of a geocache when we were up on the Lasithi Plain. That was about 10 or 11 days previously. I hadn’t been searching very hard for a postbox. On my morning walk I’d spotted one.

The sea was warm, wet, and vaguely salty again. On this trip we weren’t quite so enthusiastic, so we limited our swimming and plodging to about 40 minutes before retiring to the “purple bar” for some chilled beverages. Some were milkshakes and some were beer. And some were, in fact, food rather than beverages. It was a good way to finish off the holiday.

Not Quite Finished

We legged it back up the hill with thoughts of one final dinner. It was a fairly cordial affair by recent standards. We spent a while talking about the good and bad bits of the holiday whilst picking away at several plates of food.

After dinner, the kids were pooped again and they went to their room. Me and Kas had one final round of cocktails on the terrace bar and retired to our room too. It was quite early, but the following day promised to be a long and tiring one.


Home Time

The Sketch

Home time. The end of the holiday. Or at least it will be as soon as we’ve finished all the traveling.

Anyway, boo, hiss, and other such phrases.

Leaving the Hotel

We had to be out of the hotel room before 11am. That meant we could take a rather leisurely final breakfast at 9:30. The plan was to get fairly well fed before beginning the traveling. Some members of the family are sensitive to foodstuffs being not quite as normal. On that basis it always pays to stock up when the chance arises. In this instance though, the cunning plan failed because she wasn’t hungry. Oh well! It was a sound plan.

We were done with breakfast in good time. Because we’d mainly packed the previous day we were able to get out of the room well before 11 am. There was very little checking out to do. We’d made full use of the all-inclusive and managed not to spend anything further at the hotel.

And then we sat in the entrance hall for an hour waiting for our scheduled pickup. We’d booked a private minibus transfer so and they’d said midday pickup for a 3 pm flight. While we were there we were having discussions with several other Britains. Several were supposed to have left the previous day but their flights were cancelled and they’d been rebooked the following day. So they’d had an extra night on holiday, whether they wanted one or not. Our driver turned up at the right time, but because there were other people milling around and interrupting anyone who walked through the door, it took a while to confirm he was our driver. Meh! We got to him before someone else claimed they were us.

To the Airport

The drive from our hotel was only half an hour or so. We didn’t find any bad traffic, so we were at the airport in plenty of time. Heraklion isn’t as big as Heathrow, so they ask for you to come 2 hours before your flight rather than Heathrow’s 3 hours.

The terminal was quite busy and unfortunately we were so early that our flight wasn’t even on the board, so we couldn’t check in. I took the opportunity to dash round the car park for 15 minutes to grab a couple of last caches in Greece. It was totally opportunistic, but they were easy.

When I’d done them I texted Kas to say I was coming back, and noticed a five-minute old text saying that the check-in was open now, so could I come back please. Check-in took a while, despite already having checked in online. There seemed to be some people at the front who were taking ages about it. To be fair, the assistants also seemed to be fighting the technology. Anyway, there were five groups in front of us when we joined the queue but it still took 20 minutes to get rid of the suitcases.

We weren’t sure what facilities were available on the inside and V was hungry now, so we grabbed some pizza and drinks pre-security before going inside.

Heraklion Airport isn’t especially big, and they don’t seem to implement passport checks for EU citizens at all. I think that was the sketch anyway. We went through security scanning and then passed through a tight channel for passport control which just boxed off a handful of the gates. So I’m guessing that’s the Brexit Benefit – we get to go to gates where all the other people were either British or Russian. Not many other airlines from outside the EU fly into Heraklion.

Flying

Our inbound plane from Heathrow arrived on time, so it looked like we were going to board and get away on schedule. Following up on my gripe from the trip out, why do they allow priority boarding when it’s a bus transfer to the plane? We all ended up on the same bus, and so by definition, half the priority boarders were at the back of the bus and got off it last. Seems a bit daft. The plane was absolutely chocker so it took a while to get everyone seated. As a result we were a bit late taking off, but only 20 minutes or so.

The flight back was, from my perspective, a bit dull. We were on the very back row of seats and I was in the middle, so couldn’t see out of the windows anyway. That meant four hours of dullness. I did try to do a bit of colouring on the ipad and whatever else was available, but it still seemed like ages. A window seat is best for me, so I can watch the world drift by beneath me. I rarely settle back to read a book or (when available) watch a film. So I was a bit bored. The kids were wasting the window seat on their side by not looking out of it.

So we left at 3:20 on a supposedly four hour flight and got back to London at about 5 pm. So the pilot had obviously been able to avoid all the speed cameras and put the pedal to the metal. All good. And the landing was rather more smooth than the way out.

Back Home!

The passport control in Heathrow was quick. Obviously we dont have to mix with Johnny Foreigner any more, but it did take a couple of us some time to get the automatic gates to work.

And then we hit the first problem with travel that we’d had in ages. The suitcases took forever to come out. Probably the best part of an hour from when we got to the carousel. That was a bit rubbish. At least we could tell that all four cases were actually in London though. We could even tell when they were about to come out on the carousel. I like this game of having the electronic tags inside the bags. Smart idea.

When we eventually got our bags we walked straight out and my car was waiting ever so patiently for us in the Meet & Greet car park. The drive was uneventful after a brief traffic jam on the M25, so we were back home by 7:30.

The kids wanted McDonalds for dinner. It had been over two weeks since their last one. Kas and me fancied something from the Chinese, for much the same reason. So that was dinner sorted.

No Rest for the Wicked

The wicked person in this case was me. On the following morning I had an appointment in Uttoxeter for a weekend of geocaching at the UK Mega. So as soon as I got home I was on a mission to get ready for going away again.

