by Kevin | Dec 17, 2020
The Sketch
I was minding my own business on Facebook one night (errr, is it possible to mind your own business on Facebook ?) when a certain local geocaching blogger, or blogging geocacher, asked me if I’d like to contribute to his experiment and answer a short quiz about my life in geocaching. He’s building a series of “20 questions” blog posts, where he asks geocachers to talk about their hobby.
Does a one-legged duck swim in circles? I’m always up for wittering on about an interesting subject, and even more so if that interesting subject happens to be me. So here goes.
The geocacher in question is Washknight, and you can see the results of the experiment so far at http://washknight.wordpress.com/tag/washknight-interrogates/
So here goes. Hold onto your hat…………………
And in the spirit of keeping things fresh, I’ve updated the whole post and some of the answers during an exercise where I had to change a redundant WordPress plugin, which forced me to redo pretty much every post that has embedded images.
1. When and how did you first get into geocaching?
I’d like to start by saying that it’s all the fault of my wonderful wife. No, really. I’d never heard of it. She’d been signed up for a few months and never actually been out searching.
She made me do it!
We were lucky enough to spend a long weekend in May 2010 in Marrakech. It was a corporate jolly that I won for being a top achiever. I joined most of the other top 5% on a weekend away in North Africa. The invite was for two, so Kas came with me too, naturally. The juniors stayed at home with my parents.
The weekend consisted of a packed programme of corporate schmoozing with a very short window of just 3 hours on the Saturday afternoon for doing things not in the official programme. It seemed a bit of a waste to go all the way to Marrakech and then come home again without seeing anything, so we booked an extra couple of nights in a hotel closer to the city centre (and somewhat cheaper) than the event location so we could have a look around before heading home.
On our final day Kas told me we were off into some random park near the city centre to try a new game. “Oooh er !” thinks I. The game in question was not quite what I was expecting, but it must have been OK because I’ve now done it nearly 13,000 times in 10 years. I’ve done it in 19 different countries, in all bar 3 counties in England, and in several counties in Wales and Scotland. Sometimes I do it with the kids, sometimes with friends, and quite often on my own. I’ve done it on every different day in the year.
2. Do you remember your first find?
Isn’t that a Pulp song ?
Absolutely ! It was the Cyber Parc Cache in the Cyber Park in central Marrakech. There’s a picture of it here.
I remember it mainly because we were, to say the least, comedy cachers. We were trying to use the official caching app on an iPhone 3. The GPS in those was suspect at the best of times, and there was no 3G signal either, so we were wandering around using only a compass and distance. It was hot, and we were being watched. And as I still had no idea what we were doing, the conversation with Kas went along the lines of…
“What are we looking for?”
“I dunno”
“OK, so where is it ?”
“I dunno”
…and so on. But we did find it eventually – well, I found it because it was above Kas’s eyeline – and the rest, as they say in France, c’est l’histoire.
3. What device(s) do you use for locating caches?
That depends on what kind of a caching day it is.
If I’m in town, or I don’t want to attract too much attention, or if I’m just doing a casual bit of caching I use my iPhone with the Geosphere app. (Update in 2020 – Geosphere long since passed its sell-by date, so for casual caching I now use either cachly or the Groundspeak app).
If I’m officially “going out caching” (which is coded for “I’ll be away some time, and when I come back, I’ll be mucky”) I use my Garmin Montana 650 – the batteries last longer than the phone, it’s fully waterproof, and the GPS locator is (I have to admit after doubting it for a few years) much better than the phone. It even survived being dropped down a drain once, although in this instance I use the word “survived” in very much of a Trigger’s Broom sense. It survived by being reincarnated in a completely new box. Good job we had decent home contents insurance.
I did once find two without any kind of GPS device. I stared at Google satellite view for a while, memorized the position and the hint, and then went for a walk. One of those two was quite a remarkable find. In a tree, in a hedge, and I found it by pacing out about 150 of my steps from a junction between 2 paths. Amazingly I found it in the third tree I tried. The other one that day was under a bridge, but I was still amazed to find it because it had been disabled after a load of DNFs.
4. Where do you live and what is your local area like for geocaching? (density / quality / setting etc)
I live in Milton Keynes. It’s very green for an urban area and we have standing permission from the MK Parks Trust to place caches so long as they’re not in dumb places where people will trample all the plants down. There are a lot of caches here, but mainly isolated rather than in walkable series. There’s several good series around the perimeter though.
5. What has been your most memorable geocache to date, and why?
The most memorable piece of tupperware was probably Sangam – It’s at one of the 4 centres belonging to the World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) and it’s in Pune, India. It’s a simple little puzzle and I went there on an otherwise dead Saturday morning before catching a flight from Pune to Chennai (via Hyderabad – don’t ask!) in the afternoon. Given the location, I thought I’d better warn them. They were most welcoming and gave me a full tour of their site before abandoning me to look for the cache. And they gave me tea. And a biscuit. And before you get any dodgy thoughts about me, there were no girl guides there at the time apart from the staff, and part of the reason I went was so that I could raid their shop and bring home lots of bags, badges, and other stuff for my two daughters.
Without a doubt the best experience (and best find) was attending the first ever Giga Event in Munich in August 2014. Myself and Travelling Pumpkin (daughter the elder) went down on the bus that Simply Paul organised. It was an excellent trip and a brilliantly done event.
6. List three essential things you take on a geocaching adventure excluding GPS, pen and swaps.
If one of the kids is with me that would be Pringles, Maltesers and more Pringles. Otherwise we don’t get very far.
If I’m on my own it would be a small multi-tool, a notebook and my camera. And spare batteries. That’s four. I don’t use the multi-tool very often, but just in case.
I very rarely carry swaps. I have a bucket full at home and never take any out with me.
7. Other than geocaches and their contents, What is the weirdest thing you have discovered whilst out caching?
Simply Paul. Nothing else compares.
8. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is I am obsessed by numbers and 10 is I am all about the experience and the quality of each individual cache. Where do you put yourself?
When I started I was probably a 9. Now I’m into it a bit more I’m probably about a 4. Most of my caches are done on quite long walks out in the country, where most of the caches are quite simple but the overall effect is a large total and a healthy suntan, most days. I go geocaching mainly to get me away from my work, which is sedentary and home-based.
9. Describe one incident that best demonstrates the level of your geocaching obsession.
Two whole days on a bus to attend an event. OK, it was a good event, and we visited 8 different countries on the trip, but that’s something that would be hard to convince a non-cacher about – especially the part about watching the Sound of Music on the bus’s TVs whilst driving back through Austria and Switzerland. Spending an entire week in Northern France finding geocaches, and only taking one day off to visit central Paris, would be equally obsessive, I guess.
10. Have you picked up any caching injuries along the way?
Yes. I left a big chunk of my scalp hanging from a sharp stick in Blackpool one night. It was a hedge that had recently been cut by one of those massive council fastened-to-a-tractor things, and it was dark, and I didn’t see the pointy end. It might have been worse. I guess it was about 4 inches away from taking my eye out.
11. What annoys you most about other geocachers?
What annoys me most about other cachers are the ones who get annoyed about other cachers. It’s only a game. Chill.
Seriously, I can’t be doing with all the stressing about logging protocol, and whether you’re allowed to find puzzles you haven’t solved and whether you can claim a find on a cache up a tree when you sent the kids up, and the like. It’s a bit of fun, innit! I go caching for fresh air and exercise. I don’t go because I want more time in front of a PC or because I want to get into a fight. It was quite entertaining to watch two cachers having a fight in the car park at the UK Mega in Llangolen in 2016 though.
12. What is the dumbest thing you have done whilst out caching?
There was an FTF hunt in Oakhill Wood one night. I have no idea why I went, given that it’s behind the prison and the place gives me the willies in daylight never mind at night. And I went on my own.
I found it though.
13. What do your non caching family and friends think of your hobby?
The kids come caching with me sometimes. Kas comes out occasionally. She thinks I’m obsessed. But then she runs marathons for fun, so calling me obsessed is leaning towards the proverbial pot-kettle-black scenario.
14. What is your default excuse you give to muggles who ask what you are up to or if you need help?
Most of the muggles I meet when out caching tend to fall into the “livestock” category. I’ve had very few human muggle incidents and to be quite honest I don’t spend a lot of time trying to disguise things – you see a lot of people out on the streets doing much more weird things than furtling around in the bushes. I have never been challenged in a threatening way. I generally go with the “I’m playing a treasure hunting game” line and see where the discussion takes me. A couple of times when people have been in my way and don’t look like moving I go with the old “you’re not really seeing me do this, and there is nothing here of interest” one, which is a surprisingly good way to knock someone off guard and make them relax.
15. What is your current geocaching goal, if you have one?
Probably colouring in all the English counties on my MyGeocachingProfile.com profile. As I write this post I have 6 to do – East Yorkshire, Suffolk, Essex, Isle of Wight, Devon & Cornwall.
So that was 2014. I still haven’t completed the challenge, though I did make a disappointing trip out to Suffolk and Essex one day and we grabbed one in East Yorkshire on the way up to Newcastle once. So now 3 left to do.
Since 2018, when I changed jobs, caching has become a lot less frequent and very opportunistic in nature, and as a result I don’t really bother setting specific targets. I’ll do challenge caches if I already meet them and they are somewhere I’m going anyway, but I don’t often do caches specifically to meet any target or challenge. I’ve been caching for ten years and I still haven’t filled the D/T grid, for instance.
16. Do you have a nemesis cache that despite multiple attempts you have been unable to find?
I used to have, until I found them all. As things stand now it would have to be the promise of something pretty spectacular to make me go back for a second attempt at anything. I have learned to embrace the inner quitter. Anyway, I travel a long way most times I go out, so unless it’s a big series that takes two attempts I pretty much never return to the scene of a previous crime.
17. What three words or phrases best sum up what geocaching means to you?
Good question, if only because it requires at least three answers.
- Fresh air. I like to get out in it. Some areas have fresher air than others.
- Meeting other people and pretending not to be doing anything suspicious, unless they are also not doing it.
- Always having an excuse for going somewhere I’ve never been before. I’m a restless soul and I always liked geography.
18. What prompted you to start blogging about geocaching?
I find it relaxing and it helps me sort of organize my memories. I’m a bit retentive at the best of times and I like to feel I’ve captured something about my trips other than the photos. I use my blog like Dumbledore uses the pensieve.
19. Which of your own blog entries are you most proud of.
I’m not one for championing my own work, generally, but I quite like Imbibing Imber.
20. Which other geocaching blogs do you enjoy reading?
Well, Washknight’s one, obviously. There are no others. (Can I have my fiver now please ?)
Update for 2020
Since 2014 there’ve been a few new highlights:
- We’ve done monster “colour in as many countries/regions as possible” trips while taking family holidays in Italy and France
- I spent a week in northern France with Travelling Pumpkin finding a series of 600 puzzles
- I “coloured in” Asia, or more specifically Japan, when Kas got an entry into the 2018 Tokyo Marathon and her chosen running buddy didn’t – she needed someone to fill half a hotel room
- We spent a week in the French Alps finding some of the highest caches in Europe
- I’ve completed more than 1,000 of ryo62’s caches, and as a result he’s placed a cache named after me (and I’ve been to find it)
- I’ve travelled for mega events in Aberdeen, Llangolen, Kent, Bruges, Valenciennes, Saint Omer, Dunkirk as well as more local Geolympix ones
- I spent a mad 2020 Leap Day attending 11 different events in 24 hours
- I increased my total finds to nearly 13,000, despite having very quiet years in 2019 and 2020
by Kevin | Dec 31, 2018
Objectives
The beginning of the year promised much entertainment, with us already having planned trips to Tokyo, Paris and Italy at various points, however, in discussion with the girls, I set a single objective for the year. That was to find 2018 or more caches in the calendar year. You would think that was possible, despite being considerably above any other year so far. In the event, I was a couple of hundred short, despite having my cachiest year ever. So here is my 2018 Caching Diary.
January (88 finds)
- 1st January – we grabbed a single cache on the way home from double parkrun just so I could get the souvenir – 1 find
- 14th January – I made the majority of finds for the month up near The Giddings (see You’ve Got to be Gidding) – 71 finds
- 18th January – I attended a “Roundabout MK” event – 1 find
- 28th January – we had a near-death experience on the hills above Brighton (see Close to the Edge) – 14 finds
- 29th January – we slipped in a single cache whilst visiting Brighton – 1 find
February (36 finds)
- February was a fairly slow caching month, with my only finds being over the period of the Tokyo marathon weekend trip with Kas from Feb 23rd to Feb 26th – 36 finds
March (434 finds)
- 10th March – I got off to a decent start with a trip over to the Bourn Bonanza series (see Bourn Bonanza) – 56 finds
- 22nd March – I attended a “Roundabout MK” event that I’d organised myself – 1 find
- 24th March – I scooted over to Hertfordshire to do the Sandon Sloth series with Izzy (see Sandon Sloth) – 40 finds
- 28th March – was Day 1 of our epic journey to try to complete the MTVO series just north of Paris (see Frouville) – 120 finds
- 29th March – was Day 2 of our MTVO quest (see Livilliers) – 128 finds
- 30th March – was our third day in France and we took a day off the monster caching for A Day Off in Paris – 15 finds
- 31st March – was our fourth day in France attacing the MTVO series again after doing a French parkrun in the morning (see Hérouville) – 74 finds
April (361 finds)
- 1st April – was our fifth day in France attacking the MTVO series, and we attacked it pretty hard (see Jouy-le-Comte) – 151 finds
- 2nd April – was our sixth day in France and we managed to finish off the MTVO series (see Valmondois) – 134 finds
- 3rd April – was our seventh and final day in France, and we spent it trying to visit as many different French Departments as we could manage (see Colouring In) – 11 finds
- 29th April – I travelled over towards Royston to (see Litlington) – 65 finds
May (82 finds)
- 2nd May – I was on a business trip to Guernsey and dashed out for a few finds in the evening – 7 finds
- 19th May – we were in Liverpool for the annual running weekend – 3 finds
- 24th May – I grabbed a cache on the way to the pub – 1 find
- 25th May – I popped out to find a nearby puzzle – 1 find
- 28th May – I drove down to Stockbridge with Pesh and the Happy Hunter (see Stockbridge) – 69 finds
- 31st May – I made another find on a business trip to Guernsey – 1 find
June (3 finds)
- 3rd June – I made a couple of finds locally during a lunch break – 2 finds
- 9th June – there was a Saturday afternoon event in Milton Keynes – 1 find
July (176 finds)
- 13th July – I was with Izzy and the Happy Hunter at the GeoNord event in Dunkirk (see Forts & Dunes) – 44 finds
- 14th July – I was with Izzy and the Happy Hunter at the GeoNord event. We went to Lille (see A Lille More Time) – 33 finds
- 15th July – I was still with Izzy and the Happy Hunter at the GeoNord event. We were near Dunkirk (see Deux Sans Frontieres) – 76 finds
- 24th July – there was an event locally in Milton Keynes – 1 find
- 29th July – we were on our family holiday in Italy and spent the day in Milan (see Milan) – 14 finds
- 30th July – we spent the day in Bergamo (see Bergamo) – 5 finds
- 31st July – we spent the day at Lake Como (see Lake Como) – 3 finds
August (72 finds)
- 1st August – we were in Turin reliving the original Italian Job movie (see Turin) – 10 finds
- 2nd August – we drove down to the Cinque Terre for a very special ice cream (see Cinque Terre) – 4 finds
- 3rd August – we were in Pisa (see Pisa) – 3 finds
- 4th August – we were in Florence and attended an event organised by a French family across in Montecatini Terme (see Florence) – 9 finds
- 5th August – we were still in Florence (see Florence Again) – 2 finds
- 6th August – we made our way from Florence to San Marino via Urbino (see Urbino) – 4 finds
- 7th August – we were in San Marino in the morning before making our way to Bologna (see San Marino) – 8 finds
- 8th August – we were in Bologna in the morning before making our way to Venice (see Bologna) – 7 finds
- 9th August – we were in Venice doing the full tourist job (see Venice) – 14 finds
- 11th August – we made our way to Verona (see Verona) – 9 finds
- 12th August – we were heading back home again but made a random find on the way (see Lake Garda) – 1 find
- 14th August – I attended a nearby Beds, Bucks, Herts event – 2 finds
September (48 finds)
- 13th September – we attended an event to say goodbye to dear caching friend who sadly passed – 1 find
- 15th September – I met up with a couple of friends to walk around a new series at Souldrop (see Souldrop Revival) – 31 finds
- 17th September – there was a caching event in Milton Keynes – 1 find
- 28th September – I dashed round a few local caches – 15 finds
October (155 finds)
November (12 finds)
- 4th November – I made a single find whilst Kas was doing a run in Dovedale – 1 find
- 6th November – there was an event in Milton Keynes – 1 find
- 17th & 18th November – I grabbed a few caches on our lads’ weekend away (see Lads in the Lake District) – 7 finds
- 26th November – Kas grabbed a few caches on my account while she was in Cyprus – 3 finds
December (67 finds)
- 26th December – I made a single find at Stowe while we were having a nice Boxing Day stroll – 1 find
- 30th December – I went for a final “big day” out for the year (see Weston Underwood) – 66 finds
So that’s the 2018 Caching Diary. 1,533 total finds was well shy of the initial 2,018 target, but it was a good year nonetheless. The holiday in Italy was fantastic, and the Easter trip to France was a very memorable trip, both for the caching and the general “ambiance”, as it were.
by Kevin | Feb 26, 2018
A full day together in Tokyo after the previous day’s exertions.
We started with a trip to the Starbucks over the road for a relaxed breakfast, because you can’t rush into stuff the day after a marathon, and then we headed off for our first tourist job of the day. That makes it sound like there was a plan, when to be honest there was no such thing. It was a “winging it” sort of a day. The first tourist thing of the day was to take the free lifts up to the observation desk of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which was just up the road from the hotel. It took a little time to find the correct access point, but we got it eventually. This part of Tokyo definitely exists in all three dimensions and it’s very easy to find yourself on totally the wrong level for getting where you’re going. There’s more than one road level, for a start, and then a number of levels of walkways, underpasses and tunnels.
Once we found the right door I was expecting there’d be a bit of a queue, but we obviously got lucky because there really was nothing. I think we waited less than five minutes before getting in the lift. At the top you get a pretty impressive view across the city and in particular of all the tall buildings around the Shinjuku area. We spent a while up there walking around and taking photos before spending ages in one of the souvenir shops but leaving empty-handed as they wouldn’t take a credit card. Ho hum !
From here we decided to go for a bit of an exploratory walk through the suburbs to the Meiji Shrine, which proved somewhat entertaining. There were a couple of stretches where I felt a bit out of place, although I suppose they are probably fairly used to European tourists in most of Tokyo. We found a couple of caches though this section and ended up entering the park where the shrine is located from the north side.
Whilst still being rather busy, this one didn’t feel as busy as the Sensō-ji site that we’d visited on Saturday. Maybe that was partly because it was Monday and partly because it’s a lot more spread out. Wikipedia says that the site covers 70 hectares. The actual shrine forms a very small part of the site, most of which is taken up by trees of some 365 different varieties.
The shrine is apparently popular as a place to get married, and we were treated to a wedding procession through the outer courtyard while we were there.
Next we headed southwards in the general direction of Shibuya so we could go and have a gander at the famous scramble crossing, which is supposedly the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. It was very interesting to sit and watch for a few minutes from the nearby Starbucks, and quite an experience just to cross it a couple of times.
By this time it was mid-afternoon, so we figured we’d probably got one more location in us before nightfall. Sadly we’d failed to pre-plan and so were unable to go to the Imperial Palace, which is closed on Mondays, but we headed off in the general direction anyway so we could go take a look at the impressive outside of the Tokyo Station and its surrounding tall buildings. From here we wandered over to the edge of the Imperial Palace grounds and then southwards towards the Kasumigaseki Station, from which we’d ridden home the previous evening. This gave me a chance to grab a handful of geocaches that had been inaccessible the previous day when the marathon was on.
For dinner we found a small Japanese restaurant in the underground shopping centre that had more or less become our kitchen area for the trip, and then we settled in for an early night, as we’d got a flight at a ridiculously early time the following morning which meant us leaving the hotel practically before we’d gone to bed.
The flight home was uneventful apart from being a little late getting off the ground, and we spent most of the rest of that day watching bits of Russia and northern Europe drift by beneath us.
It had been an interesting and enjoyable trip and, much as expected, the kids were quite happy to see us when we got home.
by Kevin | Feb 25, 2018
Our third day in Tokyo, and the day that we were going to spend apart from each other, as Kas went off to run the marathon and I had a somewhat less taxing walk with a bit of geocaching planned.
Kas got up and set off quite early, and I decided to get moving fairly early too, if only to avoid getting pinned into Shinjuku until the runners had all left. The start of the marathon was literally a couple of hundred metres from our hotel and they’d been closing off various bits of road to traffic since well before daybreak.
I didn’t bother with breakfast anywhere, as I wasn’t really hungry. I sort of just wanted to go out and see how many caches I could find in Tokyo in the amount of time it took Kas to do the running. I’d got maybe 35-40 on the radar.
I began my walk by skirting around the north end of Shinjuku Station and after a quick find I began to get hit by the day’s first problem – poor GPS signal. Fair enough, there’s a lot of tall buildings around this area, so there’s not really a very clear sight of many satellites, but still, huh ? At the first cache I tried I gave up with the GPS when I was a good 50 metres away and just used the map and hint. At the second one I tried I wasn’t so lucky – I couldn’t get the GPS to settle at all and the hint didn’t give much clue as to where I should go. Likewise the third.
At the fourth I was supposed to be getting some information from a piece of street furniture, I think, but I couldn’t make sense of it and couldn’t get an answer. So that was a waste, and by this time I was starting to get a bit irritated by the whole idea. I really should learn to set lower expectations when I’m caching in towns and cities. It’s always hard work.
Anyway, I eventually found one and then picked my way down to the Shinjuku Gyo-en National Garden, where I found another whilst waiting at the gate for it to open.
The next half hour was spent rather in frustration as I tried to follow my way around a multi-cache but kept getting lost as the information trail just seemed to disappear about three-quarters of the way in. I tried three times before giving up. The gardens were pretty though.
And from here, then began the second major problem of the day – missing caches. Now I know that urban ones can be hard to find, but the particular problem here seemed to be that at least a third of the caches on my radar were known not to be present (from multiple DNF logs and/or disablement) and a third more had at least a couple of DNFs or were in areas with tall buildings. A consistent lack of useful hints wasn’t helping either.