So I emptied my suitcase. The dirty stuff went in one pile and the clean stuff went straight into another bag. There was enough clean stuff left to last the weekend, so that was easy. And that just left me to prep all the technology. I needed a PC, my ipad, my phone, my camera and my GPS, which needed to be loaded with West Midlands caches instead of Greek ones. And then I had to find all the chargers, spare batteries and other bits. At least for this journey I didn’t have to have all the tech in the same bag. I was able to put “evening” tech in one bag and “daytime” tech in another.

And that was that. By the time I was done getting ready the girls had all long since gone to bed, and I guess that officially marks the end of the holiday.

Lessons Learned

On reflection, the Panorama‘s all-inclusive was fine but would have been better from my perspective if there’d been more things (well, more geocaches) that I could walk to from the hotel. I’m never one for sitting around. So whilst the girls were soaking up the ambience and generally doing lots of nothing, I was quite bored on the days when we didn’t have a car. I spent a lot of the “nothing” days snoozing in the bedroom, because I’m not suited to lying in the sun. It was relaxing for the first few days but during the second week I sort of regretted not getting a car.

In terms of the resort, there wasn’t really anything in the way of watersports – no parascending, no kayaks, and so on, which meant it was peaceful but I think the girls wanted something else to do in resort other than just swimming. That probably didn’t help with the boredom either, because I was looking forward to a day of kayaking at least, but frankly there was little to do in Agia Pelagia. So I enjoyed what we did, and I liked the hotel, but I guess it was in slightly the wrong place for us. Another year then.


Pelotoff

Pelotoff

The Sketch

Time for some more excuses about how I meant to go caching on my new bike but ended up going in the car again. I went to finish poshrule’s peloton, so pelotoff, as it were. The excuse this time was that I’d been ill in the week, and I wasn’t sure I was up to either a long walk or a long bike ride. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t up to it. Candleford once again volunteered to drive me, as she did a couple of weeks ago (see Peloton). And as with last time, she’d already done all of the peloton series. After the last trip I’d got 96 more to do.

96 may seem like a lot for a winter day, but after getting 200 on the previous trip, 96 in a day is obviously a bit lightweight. On that basis, we decided to meet at the same place (in Alconbury) but somewhat later in the day.

As ever, I had stocked up with cold drinks, sandwiches and chocolate on the way out. I’d also filled my car with diesel and nearly feinted at the price.

Start Your Engines

Well, first of all there were a few around Alconbury that Candleford hadn’t done. Seems fair enough to go do those before heading to the peloton again. There were 10 of them, in fact. That got my morning off to a good start.

And then we drove up the A1 to Yaxley and to the end of the stretch where I’d left a big gap just after New Year (see Yaxley Peloton). This took us on an anti-clockwise loop around the Morborne Transmitter. You can see from the photo that it was a beautiful day. It was after 10:30 when we started doing these ones, and we were done with all 46 of them by 12:30. Not bad.

Get a Move On

This gave us time to waste. And as it happens, we found some ways of wasting it. Going into Yaxley to grab a Village Sign cache for Candleford wasn’t a waste, but the next 50 minutes or so could have been better used. I needed to turn my bike round, as it were, so we tried the centre of Yaxley but singularly failed to find anywhere. So we then decided to jump on the motorway and drive up to the Peterborough Services. At least there we were guaranteed some vaguely usable toilets and a coffee shop. So one out and one in, as it were, before heading down to Stilton. Oh, and there was a cache in the car park.

Anyway, yes! That Stilton. The Home of the Cheese. Great!

Before we began the afternoon’s caching, we sat with the windows open and scoffed the scoffables.

Last time out I’d deliberately left a few near to Stilton because I wanted to leave enough to be worth coming back. So we had about a dozen or so here to get. All were easy.

Connington

The last bit of the peloton I needed to do was a loop around Connington. I’d been here before, many moons ago. On that previous attempt I remember parking on the field near the church. There was some kind of summer fair on. That meant I couldn’t find one of the caches because there was a bunch of kids playing right next to it and I felt uncomfortable asking them to leave. So I left instead. This time, the whole area was quieter than a minute’s silence at a Trappist’s funeral. So we were able to flip our way around without any hassle. I was glad we were in Candleford’s car though. There were several stopping places where I wouldn’t have been happy leaving mine.

That lot took us past 4pm, once we’d cleared the main road too, and I was done with the peloton series. So we drove back to Alconbury and found my car where I’d left it. At this point I’d found 113 caches during the day.

Oh, go on then

Can’t finish on a 13 though, can you? Bad karma, is that. It’s nearly as bad as going round a loop anti-clockwise. Which we did on two out of three loops today. That needs sorting. So Candleford suggested I could waste a few minutes by checking her Village Sign and Village Hall caches in Diddington. Oh, go on then.

So 115 finds it was. Another fantastic day, and thanks once more to Candleford for driving all day. I wouldn’t have been willing to do these as drive-bys either on my own, or in my own car. So that’s a couple of tiddlywinks thrown into the “days owing” bucket.

The caches I found on this day were:


Peloton

Peloton

The Sketch

Time for another “decent” day out caching after a couple of relatively lightweight days. Candleford suggested we could go and have a hack at poshrule’s peloton. I’d so far only done a few of them (see Yaxley Peloton) but she’d done all of them. But she volunteered to drive me around anyway, on the basis that it’d be a bit of a laugh. And anyway, the weather looked like it would be gorgeous for February. That was about as much of a plan as we had. I wouldn’t normally do series as drive-bys, however a couple of things made me agree. One was that Candleford offered to drive, obviously. The other was that there are a couple of long stretches at the south which are basically linear, not circular. That means that both walking and cycling would be tricky. Both methods would leave a long old hack back with no caches. Bum to that! So drive-bys it is.