By now it was getting on towards lunchtime (or at least it was lunchtime if you hadn’t had breakfast) so I decided I’d park my butt for a while and contemplate what was going on. I stopped at a small outlet belonging to a local coffee chain and had myself a sandwich and a latte flavoured with honey, which was nicer than it sounds. I was alongside the main road running through Yotsuya, alongside Yotsuya-sanchōme Station, I think. To be honest, if I hadn’t been trying to fill time before meeting Kas I’d have given up and gone home. I wasn’t really enjoying the caching very much and the walk along here was the part where I felt the most uncomfortable all weekend. Not unsafe, but I definitely felt like stood out a bit.
I progressed my way through a couple more suburbs in the general direction of the Imperial Palace and found myself at Kudanzaka Park, where I found another couple of caches that I couldn’t find, as it were. One was inaccessible due to building works (but wasn’t disabled) and one I just couldn’t find.
I was now really despairing at the state of caches in the city and time was starting to march on, so I started to progress my way through the Imperial Palace grounds, initially failing to find a cache again at the Nippon Budokan, and then entering the proper “palace” bit. I had to get to the far side of the palace from where I was to get to where I’d agreed to meet Kas, and even this proved frustrating as I didn’t have a map of where all the paths went and I ended up going a bit around the houses (or the gardens, to be accurate).
I eventually came out onto a main road where I just had to walk a mile or so to meet Kas. There were plenty of caches on the way but I felt I was out of time, so I left all of them apart from a wherigo that I was walking right past. I did start to wonder about how come the grass everywhere seems to die back and turn beige-coloured in the winter.
From the caching perspective it had been an appalling day. I’d been caching for the best part of 7 hours and had found an extremely disappointing 9 caches. I suppose I’d done a nice long walk through a strange city and had gone to a number of places that a non-cacher would never go to, but it didn’t suppress the overriding feeling of disappointment.
What did help was sitting in the gardens at the end of the marathon course and Kas turning up with a bit of a limp, a massive medal and a smile. It had been a decent run which had been fast enough to make a “good for age” in Chicago for 2019, so that’ll be up next.
It proved to be a very easy hole-in-one trip home from here by taking the Marunouchi Line from Kasumigaseki to Nishi-Shinjuku and then plodding along the subways to the hotel.
For dinner we took a short walk at street level to the place we’d been a couple of nights previously, and this time we ended up in a Japanese speciality cafe/bar, where we were treated to a veritable feast of hand prepared foods accompanied by some very nice locally made beer. The food was generally “tapas” style, but that worked well because they served things as soon as they were ready and we shared all of the dishes between the two of us.
Our night of sleep was ever so slightly disturbed by what felt like a general shaking of the floor. It turned out that there’d been an earthquake which, had it happened 24 hours earlier, would have resulted in the cancellation of the marathon. Thankfully it happened afterwards. So we can now both describe ourselves as “earthquake survivors”, which is not something I was expecting.
by Kevin | Feb 24, 2018
Day 2 of our jaunt to Tokyo, or possibly Day 3 if you count the day we travelled over (which I don’t).
On the plan today we’d got a bit of tourism. We wanted to go see a few things while we were here but obviously Kas wasn’t over-keen on masses of walking, given that she’d be having to run 26.2 miles the following day.
We started off our day by grabbing some breakfast in a nearby Starbucks while we agreed some sort of a plan.
Our first choice location was the rather large Tokyo Skytree, which is apparently the second tallest inhabited structure on the planet. You can’t quite get all the way up it, but you can get to a rather dizzying 450m above street level.
Anyway, to get there from our hotel we took the subway tunnels to join the Toei Ōed Line underneath the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and caught a train to Kuramae Station. From here we needed to change for the
Toei Asakusa Line, which looks very easy on the tube map but in practice is a little more difficult. There are, in fact, two completely separate stations with a 350m walk down the street in between them. It must have been the first place in Tokyo we’d been to where there wasn’t a network of underground tunnels. Anyway, we found it eventually and caught another train to Oshiage Station, which according to wikipedia is “adjacent to the Tokyo Skytree Complex”. That’s a euphemistic way of saying that the station is at the bottom level of a seemingly 50-floor shopping centre that you have to walk through to get to the Skytree at the top. I exaggerate somewhat, but it did take a while. No doubt if you’re well versed in such things you can find a way of walking round the outside and straight into the tower.
The first rather excellent thing we noticed about the Skytree was that they have a separate entrance for foreigners. It probably costs more than being a local, but it means you get to jump the big queue and just queue up behind however many other non-Japanese were trying to get in. In our case that was about 15 people only, whereas the locals entrance was stacked up miles out of the door and around the corner. I’m all in favour of a bit of Tommy-Tourist bonus when you’re on a tight timescale, even if it does cost a bit extra. We were in the lifts inside 10 minutes of entering the building.
The lifts didn’t seem like lifts at all. There was a vague sensation of travelling upwards but nothing like what you expect for a lift that takes you up 350 metres in a minute. First stop on the lift is the platform at 350m, which is one that everyone has to go to, It was kind of busy when we got there so we proceeded pretty much straight away up to the second lift and the 450m platform, which was a little quieter and also quite a lot lighter. The floor on this level is a lighter colour. There’s a gently sloping walkway around on this platform which brings you out at a point a couple of floors above where you exit the lift. Most confusing if you’re not expecting it. In between those floors, and walking around the platform, you get some impressive views in all directions around the city, and also a quick gallery of various bits of Anime artwork.
We should also have been able to see Mount Fuji from this height, but as with the whole of the weekend, the atmospheric conditions meant there was too much haziness to see even across the city of Tokyo, never mind as far as Fuji.
After we’d had our fill of high altitude we sat at the bottom (outside) and had a drink whilst watching people muck about on an outdoor ice rink. It was still quite cold, despite (or because of) the sunshine. While we were sitting down we discussed some route planning for our afternoon. We wanted to go over to the Sensō-ji, which appeared to be about a mile away on foot. Having come up on the train and been standing more or less still all morning we agreed that it would be good to stretch our legs for a while rather than getting on trains. Anyway, the nearest station to Sensō-ji seemed to be half a mile away, so we were going to have to do some walking anyway.
On our way over there we grabbed a handful of geocaches and took a few arty photos of things we were passing. We stumbled across a little oasis of calm at the Ushijima Shrine and then crossed the river to a fairly busy riverside walkway where Kas sat for a few minutes while I was rummaging in the undergrowth looking for tupperware.
Sensō-ji wasn’t far from here. We entered the site from the (less preferred) north side and meandered our way into a bit of a crowd. Well, I suppose it was mid-afternoon on a sunny Saturday, but it was really very busy with lots of people doing various kinds of temple activity, much of which seemed to involve buying small offerings and then giving them away or setting fire to them.
There was an interesting mix of styles of dress too, with quite a few people choosing to adopt some very traditional Japanese dress when making their visit here. I’m not sure if this was genuine or just something for the tourists, of which there were plenty of others as well as ourselves.
The basic form here is that there are several traditional shrine / temple buildings all immaculately painted in red with gold decoration. We didn’t go inside because neither of us is religious nor do we understand the particular habits of this religion, so it would seem a bit of an insult. However, there was lots of activity going on outside which meant that a trip inside didn’t seem necessary.
From the temple there’s a long walkway heading south which is flanked by rows of tat stalls selling souvenirs of varying degrees of rubbishness, at the end of which is a formal gate which was also home to a geocache. That one took a little while to find, especially given that it was really busy.
Once past that gate, one was essentially back out into the open again, and all that remained was for us to find a metro station to get home. This was harder than it seemed, but eventually we found the right entrance for Asakusa Station. Before climbing aboard, we took the opportunity to stop for half an hour to grab a sandwich and a drink. It was only mid-afternoon and we were ready for a bit of a rest, plus Kas had expressed a desire from here for not doing much more walking, and going back to the hotel.
The sandwiches were nice and then we picked our way back home by more or less retracing our morning journey back to Tochōmae Station.
I left Kas here so that she could walk through the underpasses back to the hotel while I went for a bit of a walk to find a few of the geocaches in Shinjuku, with varying degrees of success.
By the time I got back to the hotel it had gone dark, so we made a quick turnaround and then headed out for some dinner. We got about half a block along the road towards Shinjuku Station before spotting a pizza/pasta restaurant at street level. We ordered a simple pasta dish each and then had our first experience of being told we absolutely couldn’t leave a tip, and after that it was time for an early night, because Kas had got some running jaunt to be getting on with in the morning.
by Kevin | Feb 23, 2018
OK, so this was a fairly long day by most people’s standards, mainly because by most people’s standards it was actually two days, however there was no bed involved in the middle, and therefore in my mind it was just one very, very long day.
It began at home in Milton Keynes, but not very much of it was spent there as we were out of the house before daylight on our way down to Heathrow. As is normally the case with early starts, we stopped on the way out of town to grab a takeaway coffee.
We were early enough that the traffic on the M1 and M25 was tolerable, and we were into the car park at Heathrow in under 90 minutes from home. I now see that as a very reasonable amount of time. It used to take a lot less than that but nowadays it’s quite rare in my experience.
We were bound for Heathrow Terminal 5, the home of most BA flights from the airport. We had a direct flight into Tokyo’s older but now somewhat jazzed-up airport of Haneda on one of Mr Boeing’s very finest 777 aircraft. The flight promised to be mindlessly tedious though, in the way that 13 hour overnight flights are. It was only lunchtime, but it’s one of those flights that crosses a sufficiently large number of time zones that you can’t really figure out what time (or even what day) it is until the day you come home again.
While we were flying eastwards in daylight we managed to eat our way through some lunch and take a couple of not-too-bad photos of bits of northern Europe drifting by beneath us. I quite like the one of the Gulf of Riga that I’ve included here. Unfortunately, I also decided that a good way for me to get some sleep on the plane would be to drink a lot. It didn’t work. All that happened was that I got a monster hangover while we were only halfway across Russia and it took me until lunchtime to get rid of it.
So in the middle of probably the worst bit of my hangover we landed at Haneda at what was, for Japan, quite early in the morning – before-the-start-of-work kind of early. It was a first experience of Japan for us both, and I’m not sure either of us was really sure what to expect. I guess we sort of expected, in true stereotypical fashion, that getting through the airport would be smooth and ruthlessly efficient. It was. Or at least, it was until we missed a sign and descended a staircase into the wrong bit of the bus station, which meant we had to climb back up and down again to cross a road.
Haneda is serviced by a really rather excellent idea of a bus which runs directly to a group of large hotels in the Shinjuku area, which is where we were staying. We bought our tickets and got directed to the correct bus stop by a nice lady in the arrivals hall, and then queued up for all of 10 mins before our “Limousine Bus” arrived. The bus itself didn’t have any luxury features that might make you think it was a limousine, but after brief stops at each terminal building it then proceeded directly through the Tokyo morning traffic to Shinjuku Station, a bus terminal, and a handful of nearby hotels (of which ours was the final stop). It took about an hour, I guess, but it was brainless and easy and not very expensive.
Our hotel was expecting us to arrive, which is always handy, but wasn’t expecting us to arrive quite so early. It was only 9am after all. Our booked room wouldn’t be available until 3pm, but they said if we didn’t mind upgrading our room (to a category where they’d got some available ones) then they could let us have a room at 10:30 (ish). We decided to go for it, partly because “holiday rules apply” and partly because we had other things to get done during the day, some of which required rearrangement of the content of the bags we were carrying. This left us with just over an hour to kill and a need for some breakfast, so we made our first (of many) visits to the Starbucks over the road. They had a familiar selection of coffee based beverages and some quite unfamiliar looking cakes and pastries. The chocolate chip scones were nice.