I had in my mind that we might get those two stretches done for a total of, if we were lucky, a hundred or more. That was based on Candleford’s estimation. I’ve never really done drive-bys before en masse, so have little concept of the typical speed. A hundred would be a good day in anyone’s book, especially in February.

Start Me Up!

If ya start me up I’ll never stop! Or something like that.

Long days of caching in February mean starting early. We agreed to meet in Alconbury at 6:30 am. Officially the sun comes up at 7am at this time of year, but on a clear day the light is perfectly adequate at 6:30. As is often the case, I couldn’t get to sleep. A long day at work, plus the excitement of a caching day, meant I couldn’t get settled. I did manage about 6 hours in bed but I was bolt upright by 3am, to be honest. So there was some thumb-twiddling and generally time wasting before giving in and getting out of bed at 4:45. I’d planned 5am originally, so this meant I didn’t wake everyone else up with my alarm.

So kecks on, and off we go from home at 5:10. I made my normal stop at the BP garage for fuel, sweeties and drinks. It was surprisingly busy. I knew I was a bit early, but I thought I could grab a couple in Alconbury before meeting Candleford if time allowed.

Time did allow. It gave me 15-20 minutes. That was enough to grab a multi-cache where I basically guessed the solution. The arithmetic on the cache page offered only a couple of possible locations. I picked one at random, zoomed in on street view, and saw something matching the hint. So that was good enough to convince me it was the right place. It was also enough to grab a Village Hall series puzzle for the Village Hall that I was going to leave my car at. Rockin’ and rollin’ – and when I pulled into the car park, Candleford was there.

The First Stretch

The first group of caches was a linear arrangement of 42 along the road from Alconbury to Old Weston. About an hour into this I began to think we’d be getting a big total. After an hour we’d found more than 20. We reached Old Weston, having made 42 finds along the road, in just 2 hours. That put me 44 caches up and it was only 8:30am. Blimey!

The path from here to the second stretch was a bit awkward. That’s mainly because RAF Molesworth is in the way. You have to drive right around it, and the roads aren’t great. We grabbed a couple more caches in Molesworth itself before looping back around the north of the airbase and rejoining the peloton series at Clopton.

The Second Stretch

This took us on a clockwise loop from Clopton with a little offshoot over to Titchmarsh and back. It kept being really fast. We parked up for lunch after this stretch at around 11:30. That’s fine for lunch because we’d been going for 5 hours. In those five hours I’d logged 107 caches (plus the two I did at the start). So, we were well past 100 finds and it wasn’t even midday. It’s madness, I tell you! Utter madness.

So whilst we were having our halftime break I think I finally convinced myself that 200 was on the cards. I just needed to pick caches for the afternoon that would leave enough from the series to make it worthwhile coming back. That meant planning caches so that I’d got self-contained loops remaining. That makes them easier for either walking or biking.

More of it

Back on the trail for the afternoon, we drove further west until we reached Tansor. This was pretty much the furthest we got from my car. On the way there some shenanigans where it turned out I’d pasted the wrong corrected coordinates onto a couple of the caches. As a result, Candleford had more on the list than I did. Anyway, it took me a while to figure out what was going on. It turned out to be simple. Tansor was a bit of a lollipop on the end of our driving stick. When we were done there we retraced our steps.

What I’d got left to do of the series was a couple of quite small loops (i.e. less than 50 caches) plus one humungous loop. They interlocked with each other so that completing any particular loop in full would take a big chunk away from the next day. We decided therefore to take all of the “big” loop apart from those parts of it which were also in the smaller loops. I hope that makes sense. It did when I thought of it. Anyway, that plan meant a couple of long one-way stretches, with a u-turn and a hack around to somewhere else.

While we were in this section I began counting forward and planning where we’d end up. There was a tiny loop close to Stilton. I reckoned if we did all the caches up to there, plus a couple from the tiny loop, that would make exactly 200. So that’s what we did.

OK, Enough Now

By the time we’d finished the 200 it was after 4pm, so we gave up and drove our way back to where I’d left my car. It was where I’d left it, and doesn’t seem to have been tampered with. That’s a good result. Back at the plot, when I got back to the car we’d made 200 finds and had spent about ten-and-half hours doing them. That’s a pretty ridiculous rate to have sustained for so long. I doubt I’ll break that one-day record any time soon.

The caches I found from the peloton are shown on the map below. You can see it’s quite a lot. The day actually contributed three-fold to my caching statistics. Firstly, 200 finds is by far and away the most I’ve done in a single day. Secondly, I needed 39 finds to finish the Shifty-Fifty Challenge for this day. And finally, I’d never found a cache in the UK on February 26th before. I had previous finds, but only outside the UK. 2 in Ireland and 9 in Japan, as it happens. So tick, ticky tick-tick, from Tickettyville.


Full Circle

Full Circle

The Sketch

Monday was a day off for me. For the first time ever I decided I’d had enough with watching half of the Superbowl and then going to bed, so I planned to stop up to watch the whole thing and book Monday as holiday. Conveniently it was also a day with a relatively small target in the Shifty-Fifty Challenge. I needed just 12 finds to pass the magic 50 total for February 14th. That made for a simple but effective plan. Take the day off, get up fairly late, and then attempt to find 12 or more caches while the rest of the family are working or schooling. I originally thought I go local but last weekend someone mentioned going full circle by attempting the 360° Challenge on Project-GC.com.

The idea of the 360° Challenge is to find a certain number of caches within each degree of arc on a bearing from your home location. I was missing just 4 out of the 360. All of those were clustered to the south-east of where I live. I somehow had it in my mind that the nearest caches in my “unfound” degrees were miles away, but it turns out I could do them all without driving much further than Aylesbury. So it looked relatively easy to achieve, even on a day when I didn’t start until after 11am.