While we were in there we noticed a few other Europeans who were obviously there for the same reason that Kas was, and we took the opportunity to ask one couple how easy it was to get to the expo site. We needed to go there to get Kas’s number and she wanted to do it on the Friday so that we could have a full day of tourist activity on Saturday. It turned out to be quite easy from a logical perspective (one metro and one overground) but a little time consuming.
That’s all by-the-by though. First of all we had to go check into our hotel room. Our room was of the “superior” category, whatever that means, and was on the 19th floor, about halfway up, and had a nice view out in the general direction of where the marathon would be starting. All very nice apart from the push-back wood-and-paper screen thing that separated the sleeping area from the bathroom. It was possible to push the screen back whilst in the sleeping area such that you could see someone in the shower or bath (but probably not someone on the toilet). Weird. But enough of that. The room was big enough, clean, warm and had comfortable looking beds which we were both looking forward to trying out later in the day.
Before that we had the adventure of getting to the expo site in front of us. This involved getting the Toei Ōedo Line from Tochōmae to Shiodome and then the Yurikamome on to Kokusai-tenjijō-seimon. The only annoying part really was the fact that you had to buy a separate ticket as the two lines are operated by different companies. The Yurikamome is quite entertaining, as it’s an above ground line that’s essentially rubber-tyred vehicles running on concrete guideways. It’s driverless too and it goes over the fairly large and impressive Rainbow Bridge.
The expo was at the Tokyo Big Sight and it was fairly busy by the time we arrived. Unlike some other marathon expos Kas has been to, this one had most of the gory parts happening in a closed area that couldn’t be accessed by non-runners. I’m not really one for browsing round such things anyway, so while Kas had a good old expoing session I went out for a bit of a walk and a few geocaches. Well, Japan was a new country for me both in physical and geocaching terms, and Kas was kind enough to give me a good two hours of free time in an area that had quite a few caches nearby. The walk around here was also my first experience of being out on the street, I guess. This area was all perfectly easy to understand from the perspective of a European with no knowledge of Kanji (nor of Hirigana and Katakana). Everything is written in multiple languages on all the road signs, much like they are in Singapore, including some very Latin looking script. Anyway, I had my GPS, so at least I’d always know where I was even if I didn’t know where I was going.
My walk took me down onto what I think it as artificial island with a ferry terminal on the end. Well, I know it was an artificial island. I’m speculating about the ferry terminal part. Natural islands don’t have shorelines that are perfectly straight. Anyway, I digress. The walk down this part was not really one of Tokyo’s tourist highlights, but it did yield a handful of caches in quick order in a location that was fairly free of other people. By this time also the sun had come out and I was wondering why I was wearing quite so many clothes.
Once I’d finished the ferry terminal I walked down the artificial island that has the Tokyo Big Sight on it. There were a handful more down the side of this one, although a couple of them seemed to be missing.
This took me up to my assigned meeting time with the boss, and we duly met up and made our way back to the hotel via the par-two train system again. By the time we got back it was very nearly dark, which means we’d been out of bed for about 30 hours, but we still needed to sort out some dinner for the evening. We got all showered and cleaned up and went for a look at the various hotel restaurants, assuming that they’d be horrendously over-priced, which they duly were. This lead us to take a stroll up the street and discover an interesting feature of the Shinjuku area, namely that there’s a layout of streets at the top that cars and buses go on, and then there’s a layout of underground tunnels, subways and shopping malls (with restaurants) that are completely hidden from street. We walked into one random shopping mall and were greeted by a number of different restaurants offering a variety of different cuisines and all at somewhat lower prices than the hotel. They gave us reassurance that we’d be able to eat reasonably well throughout this trip without getting fleeced.
We chose a Thai restaurant and treated ourselves to a one-course quick meal, which was very nice indeed, before retiring to the hotel for a large quantity of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Before that we managed to raise the energy to take a few photos of lit-up skyscrapers out of the hotel window.
By the time we made it to bed we’d probably not seen a bed for 32-33 hours. I call that a long day. But definitely only one day.
by Kevin | Dec 31, 2017
Objectives
At the turn of the year I was party to several facebook discussions on the subject of what targets people were setting for their caching during 2017. I generally don’t make plans, because I tend to cache opportunistically and have learned to be driven by whims rather than plans, but the discussion got me thinking. So here is my 2017 Caching Diary.
Instead of making formal plans I’ve decided this year to just try to pick away at a number of different objectives, continuing last year’s theme of just enjoying my caching. There’s a number of things I’d like to work on, these being:
- Get my total finds up towards 10,000;
- Finish off some more English counties, and maybe the remaining Welsh ones if schedules allow;
- Colour in a few more slots on the Difficulty/Terrain Matrix;
- Attend one or maybe two overseas mega events, especially the GeoNord 2017 – Oxygen event in June;
- Attend the UK Mega in Devon (Devon UK Mega 2017), if holiday schedules allow.
Let’s see how it goes, huh!
January (66 finds)
- 1st Jan – we walked around Lodge Lake in Milton Keynes to find a couple – 2 finds
- 7th Jan – we attended the 14th iteration of the Roundabout MK event series – 1 finds
- 22nd Jan – I completed most of the Banbury Fringe Circular Caching Walk series (see Banbury) – 63 finds
February (114 finds)
March (102 finds)
- 9th Mar – I attended a “Roundabout MK” meeting – 1 find
- 22nd Mar – I attended a BBH event down near Leighton Buzzard – 1 find
- 25th Mar – I felt like I was in danger of having my worst caching month ever, so I addressed the problem by finding 100 in a day near Yaxley (see Yakkety Yaxley) – 100 finds
April (463 finds)
By far the most cachiest caching month ever. Of all time.
- 1st Apr – the girls and me spend a good day in the company of the Happy Hunter attacking the Shrek series in Kent (see Greenhithe) – 56 finds
- 7th Apr – Ami and me began our epic trip to Belgium (see Jeux Sans Frontieres) – 73 finds
- 8th Apr – Ami and me attended the Brugse Beer Mega (see Brugse Beer VII) – 44 finds (including 19 lab caches)
- 9th Apr – Ami and me attended an event beginning with a “Z” then went to a town with a silly name (see Knick Knacky Knokke Heist Knicky Knacky Noo) – 63 finds
- 10th Apr – Ami and me made our trip home from Bruges via Calais (see Big White Nose) – 47 finds
- 11th Apr – I was able to complete a find on a challenge cache I’d signed on April 1st – 1 find
- 23rd Apr – Izzy and me scooted up to Cambridgeshire for a few (see Lutton Lambada) – 64 finds
- 25th Apr – I grabbed a handful while on a business trip to Munich – 5 finds
- 29th Apr – I made a solo run down to Kent for the Kent Mega event, which turned into a bit of an epic day (see Oast with the Most) – 110 finds ( including 10 lab caches )
May (2 finds)
From the best month ever to the worst.
- 2nd May – I picked up a single local cache to gain a souvenir – 1 find
- 31st May – I attended a Roundabout MK event – 1 find
June (159 finds)
Giving it some proverbial welly again.
- 4th June – I drove over to Suffolk and Essex to tick off two missing counties (see A Disappointing Achievement) – 32 finds
- 6th June – I needed to stretch my legs after work and there was a new cache just up the road – 1 find
- 9th-11th June – I attended this year’s GeoNord mega event in Saint Omer (see Saint Omer) – 123 finds
- 27th June – someone released a bunch of new puzzle caches in Milton Keynes, I got an FTF on one of them – 2 finds
- 28th June – I did another one of those – 1 find
July (137 finds)
- 6th July – I attacked a couple more of the new puzzles in Milton Keynes – 2 finds
- 14th July – I attacked most of them, but missed 4 because it was too dark (see MK Puzzle Series) – 20 finds
- 15th July – I went out for a “mega” day near Orwell after doing parkrun and came home with a new PB (see Orwell Orbital) – 114 finds
- 16th July – we all attended an event in the evening – 1 find
August (158 finds)
- 12th August – we found a cache on the way home from dinner on the first night of our family holiday – 1 find
- 13th August – I went for a walk around and found a few, some with the family and some alone – 7 finds
- 14th August – we had trouble finding any caches at all in Girona – 4 finds
- 15th August – we found a handful around the “Olympic Zone” in Barcelona – 12 finds
- 17th August – I had a rather fruitful day near to our holiday home (see Santa Cristina) – 75 finds
- 18th August – we went to Barcelona again for a bit of Gaudi action – 4 finds
- 21st August – we went for a look at the monastery at Montserrat – 6 finds
- 22nd August – I had another afternoon caching on my own in Spain (see Pedralta) – 43 finds
- 24th August – we went up to the theme park on the Tibidabo mountain near Barcelona – 2 finds
- 25th August – I walked up the hill behind our holiday home to make one more find in town before we left – 1 find
- 26th August – we grabbed a few final caches in the middle of Barcelona before coming home – 3 finds
September (85 finds)
- 17th September – I walked around a couple of new series near to home (see Adstock) – 43 finds
- 30th September – I went over to the south side of Northampton for a new series (see Camo Capers) – 42 finds
October (129 finds)
- 5th October – I finished off the puzzle series in MK that I’d started back in July – 5 finds
- 7th October – I scooted over to Souldrop for a series there (see Souldrop Caching) – 46 finds
- 11th October – we attended the “Puzzle Club” event in a well known coffee shop – 1 find
- 21st October – I headed in the general direction of Royston while the girls were away up north (see Barkway and Reed) – 66 finds
- 22nd October – I made one local find whilst setting a load of my Flags series – 1 find
- 27th October – I went to London with the kids to give Kas a day of peace and quiet at home – 10 finds
November (67 finds)
- 5th November – I headed west (slightly) to complete a couple of nearby series (see Hillesden Caching) – 38 finds
- 9th November – there was a “Roundabout MK” event – 1 find
- 12th November – I did a quick dash around southeastern MK with Izzy – 11 finds
- 18th November – it was lad’s weekend away and we ended up in Whitby after a long day of walking – 1 find
- 19th November – we went for a walk at Robin Hood’s Bay – 10 finds
- 20th November – I made a quick pre-breakfast dash around the village in North Yorkshire we’d been staying in – 6 finds
December (73 finds)
- 3rd December – I headed over to Knapwell for the majority of my finds in the month (see Knapwell Knick Knack) – 53 finds
- 23rd December – we were up at Kas’s mum’s for Christmas and I grabbed a few new ones in Whitburn – 3 finds
- 29th December – Kas wanted a long run so we met her at Rosliston for what turned out to be a very muddy afternoon – 16 finds
- 31st December – Pesh organised a breakfast event at the Peace Pagoda – 1 find
Summary
So what did I manage to achieve over the course of the year ? A few things, but maybe not that impressive a list :
- A new record for most finds in a single calendar month – 463 in April
- 3 mega events, of which 2 were overseas
- A bunch of new entries filled in on the D/T matrix
- A visit to the English counties of Essex and Suffolk (at last)
- 1559 total finds – not my best year, but not the worst either
- A visit to Catalonia to colour in 2 new provinces in Spain (or 2 or the 4 provinces in Catalonia, depending on how you feel about Catalonian independence)
- I attended my 100th event cache, counting all types such as regular events, megas, gigas and CITOs
So not a bad year, overall.
by Kevin | Aug 22, 2017
Over the previous couple of days it had become more obvious that I was going to have to deal with a cracked tooth I’d picked up somewhere in the previous couple of weeks. I think a bit more had come off it, and it was pretty much at the point where it was grating really badly against my tongue. Something had to be done. Anyway, it wouldn’t be a proper holiday for us without at least one of us needing to see a doctor, dentist, or other medical practitioner. Normally that’s me, but occasionally it’s someone else.
So I googled for dentists nearby and phoned one first thing in the morning to find out the sketch. The sketch was that they could see me at 10:30. The dentist’s surgery was down on the harbour at Sant Feliu and it was very nice inside, albeit well hidden behind a very non-medical looking door to what I think was a block of apartments. The dentist decided she needed to hack out a bit of tooth and then fill it. The whole thing was done in half an hour and it cost me less than it would to have the same procedure done at home. In fact, it was so little that it was below the excess on the insurance policy, so I just paid it and wandered off without waiting for much in the way of documentary evidence. Because the plan for today said “Waterpark” I’d also scouted their website first thing. The Waterpark did good discounts on entry for people well organised enough to book online a day in advance, so I duly did that and then swapped “Waterpark” and “dad’s going caching” around on the day planner. Caching day then!
On the radar for this day was a long walk through woodlands up to a local viewpoint called Pedralta (“High Rock”) and then an equally long walk back down into Sant Feliu. Kas dropped me off at the end of a new and quite plush looking housing estate on the west side of town, through the back of the golf course I’d crossed on my previous caching trip ( see Santa Cristina ). In fact, it probably dumbs the place down rather to refer to it as a housing estate. I’m going to change my mind and go for “collection of substantial residential properties” – seriously, I don’t think they have a lot of poverty in the area. What they did have though was a lot of biting insects. Little scumbags. I got bitten twice while I was still switching the GPS on and finding a pen.
My walk took me through forested land in a downwards and then very steeply upwards direction, heading vaguely south and east. The caches were fairly close together for most of the way but they lacked hints and a few were well buried, so progress was a little slow. It was also very warm and the trees took away what little breeze there might have been. You get the picture. I was getting hot. Just as well I had an earth-shattering quantity of cold drinks in my bag then. The objective of all this uphill walking was the Pedralta, which, according to wikipedia, used to be the largest rocking stone in Europe. What there is up there is a little chapel, a big rock balancing precariously on a somewhat smaller one, and a big plateau with a viewpoint, from which you can see most of the surrounding area. It was a pretty decent view from up there.
Where the walk up had been all through forests and on rough paths, the route down followed a tarmac road, which meant that the walking became somewhat easier. The caches were a little easier to find too. I made pretty good progress back down the hill and soon found myself by the side of the new dual carriageway running round the western side of Sant Feliu. From here I followed cycle paths and wide footpaths around to the harbour (collecting more caches as I went). I eventually found myself at the old monastery in town (couldn’t find the cache there) and then found my way to the beach, where I found another cache and a place to buy ice cream.
There were two more caches at “our” end of the harbour that I grabbed on the way past and then walked back up the hill to rejoin the girls. The kids had decided they were having another “can’t be bothered” day, so the three of them had been at the apartment the whole time.
Tea for the evening consisted of a very welcome combination of pastas, sauces and beers. By the end of the day I’d found 43 caches. They were :
by Kevin | Aug 17, 2017
Today was a day in which the ladies of the house would be posting a blog page called “Not a Lot Happened”, or something similar to that. I had it pencilled in as a caching day, so I was far from inactive. Other things I was “far from” for periods of the day included “comfortable”, “home” and “enthusiastic”, although apart from “comfortable” none of the others lasted the whole day. I was mainly uncomfortable as a result of getting myself sunburned the previous afternoon. I’m not a clever bunny sometimes.
The day’s exploits began with Kas dropping me off on the far side of Santa Cristina, at some random junction with an old railway line that’s been converted into a biking trail and has subsequently been littered with lots of tupperware, spaced at approximately 180m intervals. Ideal. I was carrying a large quantity of beverages and some sandwiches in my bag as well as spare caches, pens and camera, so I was feeling a bit weighed down, and the bag was chafing against my hurty back, so I was a bit of a miserable bunny when I set off, but not miserable enough to stay at home and mope. The caching was quite slow going, partly because of the heat and partly because they were proving more difficult to find than the listed difficulty (in my opinion). My route took me along the old railway into Santa Cristina town (with a short diversion up a hill for three very creative caches). At one of these (just on the edge of town) I got spotted by the CO’s teenage daughter and she came outside to say hello and see if I needed any help. I didn’t, but it’s always nice to meet up with people.
As I passed through the town the first time I stopped to buy spare batteries. I think the rechargeable in the Garmin is starting to lose its oomph, especially when being used in bright light. There was a local newsagent that stocked the requisite. From here I headed around the south of the town (and the other side of the motorway) through a golf course and some new housing before ending up on the south side of Santa Cristina again. There was another series running along the southern edge of town, which proved to be good fun, before I walked back to the northern side to join the old railway line again. By this time I’d been out for 6 hours or so and had drunk plenty but not eaten much. I tend not to get hungry in hot weather. I’d found time for an ice cream though. Eventually I got back to the north-east corner of town, from where the railway line cut a sharp southwards turn towards Sant Feliu.
Ami had mentioned she might like to walk the final couple of miles into town with me, so I called Kas and they arranged to meet me at a little parking spot at 4pm, from where Ami and me would have about an hour’s walk to get home. She bought more drinks, which were very welcome.
The walk in was slower than expected, with a few more tricky ones and a couple of missing ones. We also overshot in an effort to get to the very end of the series, and then had over half a mile (mainly uphill) to get back to the apartment again.
By the time I got home it was well past 6pm and I was thoroughly exhausted. I’d found 75 caches in total, which is not a bad haul, but in UK conditions I might have expected to that many in two hours fewer. Nevertheless, it was a new overseas personal best for me, and I was (eventually) happy about it, especially once the multiple pastas and multiple beers we had for tea had settled in properly. The beer-based “rehydration” continued for some time, although I was alternating with non-beer too, just to make sure I got some benefit from all the drinking. The sunset was rather nice too.
I logged 75 geocache finds on the day. They were :
by Kevin | Aug 15, 2017
For our fourth day we decided to go and see what was on offer in the big city. Well, we sort of knew what was on offer, so on this day we decided to go and buy a bit of it.
We left home at around 10:15 after Kas had been for her run. The drive into Barcelona was pretty uneventful and Cynthia did a grand job of taking us along the main coastal road rather than through the middle of town. We parked up in a massive car park on the side of Montjuïc. I then decided I didn’t like where I’d parked, so I did another lap of the car park and parked somewhere I thought more acceptable. The problem was caused by the fact that it wasn’t obvious whether you were supposed to pay to park or not.
Anyway, back at the plot, on the top of Montjuïc there’s a castle which has been kept in pretty good order and which was surprisingly cheap to get into. We had a good old walk around the inside, taking lots of photos of both the castle and the views over the city. Of the three things I expected to be able to see from a high vantage point in Barcelona ( the Camp Nou, the Sagrada Familia and the Olympic Stadium) we only managed to spot one from up here. The Camp Nou was hidden in buildings and we didn’t know which direction it was in, and the Olympic Stadium is at the foot of the mountain hidden behind a load of tees. The Sagrada Familia stands out a mile from its surroundings. I think the surrounding buildings are being deliberately kept at a low height so that the cathedral stands out more.
After a while we found ourselves in an inner courtyard with what looked like a load of tea towels hanging out to dry. Turns out they are full of profound questions. The only question we had at this point was “is there a cafe in here?” and we found a member of staff to answer it for us. “No”, she said. “But there’s some vending machines in room 10 that contain cold drinks.” Well that’ll do us, because we had sandwiches and crisps in the backpack anyway.
Back outside after lunch we went for a walk around the path on the outside of the walls, partly for more views and partly to do a few geocaches dotted along the way. Some of these ones were actually there.
After walking all the way round we took the cable car down to the bottom (lazy, I know, but we’d have to come back up again at some point, and it’s part of the experience, innit ?
From the bottom of the cable car it’s about a third of a mile walk along flat ground to get to the Olympic Stadium. They very nicely keep this open at one end so you can enter on the mezzanine level and get some good photos around the stadium. There’s also a souvenir shop and a cafe inside. Excellent. Time for an ice cream then.
From the stadium we dropped down a level onto the big open spaces they built for the Olympics. There were a few more caches down there as well as a load of extra Olympic venues that were closed.
By the time we’d done all this it was getting a bit late, so we headed off home, via a drinks stop at the same service station we’d used on Saturday.
When we got home we decided to go out for dinner again and walked down into Sant Feliu, where we found a rather average pizza place after having wandered most of the town centre looking for something other than the rather samey tapas bars that the town centre is filled with.
The walk back up the hill was quite slow after a long day, and once we got home Kas and Izzy went straight to bed while Ami and me sat up for a while reading.
by Kevin | Aug 13, 2017
Our first full day on holiday began with a lot of relaxing.
Kas went out for a run (which is what she does to relax) while the girls and me generally mucked about at the apartment, by which I mean that the girls went in the swimming pool, and I joined them after an hour or so. In the morning the pool was in shade, so we could get away with not doing the full suncream experience.
We had lunch at the apartment and then decided to go for a walk down to S’Agaro to the beach called Sant Pol, via a somewhat “scenic” route that Kas had run part of the way around in the morning. Whilst doing this I was trying to sneak in a few crafty geocaches too. It was quite hard going because the weather was warm and the coastal path was very hilly (a bit of a theme for this holiday, as it happens).
We made it round to beach just before the kids had a total meltdown about having to walk outside in nice weather. Once on the beach we grabbed a quick ice cream and then I went for a walk further round the nearest headland trying to find a few more caches, again with mixed (i.e. very little) success. Eventually I think I gave up trying and just went back to join the girls on the beach. When I got there I discovered that the sand was far too lumpy for building sandcastles, and they’d therefore contented themselves with just going swimming the whole time. I went and joined them for a quick plodge in the sea to get cooled down.
In the late afternoon we walked back uphill to the apartment and got cleaned up before walking back down to the same beach to find a beach bar for dinner. We had a range of tapas again, and our considered opinion was that the patatas bravas weren’t as nice as the ones we’d had the previous night, but they were still quite good.
We went back up the hill again quite early (it was still light) but didn’t do any beer drinking or snack eating. Everyone was too tired still, so we made it an early night and just dived into bed. Anyway, we’d got plans for the following day.
by Kevin | Aug 12, 2017
Sant Feliu de Guixols - The Apartment
Woo hoo! Family holiday time.
We’d booked some flights to Barcelona quite early in the year (“Book early to avoid disappointment”) and had subsequently conducted an extensive search across multiple accommodation sites before plumping for a two bedroom apartment in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, just over an hour away from Barcelona.
Our flight was quite an early one leaving from Luton Airport with Vueling. I’d never heard of the airline before, but they are apparently the biggest airline in Spain. We picked them partly for that, and partly because, as is always the case, when you add the cost of carrying bags ad sitting next to each other onto the base price of flying with the orange-coloured low-cost airline then it ends up being more expensive (by about £35 per person).