Mursley, Schmursley

First up was a visit to Mursley. I didn’t need it for the 360° Challenge but there were a couple of caches I hadn’t done. One was disabled and the CO agreed I could check and replace if needed. I got my first taste of things to come here. Mursley currently can’t be reached on the shortest route from Milton Keynes. They’ve closed it because the East West Rail route goes beneath it. I guess as well as needing access for lorries, they’re also demolishing an old road bridge and building a new one. Anyway, it made me drive an extra 5 miles around to get to where I wanted.

The first cache I tried was the one that was supposedly OK, however I couldn’t find it. I asked the CO, and sent photos of the site. It had changed a lot. The stile that used to be the hiding place for the cache was in pieces in some bushes and there was a new stell gate where it used to be. So no cache. CO was kind enough to allow me to replace it.

The second cache in Mursley was definitely missing, so with CO’s permission I replaced that too.

Swanbourne

Swanbourne was my first stop for the 360° Challenge. It was a church micro. I parked up by the roadside and was observed by a guy who was fiddling with the blue sign outside the church. We had a brief chat and he was fairly familiar with what I was doing, so all good there. A quick find. Tick, move on.

The Claydons

The next one for the 360° Challenge was the bonus cache for Simply Paul’s Adventure Labs in the Claydons. Obviously (cough?) to find the bonus you need to do all of the Adventure Labs points first. That wasn’t a problem though. Several could be done without getting out of the car, and I still needed my target of 12 total, so 5 simple ones was good. I parked in Middle Claydon to do the two traditionals there too. It would be rude not to.

So at this point, 11 total finds and two out of four ticked off for the 360° Challenge.

Padbury

So, on the previous weekend, it turned out that someone had deliberately set a n=bunch of new caches in Padbury because Candleford needed that degree of arc for her own 360. I didn’t need that, but who can resist 3 completely new caches? All were easy finds in good condition. Well, I’d hope so, because they’d only been out for 6 days.

Quainton

Next up was Quainton. That’s a good 20-25 minutes from Padbury along the country roads. During that drive it started raining. Quite heavily. There was a single church micro that contributed to the 360. The other two caches in the village are over the boundary into the next degree of arc, so I felt no urge to do them in the middle of a downpour. I contented myself with parking at the church and doing just that one.

Wotton Underwood

My final stop was in Wotton Underwood. It’s not even really a village, it’s just a couple of houses and a church. It’s close to a big country estate though. Anyway, available here was a church micro and another puzzle. I’d solved the CM but hadn’t fully solved the other puzzle. Finding one of the two would be OK though.

The CM was a straightforward find. And unless I’m very much mistaken, the church in question has just had its spire covered in new copper sheeting.

For the other puzzle I thought I’d pinned down the northings and when I plugged that in I could tell there were basic only two possible areas for the final. I won’t go into too much detail but I guessed which one and went for a look. Initial inspection wasn’t promising, but after a bit more wandering I returned and decided to sacrifice the cleanliness of my gloves, Once I went in for a proper look I was rewarded with the cache. It was seriously buried under a large amount of leaf mould, but otherwise fine.

So anyway, that sector now has two finds in it. I also added one in the sector immediately clockwise. There was another puzzle that I’d solved which I figured I’d walk to while I was here.

And that was it for the day. I could have attempted a few more things, but fundamentally I’d achieved my aim. 18 total finds and all 360 sectors filled in with at least 1 find. Result.

Anyway, it was Valentine’s Day, so there was some exchanging of cards and some spending of family time to be done.

The caches I found are shown on the map below.


Brandon

Brandon

The Sketch

I recently emerged from a mandatory 10-day period of isolation, after being hit by the COVID thing. I was definitely ill for a while, but not badly so. The main problem was that it forced me to miss a weekend of attempting to push forward with the Shifty-Fifty Challenge. That’s a couple of days that’ll have to wait a few years now until they fall on a weekend again. Never mind. Every problem brings an opportunity. In this case, it was an unexpected opportunity to go caching in Brandon on a weekend I hadn’t previously planned to.

February 6th was a day I already had more than 50 finds, but February 5th required 41 to make the magic 50 total. During the course of the week I’d been discussing a possible day out with Candleford and she suggested I could join her with Palmer28 and DanSpurs14 for a hack around Brandon on a trip she already had planned. That sounded like a top idea that ticked all the proverbial boxes, so the deal was struck, the contract made.

Always Read the Fine Print

The fine print of that contract was based around the maxim of “if you’re gonna go, go hard.” Or possibly “if you’re gonna have one, have a big ‘un.” Anyway, Candleford had agreed to meet the others for a walk around Brandon at 9am. That meant there was nearly two hours of perfectly good daylight available before that.

We decided to go to Thetford so I could do several sets of Adventure Labs there whilst Candleford could pick up a handful of Trads, Multis and a Virtual that she didn’t have time for on her previous visit. We thought we’d need maybe 70-80 minutes there, so we’d need to be away by 8:45 at worst.

So working backwards through time, I agreed to pick Candleford up at 6am, with a 45-50 minute drive to get to Thetford from the pickup point. Working backwards even further that meant I needed to be away from home at 5:10 at latest. I set my alarm for 4:35.

As chance would have it, because I’d gone to bed at 9pm, I was awake before the alarm went off. So I was able to get into my car before 5am and therefore had time for my usual coffee stop at the garage on the way.

I made it to the pickup point early. Funnily enough, there wasn’t a lot of traffic around. Candleford was already waiting when I arrived, so a quick turnaround and we were outta there.

Who do you think you are kidding?