We woke up at some ridiculous time (4:30am) having had virtually no sleep, and left home 45 minutes later. The drive to Luton was painless. The parking was slightly tedious to find but we ended up in the terminal building not long after 6am, and a good half hour before Vueling were supposedly going to open their one check-in desk. It took us a while to find the Vueling check-in desk, but when we did, there was someone at it, so I walked up and asked, and was told that yes, I could indeed check in half an hour before they were supposed to open. Result. So we got the bags checked in by about 6:15 and decided it was time to go for breakfast on the other side of the security controls.
We found an extremely busy cafe inside where we sat and had some coffee and pastries to pass the time. When we’d finished that, Kas decided she wanted a new camera, so she went and bought one.
We still had a while before departure, but by this time the terminal had quietened down a lot. I think EasyJet and Wizz ship all their planes out of Luton on a Saturday between 6am and 8am, so by the time they got round to boarding us (at 9am) the terminal was like a ghost town. Anyway, that made it less painful to get to our gate, and we were able to walk out to the plane in fairly nice weather on time.
We seemed to sit on the tarmac for quite a while before getting airborne, but because it’s downhill going to Spain they managed to catch up the time and we landed when we were supposed to.
Barcelona’s airport is definitely a big, proper airport rather than a small, regional one. It’s big, shiny, and contains a lot of glass and polished stone.
It also has a lot of car rental desks. Ours (booked online with Enterprise) was fairly easy to find and after quite a while queuing we got to the front. I was ready with all my excuses as to why I didn’t want all of their extra insurances, but as it turned out they didn’t bother offering them to me anyway – they just took the money for the rental and the damage deposit and sent us on our way. I turned down the opportunity of paying €55 for the privilege of being able to take the car into France.
The car itself (and the key for it) was away in one of the car parks. The nice gentleman there presented us with the key to a spangly dark blue Volvo S60. I’d upgraded a couple of levels from our normal because I wanted something quite comfortable and a little larger. I was expecting we’d be doing a fair amount of driving and wanted a car that was nice to sit in. The only two potential issues were the fact that it was a saloon, so it might be fun getting the luggage in, and it was an automatic, so it might be tricky to drive for the first half hour or so.
We got the luggage in eventually. It was a bit of a Krypton Factor test, involving more than one attempt and having to push down a little too hard on the boot lid. It was what you’d describe as a tight fit, although no actual jungles, lions or sleeping were involved. We were ready to whim away though.
I took the first shift of driving, which gave me the challenge of getting the car out of the fairly narrow parking space, around the narrow lanes between kerbs and large-looking metal barriers, and out into the open air. We made this more entertaining by missing the exit lane the first time, which resulted in us having to do a second lap of the car park. I really wasn’t driving very confidently.
Once outside though, Kas started fiddling with the onboard SatNav system and managed to programme it to take us to the place where we had to fetch our apartment keys. The SatNav was set in German though, so as we drove through central Barcelona we had a peculiarly European experience of being an English family in Spain, driving a Swedish car that was talking to us in German. It was also quite uncomfortable for me driving, because I hadn’t got the steering wheel position right, so I felt all squeezed up but never quite had time to adjust it as we passed through Barcelona’s extensive urban motorway system.
All of this, plus the fact that it had been a while since we’d eaten or drunk anything, encouraged us to stop at some motorway services on the edge of Barcelona for a chill-break. Whilst still in the car park Kas figured out how to change the SatNav to speak to us in English and I fiddled about with the steering wheel and seat adjustments. The SatNav spoke quite posh English, and we decided to name her Cynthia. She sounded like a Cynthia.
We had to fetch our apartment keys from the town of Llafranc, which is (rather annoyingly) a half hour drive further on from our resort. Being a Saturday afternoon in summer, it was also busy to the extent that we couldn’t find anywhere to park. We ended up wasting about half an hour driving in circles and experimenting with how small a space I thought I could park the Volvo into. If you’re not familiar with a car’s size or gearbox, then attempting to reverse up a steep hill, around a bend, on a gravel surface and surrounded by trees probably isn’t a great idea. I thought better of it and drove off for another lap of the town.
Eventually we got parked up and descended through the town to the accommodation office (Llafranc Villas). Izzy needed the toilet by this time and the office didn’t have one we could use, so Kas took her for a walk down to the sea front while Ami and me queued up to check in. The checking in consisted mainly of paying and being told that everything else we needed was actually at the apartment already. OK, fair enough.
The drive back to Sant Feliu seemed quicker than the drive out, and Cynthia found the apartment easily enough. There was an onsite geezer who looked after keys, maintenance, bedding and any other general things that needed looking after. The apartment itself was small but adequate, given that we’d be out for much of the time anyway. The view is quite good though.
The next essential was to find a supermarket and do all the normal business of buying food for the morning and cleaning products. There was one down the bottom of the hill from the apartment and it proved to be big enough to see us through the holiday without wanting to find anywhere better.
When we got back to the apartment it was getting late and we couldn’t be bothered to cook, so we got dressed up and legged it down to the sea front in Sant Feliu to see what was what. What was what was a nice restaurant on the plaza back from the sea wall, with outdoor seating, cold beer, and a varied menu of local cuisine. That’ll do us for now then.
Our final action for the day was then to walk back up the hill to the apartment. Walking up that hill became a bit of a theme for the holiday. It was steep. We sneaked in a quick geocache on the way back up.
It had been a long day and we were all kippered, so we went straight to bed anticipating that a good night’s sleep would fix most things.
Our first full day on holiday began with a lot of relaxing.
Kas went out for a run (which is what she does to relax) while the girls and me generally mucked about at the apartment, by which I mean that the girls went in the swimming pool, and I joined them after an hour or so. In the morning the pool was in shade, so we could get away with not doing the full suncream experience.
We had lunch at the apartment and then decided to go for a walk down to S’Agaro to the beach called Sant Pol, via a somewhat “scenic” route that Kas had run part of the way around in the morning. Whilst doing this I was trying to sneak in a few crafty geocaches too. It was quite hard going because the weather was warm and the coastal path was very hilly (a bit of a theme for this holiday, as it happens).
We made it round to beach just before the kids had a total meltdown about having to walk outside in nice weather. Once on the beach we grabbed a quick ice cream and then I went for a walk further round the nearest headland trying to find a few more caches, again with mixed (i.e. very little) success. Eventually I think I gave up trying and just went back to join the girls on the beach. When I got there I discovered that the sand was far too lumpy for building sandcastles, and they’d therefore contented themselves with just going swimming the whole time. I went and joined them for a quick plodge in the sea to get cooled down.
In the late afternoon we walked back uphill to the apartment and got cleaned up before walking back down to the same beach to find a beach bar for dinner. We had a range of tapas again, and our considered opinion was that the patatas bravas weren’t as nice as the ones we’d had the previous night, but they were still quite good.
We went back up the hill again quite early (it was still light) but didn’t do any beer drinking or snack eating. Everyone was too tired still, so we made it an early night and just dived into bed. Anyway, we’d got plans for the following day.
I got up at 9am. It should have been 8:30, but my phone was in the lounge and Izzy didn’t think to come and tell me that the alarm was going off, despite sitting next to it for the duration. Kids, huh ?
Kas was already out running and was expecting we’d be somewhere near ready for going out when she got back. We weren’t, but we were fairly close.
The plan for the day was to drive to Girona for a look around. We weren’t really sure what that would involve other than some buildings and some ice cream. When we set off I’d got it in my mind that Girona was the setting for a William Shakespeare play, but that turned out to be Verona – completely different place. In a different country. Well, two thirds of the letters in the name are the same. It’s an easy mistake, especially if you’re not well versed in the bard.
Anyway, first of all we had to get there, which gave Kas a bit of a challenge because it was her first attempt at driving the Volvo. Because we didn’t know whereabouts in Girona we were trying to get to, we were unable to use Cynthia the SatNav to help. A recipe for potential disaster, but which thankfully didn’t come to pass until we were trying to get home again.
We parked up by some medieval walls on the east side of the city centre (it’s not a very big place) and decided to take a walk around in a clockwise direction. You can walk most of the way around the walls. Calling them “medieval” is a bit of a con, on the basis that they have had to be significantly upgraded and repaired to make them walkable, but it’s been done fairly tastefully and the overall effect is quite dramatic. In several places the walls are really rather high.
It was kind of a warm day, and we quickly found that the heat was getting the better of us all. The walls were quite exposed to the sunshine and the ambient air temperature was rather high.
After most of an hour we arrived at the heart of Girona’s medieval centre, the cathedral. The outside of it seems a little stark and plain when you’re used to the Gothic excesses of Northern Europe and the UK, and the fact that it isn’t symmetrical adds to a sense that it isn’t very cathedral-like (in my mind, anyway).
Before going inside we decided to grab a sandwich and a drink at a cafe in the square at the foot of the main steps. This is a location that you would normally describe as “Tommy Tourist Central”, but to be honest the prices weren’t too bad, and whilst there were plenty of passers by in the square they were generally, well, passing by rather than trying to get into this cafe. So it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience.
The cathedral itself offers a self-guided talkie-tour. Izzy insisted on getting one of the handsets to listen in, but then promptly handed it to someone else and didn’t pay any attention to it. The interior of the cathedral is large and church-ish. The experience was “improved” by the presence of someone playing a continuous scale of notes on the organ starting very high and gradually descending to a tone and volume that made you wish that the toilets were a little closer.
The cathedral also offers some cloisters, which are worth a walk around. No, not a Belgian tennis player. That’s Clijsters, you numpty. It’s an enclosed walkway forming a quadrangle and often attached to the warmer south side of a cathedral, and indicating a former use as a monastery. The cloisters allowed the monks to walk about outside without being disturbed by the riff-raff outside of the monastic life. Medieval monks took their monking pretty seriously.
Within a hundred metres or so of the cathedral stands the Collegiate Church of Sant Feliu, which is another large and entirely unsymmetrical church. It is also quite nice inside, although that might just have been because of the lack of bladder-bursting organ music.
Just down from here is a bridge over the River Onyar, from where one can take artistic photos of the pretty coloured buildings along the east bank.
From here we grabbed an ice cream and walked through the old town to find the far end of the medieval walls.
The route back to the car from there was all uphill, and therefore quite unwelcome. What was also unwelcome was my total inability to locate any of the caches I attempted on the walk. I eventually threw a hissy fit and gave up.
We left Girona at about 3:30pm and drove home, via the supermarket. When we arrived home the kids were in the pool before anyone could say Jack Robinson. Kas and I politely declined.
We made it “sausage and salad” night for tea and then sat down with Izzy to make a day-by-day plan for the rest of the holiday. We nearly stuck to it.
On that same evening I also started to make notes on the laptop for these blog posts, and I began reading one of the two Iain M. Banks books I’d taken with me – The Hydrogen Sonata.
For our fourth day we decided to go and see what was on offer in the big city. Well, we sort of knew what was on offer, so on this day we decided to go and buy a bit of it.
We left home at around 10:15 after Kas had been for her run. The drive into Barcelona was pretty uneventful and Cynthia did a grand job of taking us along the main coastal road rather than through the middle of town. We parked up in a massive car park on the side of Montjuïc. I then decided I didn’t like where I’d parked, so I did another lap of the car park and parked somewhere I thought more acceptable. The problem was caused by the fact that it wasn’t obvious whether you were supposed to pay to park or not.