The drive to Thetford also didn’t take quite as long as we thought, and we were in the town centre looking for a car park at 6:30. We found one that was great at getting me to type my car registration and taking my coins but seemingly not so good at issuing a ticket. Sod that. Don’t want to risk it. So we moved around the block and parked in an unrestricted, sign-free and ungated car park behind a pub.

And so the caching. It was still seriously dark, but the good thing about Adventure Labs in a town is that they can usually be done in the dark. And there were so few people around that there was nobody around to notice us acting suspiciously.

So why call this bit “who do you think you are kidding?” Mainly because Thetford was the original shooting location for key buildings used in Dad’s Army, that’s why. One of the Ad Labs sets was about just that. And there’s a statue of Captain Mainwaring there too. Back to that in a bit.

The first Ad Lab celebrates Thomas Paine, a famous son of Thetford. There’s a very brightly gold-painted statue of him right behind where we parked. From here we headed west across to Thetford Priory and back again to the statue of Captain Mainwaring. From here we continued east(ish) to the Old Coffee Mill. By this time it was just about getting light, as you can see from the picture.

Motte and Bailey

From here we ventured up to Thetford Castle. There’s not a lot of castle left but there is a big mound that used to be the Motte. There’s a virtual cache that requires you to count the steps and photograph yourself at the top. I can confirm that the number of steps is “lots” and it’s hard to get a good photo of yourself if you’ve attempted to run up them. Especially if you’re unfit from having spend two-weeks sitting at home with a respiratory illness.

Back at the plot though, from here we wandered back into the town centre to finish more Ad Labs and a handful of multi-caches we’d been able to solve from google. You know you’re early when even the market stall holders have only just arrived.

When we got back to the car I’d found 20 caches already and it was still before 8am. There’s one Adventure Lab we couldn’t sort out on site, but thankfully a bit of text-a-friend activity from Candleford later in the day uncovered what we were supposed to have typed in. That’s a decent start to my attempt at a minimum of 41 finds.

On Brand

So as we left Thetford I was thinking that the 41 target was going to get properly smacked out of the proverbial ballpark. We arrived in Brandon around 8am and started on a few of the labs in the village. Again, Candleford had done these before but she was happy to humour me. We found another 4 Ad Labs and 3 Traditionals before deciding it was late enough to go for the meetup.

A couple of those finds were up at Brandon Station, which turned out to be the least station-like station ever. Well, it was the least welcoming anyway. All the doors are boarded up. I guess it’s on a line now where they take online payments or use conductors, and hence there’s no actual staff at the smaller stations. There’s just a couple of platforms and an inaccessible building. It seems the owners want to demolish it but are being prevented from doing so by a number of objections based on the historical significance of 1840’s railway architecture. So the building is in limbo.

We’d agreed to meet up with Palmer28 and DanSpurs14 at 9am on the west end of Brandon. There was marked parking for the beginning of the “Gate Lodge Loop” series. It was more than big enough for two cars, even if one of those was mine. We arrived a couple of minutes before the other two, so we were halfway through getting booted up and deciding what snacks to put in our bags.

Making Like a Bear

So off into the woods we went. The Gate Lodge Loop is a clockwise loop of 26 traditionals through the woods to the east of Brandon. At the far end there was the opportunity to add a couple of more loops. The 26 would have been enough to make my target, but why stop at “acceptable” when there’s time for “exceptional”

Anyway, the first stretch out was spent getting some familiarity with the style of caches, and also some familiarity with each other. Candleford, Palmer28 and DanSpurs14 knew each other, but I only knew Candleford. We evidently deemed each other as acceptable companions, because we kept going.

Back at the caching, most were fairly straightforward finds. We weren’t suffering too badly with helicopter GPS syndrome, although four devices and four pairs of eyes always helps. We made pretty good progress through to Gate Lodge Loop, from where we had a decision to make.

The Train Track Trail

The decision we made was obviously the one that involved doing more caches. We headed north slightly to go to the Train Track Trail. This is a short series of caches running (in part) alongside the Breckland Line, which runs from Cambridge to Norwich. It seemed to be quite a busy little train line anyway. The caches were good, and quick to find. We were still making good progress.

The Train Track Trail took us on a triangular route from a level crossing back to the same point.

Strolling and Slogging

From here we elected to follow various parts of the Santon Stroll and Santon Slogg series. These kind of ran into each other and took us in the opposite direction (Norwich-bound) along the same railway line. There was a car park with picnic tables that was an ideal spot for a quick break for snacks (and lunches, for those who were organised enough to bring lunch).

We were still heading away from where we parked at this point, and had a quick discussion about how far we could actually go. We decided to skip the “Tree Trail” in the woods here. We’d just loop out along the Stroll and Slogg series. That would bring us back after a long out-and-back linear walk along the railway line.

The caches on this section were quite spread out, and we missed a couple of them too. It was quite time consuming and when we got back to #16 on the Gate Lodge Loop we still had 2km to walk, 11 caches to find and about 90 minutes of usable daylight.

Back to the Gate Lodge Loop

When we got into this final stretch of 11 caches the light under the trees was failing quite quickly. A couple of the caches were also field puzzles or were otherwise quite slow going. It was evident we needed to think about the time. We started to alternate, with one pair of us doing one cache while the other pair continued to the next. I’m happy doing this, to be honest, because we all passed the site of every cache, and each one was properly found.

We got back to the cars after 4:30, having walked 18km and found 55 caches. That’s quite spread out, and it took us longer than I might normally expect (at least 7.5 hours), but it had been a great walk and the cache series we did were all well thought out. I favourited pretty much every one of them. They were all either good, challenging hides or entertaining containers.

Finishing Off

We split up at this point. DanSpurs14 and Palmer28 went for a pootle around the nearby housing estate to grab a few more. Candleford obviously had to go where I went, so we drove around Brandon village to finish the two sets of Ad Labs I’d started earlier plus a War Memorial one I’d managed to solve using google.

It was proper dark by the time we’d finished those and I was out of energy, especially with knowing I’d got at least 90 minutes of driving to get home. We stopped on what I thought was 89 finds for me. A pro might have done a few more, but because there’s a few more in the woods here and another set of Ad Labs, I might well come back at some point. And anyway, I’ve got the better of my “thoroughness” traits where caching is concerned. Enough is enough, however many that happens to be and regardless of where it leaves me in the stats charts.

Take Me Back ‘ome

So we set off back home. Candleford’s car was thankfully still where she’d left it, and whilst the traffic was busy that was good because it helped keep me awake. To be honest, I could quite happily have snoozed for 30 minutes before driving home. However, the Good Lady Wife had texted about making dinner and I knew if I got home straight away I’d be in time for a good meal with the family rather than getting takeaway and eating on my own. So that was all winner-winner-chicken-dinner (except we had chilli).

I spent the rest of the evening moaning about being stiff, drinking cider, typing up logs, and watching sport. Some Winter Olympics, and some FA Cup football. While I was typing the logs up I noticed I’d miscounted and actually found 90 rather than 89. That would normally be good, except it meant I finished the day on 14,299 total finds, which just looks a bit like a schoolboy error.

All in all an excellent day, spent in the company of fine people who I hope I can persuade to let me accompany them again. The caches I found over the course of the day around Thetford and Brandon are shown below.


South Shields and Newcastle

South Shields and Newcastle

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The Sketch

It was the weekend before Christmas. We’d arranged a trip to South Shields and Newcastle too see family members. Due to various house-based shenanigans, the girls were stopping with grandparents but Kas and me were in a hotel.

On the previous day we’d arrived just after lunchtime and then went down to South Shields beach for an ice cream. Really! We do it every time, even though the weather is often unsavoury. Well, why not? Toney Minchella has an indoor place that does great ice cream. It also does nice cakes and scones and coffee.

In the evening the girls stayed with Nana and Grandad while Kas and me went back to the hotel. We weren’t especially hungry so we just had snacks and beer in the hotel bar. It was functional.

Monday Morning

Monday morning was foggy, much as it had been for the whole of Sunday. Kas wanted to go for a run and I fancied some early morning caching. So we agreed we could do both from the Littlehaven Beach in South Shields. Kas spent an hour running south along the coast and I walked north. I walked right along to the mouth of the Tyne completing a series of adventure labs. After that, I climbed uphill a bit and did another series of labs based on the Roman Fort.

Both sets of labs had a bonus physical cache, plus there was another puzzle on the walk, so I found 13 caches in an hour. That was enough to celebrate with a traditional Premier Inn breakfast.

Off up the Toon

The ladies were all going shopping with Kas’s mum. Originally we were all going together to central Newcastle, but there was a last minute change of plan. I had always planned to go caching anyway, so Kas took my car and drove to the Metrocentre. I jumped on the Metro and went to central Newcastle. There was a station half a mile from the hotel, so she dropped me off first before going for the kids.

The Tyne and Wear Metro offers a very convenient service if you’re close to a station. The trains are quiet and fast, and fairly clean. It’s under public ownership, so the ticket prices are very reasonable. The most you can pay in a day is £4.80 for a ticket that takes you anywhere as many times as you want in 24 hours. I climbed aboard at the Tyne Dock station, bound for Haymarket.

Off we Go

The centre of Newcastle is very compact. It’s full of wonderful Georgian architecture and has a decent shopping area. It also has a cathedral, a university and a very large and imposing football ground. I was scheduled to visit all of them at some point during my day.

I started at Haymarket and initially walked south towards Newcastle Cathedral. I was alternating between a couple of sets of Adventure Labs and a load of “proper” caches. One of the proper caches was in celebration of the “Vampire Rabbit” round the back of the cathedral.

At Grainger Market there was a multi-cache that took me ages to work out. But once I had some coordinates it was an easy find.

Up the Football

St James’ Park can basically be seen from the moon. It’s by far and away the most identifiable building in the centre of town and you can see it from miles away. You can also see it when you’re standing right underneath it. Except, of course, if you’re really close you can’t see all of it without moving your head.

Back at the plot, there were a few in very close proximity to the stadium, including two actually stuck to it. One was awkward to find.

From here, I walked along some of Newcastle Town Wall on the west edge of the city centre. There was a set of Ad Labs there and it took me into the wonderful Blackfriars Square. It just goes to prove you can visit a place several times and still not really know it.

Down the River

From the centre I visited Newcastle Central Station for a quick service break and then headed off down to the riverside. There was another set of Ad Labs covering five of the bridges over the Tyne. It started at the upstream end and ran all the way down the Millenium footbridge.

While I was in between the first and second points I got a call from Kas. Shopping was done and they were off home. I’d arranged to meet them at East Boldon metro station, the closest to Kas’s mum’s house, so I had to speed up my walking a little bit to avoid making them wait for ages. I caught a train from the Central Station.

The Reckoning

Over the course of the day I’d made 39 finds, most of which were Adventure Labs. Urban caching can be quite slow going, but Ad Labs have provided a new dimension when in town, and I like them for that.


Brogborough

Brogborough

The Sketch

A day spent wandering around Brogborough in Bedfordshire. There were a couple of series in the area with a possible extension up to Cranfield. I spent this day with Candleford, who fancied the area for caching but didn’t fancy walking around there alone. She’d suggested it a week before at a local GIFF event. Fair enough, I’m not so keen on caching alone now. The two series concerned, with the Cranfield extension, came to about 50 possible finds, which is decent for a day in November.