Anyway, back at the plot, on the top of Montjuïc there’s a castle which has been kept in pretty good order and which was surprisingly cheap to get into. We had a good old walk around the inside, taking lots of photos of both the castle and the views over the city. Of the three things I expected to be able to see from a high vantage point in Barcelona ( the Camp Nou, the Sagrada Familia and the Olympic Stadium) we only managed to spot one from up here. The Camp Nou was hidden in buildings and we didn’t know which direction it was in, and the Olympic Stadium is at the foot of the mountain hidden behind a load of tees. The Sagrada Familia stands out a mile from its surroundings. I think the surrounding buildings are being deliberately kept at a low height so that the cathedral stands out more.
After a while we found ourselves in an inner courtyard with what looked like a load of tea towels hanging out to dry. Turns out they are full of profound questions. The only question we had at this point was “is there a cafe in here?” and we found a member of staff to answer it for us. “No”, she said. “But there’s some vending machines in room 10 that contain cold drinks.” Well that’ll do us, because we had sandwiches and crisps in the backpack anyway.
Back outside after lunch we went for a walk around the path on the outside of the walls, partly for more views and partly to do a few geocaches dotted along the way. Some of these ones were actually there.
After walking all the way round we took the cable car down to the bottom (lazy, I know, but we’d have to come back up again at some point, and it’s part of the experience, innit ?
From the bottom of the cable car it’s about a third of a mile walk along flat ground to get to the Olympic Stadium. They very nicely keep this open at one end so you can enter on the mezzanine level and get some good photos around the stadium. There’s also a souvenir shop and a cafe inside. Excellent. Time for an ice cream then.
From the stadium we dropped down a level onto the big open spaces they built for the Olympics. There were a few more caches down there as well as a load of extra Olympic venues that were closed.
By the time we’d done all this it was getting a bit late, so we headed off home, via a drinks stop at the same service station we’d used on Saturday.
When we got home we decided to go out for dinner again and walked down into Sant Feliu, where we found a rather average pizza place after having wandered most of the town centre looking for something other than the rather samey tapas bars that the town centre is filled with.
The walk back up the hill was quite slow after a long day, and once we got home Kas and Izzy went straight to bed while Ami and me sat up for a while reading.
Today was one of the “don’t go anywhere” days, except that only really meant not going anywhere in the car. We were still allowed to go out so long as we walked there.
We had a lazy morning, with Kas going for her normal run and the kids mucking about in the pool.
On the day-planner we’d made on Monday night (see Girona) we’d put down “kayaking” for today, so we had a bit of exploring to do.
It was easy enough to find the phone number of the kayaking place on Sant Pol beach and they confirmed we could just walk up and take a couple of kayaks out. They had a formal trip leaving at 2pm but they thought that might be a bit much with the kids as the formal trips follow a set route and go at a certain pace.
OK, we thought, so we’ll just walk down for about 1:30 and see what’s what.
The kayaks were great big plastic things with seating for two. We split the weight approximately halfway by getting Kas and Ami to take one kayak and me and Izzy to take the other. This meant my boat was somewhat lower in the water at the back than at the front, but otherwise it was quite a pleasant sensation. Izzy was a very keen paddler but not particularly effective, so I was basically driving our boat on my own. Kas and Ami were a little more balanced.
The water on the sea was a bit choppy and was worse the further away from the cliffs, in fact the centre of the bay was quite bumpy, so we hugged the coastline quite closely for most of the time. First of all we paddled around the south side of the bay where all the interesting little bays were, and had great time paddling in and out of quite small but calm inlets. After this we paddled all the way across the bay to the north shore, which was somewhat less interesting. By this time we’d been out for 80 minutes of our 120 minute rental, but decided our arms were aching enough to stop, so we had a final paddle across the bay into the middle and tried to get up to “ramming speed” so we could get the kayaks up onto the beach quite well before trying to get out. Thankfully there was an attendant to help drag us up anyway.
It was still quite early in the afternoon so we decided to stay on the beach for a while, and this is where I made my biggest error of the holiday. I assumed the late afternoon sun wouldn’t be strong enough to burn me, so while the kids were playing in the water I took my shirt off and lay on the beach for a bit. When I got home I was bright red and itching all over. The itching stayed with me for the rest of the holiday. Oh, when will I learn ? Sunshine and me don’t mix well.
It was sausage and salad night again for tea, but sadly the accompanying beer did nothing to take away the itchiness.
Today was a day in which the ladies of the house would be posting a blog page called “Not a Lot Happened”, or something similar to that. I had it pencilled in as a caching day, so I was far from inactive. Other things I was “far from” for periods of the day included “comfortable”, “home” and “enthusiastic”, although apart from “comfortable” none of the others lasted the whole day. I was mainly uncomfortable as a result of getting myself sunburned the previous afternoon. I’m not a clever bunny sometimes.
The day’s exploits began with Kas dropping me off on the far side of Santa Cristina, at some random junction with an old railway line that’s been converted into a biking trail and has subsequently been littered with lots of tupperware, spaced at approximately 180m intervals. Ideal. I was carrying a large quantity of beverages and some sandwiches in my bag as well as spare caches, pens and camera, so I was feeling a bit weighed down, and the bag was chafing against my hurty back, so I was a bit of a miserable bunny when I set off, but not miserable enough to stay at home and mope. The caching was quite slow going, partly because of the heat and partly because they were proving more difficult to find than the listed difficulty (in my opinion). My route took me along the old railway into Santa Cristina town (with a short diversion up a hill for three very creative caches). At one of these (just on the edge of town) I got spotted by the CO’s teenage daughter and she came outside to say hello and see if I needed any help. I didn’t, but it’s always nice to meet up with people.
As I passed through the town the first time I stopped to buy spare batteries. I think the rechargeable in the Garmin is starting to lose its oomph, especially when being used in bright light. There was a local newsagent that stocked the requisite. From here I headed around the south of the town (and the other side of the motorway) through a golf course and some new housing before ending up on the south side of Santa Cristina again. There was another series running along the southern edge of town, which proved to be good fun, before I walked back to the northern side to join the old railway line again. By this time I’d been out for 6 hours or so and had drunk plenty but not eaten much. I tend not to get hungry in hot weather. I’d found time for an ice cream though. Eventually I got back to the north-east corner of town, from where the railway line cut a sharp southwards turn towards Sant Feliu.
Ami had mentioned she might like to walk the final couple of miles into town with me, so I called Kas and they arranged to meet me at a little parking spot at 4pm, from where Ami and me would have about an hour’s walk to get home. She bought more drinks, which were very welcome.
The walk in was slower than expected, with a few more tricky ones and a couple of missing ones. We also overshot in an effort to get to the very end of the series, and then had over half a mile (mainly uphill) to get back to the apartment again.
By the time I got home it was well past 6pm and I was thoroughly exhausted. I’d found 75 caches in total, which is not a bad haul, but in UK conditions I might have expected to that many in two hours fewer. Nevertheless, it was a new overseas personal best for me, and I was (eventually) happy about it, especially once the multiple pastas and multiple beers we had for tea had settled in properly. The beer-based “rehydration” continued for some time, although I was alternating with non-beer too, just to make sure I got some benefit from all the drinking. The sunset was rather nice too.
I logged 75 geocache finds on the day. They were :
The holiday plan said today was supposed to be “Barcelona – Gaudi”, meaning that we were going to attempt to go into Barcelona and have a look at some of Gaudi’s more obvious contributions to the city.
Kas decided to duck out of running in favour of having a rest day, so we managed to get up fairly early and head off for the big city at 9:20. Kas took the wheel and we gave Cynthia the job of finding us a car park. She failed, mainly due to an utter confusion of information on the map once you get into town.
We eventually found a car park close to where we wanted to be, and Kas very expertly managed to get into a parking space without hitting anything. Genuinely, that was a good achievement, and it became a running theme for the day.
The first place that we wanted to be was the totally whacky Sagrada Família. We were about a block away so we legged it around, expecting to have to join a queue to buy some tickets. The place is still being built, and it’s being funded by the entrance money they charge for having a look around. One wonders whether the fees for entrance have been steadily increasing as further parts of the building are completed. Anyway, from the outside it looks like a massive building site with some quite nice looking bits of stonework in fantastic design.
That proved to be all we could manage there on this day though. They limit the number of tickets per day, and when we arrived at 10:30 am on a midweek day they had already sold out until the end of the day. No more tickets, nada, sorry. I guess you have to pre-book online. Still, we snapped a few nice pictures before buying a very over-priced drink and getting back in the car.
Our second planned stop proved to be equally frustrating. Cynthia did a grand job of negotiating our way through the city up to Park Güell, which promised a plethora of Gaudi-related goodies. Parking proved to be even more of a nightmare than the Sagrada Familia. There’s a big bus park but otherwise you’re stuck with housing estates and an abandoned and unpaved void between tower blocks that has very limited access and lots of really precipitous slopes. Eventually, after much farting about, we found a small car park near some shops in the middle of a hairpin bend going up into the hills. It was probably half a mile to walk back down, but at least the park was paved and relatively easy to get into. More of that later.
Park Güell also has a limit on the number of tickets they are prepared to sell for the inner sanctum. And they’d sold out for the day. This was becoming a theme. We decided to go for a walk around the free part and made a lunch break our first order of business once we got inside. The parks themselves are still really nice. It would have been nice to go into the paying area but we decided whilst walking around that we probably weren’t keen enough to come back on a different day just to do that.
After lunch beneath the walkways we walked all the way up to one of the upper levels, passing a couple of geocaches on the way, and then descended to the far end of the park before walking back along the road past the main entrance to the paying area. It was more than enough to get the general feel of the place, I think. If you were going to pay to get in, you’d probably spend all day there. We contented ourselves with about 3 hours though.
When we got back the car parked in the middle of the hairpin bend we were faced with the biggest driving challenge of the holiday so far. We’d squeezed into a space that had a line of cars in front, and it was quite easy to get in, but when we came back a couple of cars had formed another line in front of us that was somewhat closer. We spent a little while pondering and very keenly all jumped in the car assuming that the parking sensors could get us out safely before deciding that wasn’t going to work. The parking sensors go completely ape when you’re half a metre away, and the exit route was so tight that we couldn’t afford to lose a half a metre. So Kas jumped out and acted as a somewhat more human parking sensor by showing me exactly how far away I was from everything. It took about 5 attempts at going backwards and forwards on full lock before getting the car out of the space, but I did get it out, and I didn’t at any point hit anything else. I was fairly proud of our achievement. I say “our” achievement, because there is absolutely no way I’d have got out of the space without Kas’s help.
So up to this point the day had been a bit of a disappointment. However it was still only mid-afternoon, so we thought we’d have time for one more thing before going home. We read that there are quite a few things to do up on Tibidabo so we thought we’d go for a look. When we got there it appeared to be closed. It wasn’t, but it was very quiet. It was the day after the terrorist attack on La Rambla and we wondered whether people had just decided to have a day at home instead. There were quite a few armed police around, including at the top of the road leading up the mountain.
We checked out the form for the fun park and decided it was probably good enough for a whole day later in the holiday, which left us with the opportunity to go up the Torre de Collserola. At least, once we’d found the entrance……
This was also very quiet, but that gave the advantage that we had the place more or less to ourselves. I think there were no more than two other paying punters and two staff on the viewing level the whole time we were there. The view from up there really is quite spectacular. You can see pretty much the whole of the city from the viewing level (including the Camp Nou, the Sagrada Família and the Olympic Stadium all at the same time). They also have little plaques at various points indicating the distance and direction to other major cities in the world.