We met at some unearthly hour in the car park at Brogborough Village Hall. It was only just getting light, and funnily enough, there was nobody else around.

Brog For 21 and the Cranfield Dirty Dozen

The first series we attempted was the Brog For 21, which runs north from the village over the A421 and towards Cranfield. It started in the village and then led us north and east over the main road and into some agricultural land. There was a wood at northern end which allowed us to extend around the Cranfield Dirty Dozen beginning at No. 9. This was a nice self-contained loop, although a bit slow because the caches were quite spread out. The first one was a bit out on a limb. It was also a nightmare to find. We only got it by calling the Minions for a hint. Even then we made hard work of it until something slightly amiss caught my eye.

Back at the plot, we got back into the woods and followed the Brog Fro 21 series back to where we’d started. This part was somewhat less scenic than the outbound stretch. It’s a part that runs alongside the now-covered landfill site. That’s now been covered with earth and a very large number of pipes to capture escaping methane. The methane is collected and pumped to a 30MW power station on the other side of the mound from where we were. It’s nice to know that lots of my own former household waste is being used to power my current house, sort-of.

Some of the pathways down this side were muddy and slippery as well as not-so-scenic.

Brog Too 19

The Brog Too 19 series loops out from the other side of Brogborough towards Ridgmont Railway Station, crossing over the railway line and back again.

We walked this series in reverse number order. After a couple of caches we were faced with a real Moby Dick of a cache. Supposedly it’s a small container disguised on or near a tree. However, there were loads of immature trees within a 20 yard radius and a long fence. It could have been anywhere in there. After about 20 minutes we gave up.

This series continued to be quite unfulfilling. We missed a couple more. One that was a special container was obviously completely missing. And generally it was getting to be hard work. Also, time was marching on. We therefore took the decision to cut it short and just do the bottom half. That was still enough to get the codes for the bonus cache, but we were generally a bit disappointed with the walk.

Drive-Bys

Back at the cars Candleford said she’d humour me by doing the Adventure Labs series along the Marston Vale Line as well as those in Stewartby. That meant driving most of the way up to Bedford and back again. That was fine though. We both jumped in my car, to save the planet very fractionally.

A number of the labs could be done from inside the car, by guessing the numbers. In Stewartby though, we had to get out for most of them. There were a few other caches there too, most of which Candleford had done already.

We finished the caching day by driving right up to Kempston Hardwick for the last lab of the Marston Vale series, followed by coming back slightly for the bonus cache of that series.

Thankfully Candleford’s car was where she’d left it.

We’d (well, I’d) made 55 finds during the day, which is a top day out for this time of year. I almost certainly won’t return for the rest of Brog Too 19 though. There’s not enough and it wasn’t nice enough to warrant going back.


Pokémon

Pokémon

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The Sketch

I hadn’t been out caching for a while, or at least, I hadn’t been out all day for a while. It felt like time for another go, and I still had a load of the Pokémon series to do. I’d made two previous visits and completed three of the four loops (see Burton Dassett and Bishop’s Itchington) back in September. So it was about time I finished it off.

In my mind I was going to do the remaining loop of these and also a loop at Ladbroke to make about 70 total, but a few factors acted to prevent that. That total plan was 13km for the main series and another 8km for the “extra” series.

Setting Off

I got up sensibly early. After all, it was clock-change day so I got an extra hour in bed. When I got up though, it was raining rather hard. The weather forecast was for this to last until lunchtime, so I decided not to hurry. I had a good breakfast and got out of the house at around 8:30.

I normally stop for fuel (both for the car and myself) on the way out. Today, it took ages. I paid for my fuel but then the attendant got in a right mess with the till. There was a long discussion about whether I paid for my fuel, or paid for the woman who was in front of me. I’d paid for my own. But he’d not added the drinks and snacks. And then it took ages to make my coffee too. All-in-all it took 20 minutes to fill the car and buy a coffee.

As I was driving out it was still raining, and along the M40 there was so much spray you could barely see. I’d decided to go and park in Bishop’s Itchington to start today’s Pokémon loop. However, when I got to the start point I couldn’t park there, plus it was still raining really heavily. I didn’t fancy starting my walk in a downpour.

Killing Time

So what to do? Well, there was a puzzle and a wherigo over in Gaydon so I thought I’d go there to kill half an hour. If the rain kept going I could just go home again. If it stopped, I could shorten my walk, but still finish the non-existent animals.

The puzzle was easy (a Church Micro) and it sent me on a 250m walk to get the final. There was a traditional on the way past. While I was signing the Church Micro puzzle the rain stopped. As I walked back to my car I could see some clear weather coming. By the time I got to the final of the wherigo the sun was shining brightly. So I thought it would be OK to go and have a pop at the Pokémon. Why not?

Pokémon On!

I decided to return to Bishop’s Itchington but park on a quiet dead-end street I’d noticed last time. It was a long walk to the caches, but it looked safe and out-of-the-way, and hence better than the recommended parking.

The first cache I tried was actually a traditional, and not part of the series. I didn’t spot it, and gave up after a few minutes.

The series itself was quite hard going, like much of the rest of it. The caches are quite spread out. And they’re mainly quite small. Smaller than they need to be, anyway. They’re in the middle of nowhere. Large boxes should be easy to fit in.

But away from my moaning, it was quite hard going. Everywhere seemed to be both uphill and upwind. And the wind was really strong. And, to be honest, the hills were really up. In my first hour after leaving the car I only managed to get through 8 caches. That rate wasn’t going to get me round the add-on loop.

Keeping Going

Everywhere was wet. Did I mention it was wet? I know I mentioned the wind. Anyway, there’d been so much rain it was still running away. There were puddles everywhere despite the sunny skies. Except it also wasn’t sunny all the time. I got drenched at least twice on the walk and was making me a bit disheartened. Why do I do this? Oh yes, I do it for the great scenery and the fresh air. And the exercise. Today’s exercise felt more like swimming than walking.

After 25 or so finds I made it into Ladbroke. There was a church micro there that was a simple offset, but I took the opportunity to have a short break. Again when I got here the church was bathed in bright sunshine.

Finishing Up

From here I was heading back towards the car. It was still tough going though, despite the promise of finishing. The caches still seemed to be spread out way more than they needed to be.

On the way back into the village I was faced by a bit of a puddle beneath a railway bridge. A couple of cars just “went for it”, which I think was a bit risky. You couldn’t tell how deep it was. I decided the best plan was to walk on the centreline of the road, because roads have a convex shape and are higher in the middle, so the water would be lowest there. It was still over the soles of my boots though. I turned round and took a photo looking back when I got through. I like the way the light is illuminating the whole tunnel.

Heading Home

And that was the end of the Pokémon. Today I found 40 of them. Numbers 1 to 40, as it happens. I thought the walk would be about 13km but when I got to the car I’d actually done 15km. This was partly because I’d parked a bit far away from the start. The rest was, I guess, the usual geocachers-shuffle.

I thought I’d try some drive-bys in Ladbroke on the way home. I’d ducked them on the walk because I wasn’t sure about the time. I should have done them then. There was basically nowhere to leave my car in the village.

So I thought I’d try Claydon, where I’d solved a couple of puzzles. One was easy. The other was one where I thought there’d be a road, but driving down it I got to a point where I decided it was actually not a road. So I reversed up and left it. After failing with two planned stops for drive-bys I concluded it wasn’t going to be my day, so I just gave up and came home. Claydon Church was nice though.


Bishop’s Itchington

Bishop’s Itchington

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The Sketch

A couple of weeks ago I’d been up in Burton Dassett to start some work on the Pokémon series of puzzle caches. Fast-forward a couple of weeks and I fancied another hack at them. This time I was looking to begin in Bishop’s Itchington, a fairly large village on the northern edge of the series.

I ended up parking a little way south of there in a fairly large pull-off alongside a country road. Unlike last time.

Driving Up

I didn’t stop for any drive-bys on the way up. Today was just about me and some caches. Well, initially it was about me and some shouting. In the previous week some morons in the media had turned a minor shortage of fuel at a couple of stations into a major disaster, and hey presto people started panic buying.

I wasn’t completely empty of fuel but I could use some. I normally stop at a local station to fill up and buy snacks and drinks. Today I was disgusted to find a queue of 30-35 cars outside that station at 7:30am on a Sunday. I didn’t bother stopping at that one. There was another station in Buckingham that didn’t have any queues, but only because it didn’t have any fuel. So I diverted around to some motorway services on the M40 where they had some fuel, but had limited it to £30 per vehicle. That was more than enough for today’s purpose so I just took that much and bought some snacks to go with it. I didn’t mind the diversion because today I was planning to start very close to a junction on the M40 anyway.

Off we go

I pulled off the M40 and headed into Bishop’s Itchington and then headed south to find my chosen parking spot. When I arrived there was another car there, but it moved quickly after I parked, while I was still putting my boots on.

I started caching with a fairly easy section along the road down to Knightcote. From here the work got a bit harder as the route started taking me across ploughed fields. September is a bad time of year for that, I guess.

From Knightcote I headed south towards Northend across some fields. The caches here were quite close together but the underfoot conditions weren’t great. Northend is just north of where we’d finished two weeks previously on the Burton Dassett day. My walk skirted the base of the big hills there and the caches became increasingly spread out. There was one point either side of Fenny Compton where I had to walk more than a kilometre between successive caches, most of which was across ploughed fields. The enthusiasm was waning a bit on that stretch.

Don’t Shoot

From Fenny Compton the walk took me north in a big anti-clockwise loop back to Knightcote. All the way around here I could here shooting. I eventually found a load of cars parked in a field – I guess there was some form of game shooting event going on. I was concerned for a while that my route would go right through the middle of them, but thankfully it didn’t. My walk went right around the outside of them. Good. I don’t fancy being shot.

I was managing to find most of the caches fairly easily today, including all the “hanging in hedge” ones.

When I got back to Knightcote I sat on a bench by a cache for a few minutes to have a drink and a snack. It was proving to be slower going than I’d hoped.

The Northern Loop

From here there was a second loop which lead up to the M40 junction, across the top of a big area of wood, and then back through Bishop’s Itchington. The first stretch of this was along a paved road, so it was quick to walk. The caches were easy to find too, so I managed to improve my average rate a bit. Along this stretch I bumped into a father and son who were picking litter. They were intrigued by what I was doing. I don’t mind talking to people about it these days. I think they’d heard of it before but hadn’t ever tried it.

When I got to the “top corner” and started walking alongside the large wood, I started to get a bit irritated about the spacing. Some of the caches were spread out at 400m or 500m separation, despite it being easily being possible to place them at minimum separation of 161m. I guess the cache owner had decided he was doing 4 loops and hence spread the caches out accordingly. My experience on this day was that he could easily have fit another 20-30 caches around the walk I did. This would mean the fourth loop (the one I hadn’t done at the time) wouldn’t be needed at all. I’m not complaining too much, but I guess I’m used to working with caches that are much closer together.

I was starting to ache when I got to Bishop’s Itchington but thankfully I was nearly home by then. The last section was straight down the road and I was still finding the caches quite easily, but by the time I reached the car I’d walked 27km.

When I got back to the car it was late enough that I couldn’t be bothered with any more. I had found 80 caches though, so not a bad day really.