By the time we’d finished up the tower it was past 5 pm, so we decided to drive home (through the Friday night rush hour) and go out for dinner in Sant Feliu. The drive home was uneventful and we had a quick shower break before walking down to the same restaurant we’d been to on the night we arrived. It was the best place we’d been so far, and it was nice again.
While we were getting ready, a massive cruise liner drifted by. On the sea, obviously…….
This day was our mid-point, not that we celebrated the event in any particular way other than figuring out how to use the washing machine at the apartments.
Kas went for a run, as ever.
The daily planner said we were having a day of not travelling far. We’d checked out a few local activity places and we decided to go for Parc Aventura just on the outskirts of Sant Feliu. It’s one of those places where you have to make your way across various assault-course things like tight-ropes, rope bridges and zip wires whilst being fastened to an overhead rope. However, unlike ones we’ve been to near home, this one is in the middle of some beautiful wooded hillsides, and with fantastic views back down over the town.
Parc Aventura has three or four different courses you can go on that have varying levels of difficulty. Kas, Izzy and Ami decided they were going round while I took the photos. They did the easiest route and then stepped up to the second easiest. Ami was going so quickly that she had time to step up to the third level too, which was good because it actually challenged her enough to have a scared moment.
When we’d finished all of this it was definitely ice cream o’clock. We ended up going all the way down into the sea front at Sant Feliu to find one. Thankfully we’d chosen to go on foot, which allowed me to swap my ice cream for beer.
For dinner we had a fairly simple affair of chicken in various forms accompanied by salads (in the kids’ case, you have to allow for ketchup being classed as a salad).
Every holiday has a day like this. The one where we don’t do anything of note.
The kids spent most of this one in the pool, while Kas went for a morning run and I spent much of the day doing the washing and staying out of the sun.
We had thought about going to the beach in the afternoon but then the girls decided not to bother, so we didn’t go.
In the evening we walked into Sant Feliu and found a nice cafe gastro-bar place which did excellent food and rather nice beer too.
While we were walking back up the hill to home we stopped in a bar to watch a bit of the Barcelona vs. Real Betis game on telly, but it was a bit dull and we’d missed the only two goals. On Saturday evening we’d toyed with the idea of buying tickets to go and see the match, but by the time we got onto the website it was going to cost about €65 a ticket to go, so we decided not to bother.
Such is life.
Today was the planned day for a bit of monk-on-a-mountain action.
It started (as ever) with Kas going for a run. She went early, which meant we were able to leave the apartment just after 9 am, albeit that we hadn’t had any breakfast.
We attended to the lack of breakfast situation by stopping at a random motorway service station. This also allowed us to fill up the trusty Volvo with some motion lotion.
Our target for the day was the monastery at Montserrat. We got there just before midday (we’d spent at least an hour having breakfast) and managed to find a parking spot quite easily, although at some distance away from the actual monastery. Meh! Walking is good for you.
Our first activity was to wander around some of the buildings trying to find a few caches and soak a few rays.
We gave up for a late lunch break at about 2 pm and had lunch in the onsite cafe. The food was actually quite good, which surprised me.
After lunch we adventured our way up the Funicular de Sant Joan for a walk around the top of the mountain. It was a warm day, so we’d already concluded we weren’t going to attempt any long stretches of walking, but up the top here we were able to trudge our way along a relatively flat path to visit a couple of little chapels. At one point, I had the direction arrow pointing to a cache but couldn’t see any way of getting there. At another point, we walked along a bit of path cut into an overhanging cliff and of a sufficiently small size that at least one of us couldn’t walk straight. And finally, there was one further cache at the top of what could be described as a rock staircase going upwards, if you were being generous. If not, then it would be better described as a bit rough. It was rough enough that Izzy didn’t fancy it, so Ami and I went over while Kas stayed with Izzy. There were some pretty spectacular views from up there though.
When we came back down to the bottom it was definitely time for an ice cream, which was consumed whilst sitting outside in the shade. After this Kas escorted the girls for the obligatory trip around the shop while I dashed off to find another cache that was some way below the incoming rack railway line.
By this time it was getting on a bit, so we did one final cache and photo stop at a rock outcrop near where we’d arrived in the morning, and then made our way down the road to the rather distant car park.
The drive back to Sant Feliu was duller than a dull thing. When we got there we made a quick stop to buy snacks and some things for breakfast before going back home to consume most of those snacks with some cold beer, whilst typing up the handful of caching logs that were due. It had been quite a long day.
While I had the PC out, I decided to pre-book some tickets to go around the Sagrada Familia. We decided we had time to go there in between leaving the apartment and needing to be at the airport on the day we were going home.
Over the previous couple of days it had become more obvious that I was going to have to deal with a cracked tooth I’d picked up somewhere in the previous couple of weeks. I think a bit more had come off it, and it was pretty much at the point where it was grating really badly against my tongue. Something had to be done. Anyway, it wouldn’t be a proper holiday for us without at least one of us needing to see a doctor, dentist, or other medical practitioner. Normally that’s me, but occasionally it’s someone else.
So I googled for dentists nearby and phoned one first thing in the morning to find out the sketch. The sketch was that they could see me at 10:30. The dentist’s surgery was down on the harbour at Sant Feliu and it was very nice inside, albeit well hidden behind a very non-medical looking door to what I think was a block of apartments. The dentist decided she needed to hack out a bit of tooth and then fill it. The whole thing was done in half an hour and it cost me less than it would to have the same procedure done at home. In fact, it was so little that it was below the excess on the insurance policy, so I just paid it and wandered off without waiting for much in the way of documentary evidence. Because the plan for today said “Waterpark” I’d also scouted their website first thing. The Waterpark did good discounts on entry for people well organised enough to book online a day in advance, so I duly did that and then swapped “Waterpark” and “dad’s going caching” around on the day planner. Caching day then!
On the radar for this day was a long walk through woodlands up to a local viewpoint called Pedralta (“High Rock”) and then an equally long walk back down into Sant Feliu. Kas dropped me off at the end of a new and quite plush looking housing estate on the west side of town, through the back of the golf course I’d crossed on my previous caching trip ( see Santa Cristina ). In fact, it probably dumbs the place down rather to refer to it as a housing estate. I’m going to change my mind and go for “collection of substantial residential properties” – seriously, I don’t think they have a lot of poverty in the area. What they did have though was a lot of biting insects. Little scumbags. I got bitten twice while I was still switching the GPS on and finding a pen.
My walk took me through forested land in a downwards and then very steeply upwards direction, heading vaguely south and east. The caches were fairly close together for most of the way but they lacked hints and a few were well buried, so progress was a little slow. It was also very warm and the trees took away what little breeze there might have been. You get the picture. I was getting hot. Just as well I had an earth-shattering quantity of cold drinks in my bag then. The objective of all this uphill walking was the Pedralta, which, according to wikipedia, used to be the largest rocking stone in Europe. What there is up there is a little chapel, a big rock balancing precariously on a somewhat smaller one, and a big plateau with a viewpoint, from which you can see most of the surrounding area. It was a pretty decent view from up there.
Where the walk up had been all through forests and on rough paths, the route down followed a tarmac road, which meant that the walking became somewhat easier. The caches were a little easier to find too. I made pretty good progress back down the hill and soon found myself by the side of the new dual carriageway running round the western side of Sant Feliu. From here I followed cycle paths and wide footpaths around to the harbour (collecting more caches as I went). I eventually found myself at the old monastery in town (couldn’t find the cache there) and then found my way to the beach, where I found another cache and a place to buy ice cream.
There were two more caches at “our” end of the harbour that I grabbed on the way past and then walked back up the hill to rejoin the girls. The kids had decided they were having another “can’t be bothered” day, so the three of them had been at the apartment the whole time.
Tea for the evening consisted of a very welcome combination of pastas, sauces and beers. By the end of the day I’d found 43 caches. They were :
We’d written on the holiday plan for this week that we’d do a waterpark or similar during this week. The closest was Aquadiver in Platja D-Aro. It turned out to be cheaper to pre-book online to get one of their advance-purchase family deals, so we booked tickets the previous day and went there on this day.
The place was easy to find except for us missing the motorway junction on the first pass and having to drive a few miles in the wrong direction and then coming back again.
When we did get there the parking was a bit dodgy, but this seems to be endemic in Catalonia so there was nothing particularly surprising about it.
Entry via pre-paid tickets downloaded to the phone was easier than Easy Jack McEasy, so we avoided some quite long queues and decided to make a base camp under the trees and chuck our valuables into one of the lockers.
I have to say I wasn’t personally looking forward to this day as it’s something I didn’t think I’d really enjoy, but once we got into it a little bit it turned out to be one of my favourite days of the holiday.
We started off in the big wave pool (but didn’t stay long) and then headed to the big rubber-dinghy-slidey-thingy (name unknown). We went on doublers, which was a laugh except that Izzy came with me, so we weren’t exactly level in the water. It was a big slide though, so I’m not sure imbalance in the water was a big issue.
After this we moved up to the “business” end of the park, where there were some rather larger looking slides and rides. The queues were a bit variable all day, and after making the initial mistake of joining a long queue for something we fancied, we then started just going for the relatively short queues. This proved to be a much better option, although it did mean we went on the “kamikaze” quite a lot.
We took a lunch break at one point and then an afternoon ice cream break too, and ended up staying until all the rides had shut at about 6.45pm.
It was such a good day that I can’t remember what we did for dinner. Probably not very much.
We had a fairly slow morning before taking a leisurely drive towards Barcelona for our planned day out at Tibidabo.
We got there at around 11 am and then bought some tickets and went for a drink before attempting anything else.
After drinks, we went for a wander around the big church up there ( the Sagrat Cor ). The view from the top was quite impressive. Once down again we spent a frustrating few minutes searching for a fake padlock on a proverbial fence covered in padlocks. There was one that supposedly was a geocache. That’s a few minutes of our lives we’ll never get back.
After the church, we wandered around the upper levels of the park for a while before grabbing a seat and eating our lunch. We’d taken sandwiches with us, but the kids didn’t want to be limited just by that, so we found a restaurant where you were allowed to eat your own stuff too, and then we supplemented our apparently inadequate rations with some cold drinks and chips. Chips fix most things.
The lower levels at Tibidabo, below the church, are where all the rides are. The rides at Tibidabo were a bit variable, to be honest. None of them was very long and all bar a couple were a bit boring. I guess the park is designed for somewhat younger children. The Red Mountain rollercoaster and the log flume were OK but the rest of it was a bit dull, in my opinion, and because there were also some long queues for some of the rides it felt a bit like a waste of money. We did our best to eek it out for a while and had several goes on both the rollercoaster and the log flume before giving up and getting ice cream.
After this, we spent a little time taking in the view of the city from the top of the hill.
We drove back home at about 5 pm, which put us into the evening rush hour again.
Once at home we got changed quickly and walked halfway down the hill to the Guixols Cafe to have some beer and burgers. It was really rather good.
Today was a day of preparing ourselves for the inevitable end of the holiday and the looming reality that we’d have to leave the warm weather and the seaside behind.
The strain of it was all so much that we ended up doing nothing of any note. We offered the girls he option of a trip down to the beach, but neither of them could raise the energy and they were perfectly happy to stay at the apartment and play with their two new friends, both of whom were called Victoria.
I spent most of the day finishing off the book I’d started reading before mustering the energy to walk to the top of the hill to fetch a cache that had been winking at me all holiday. The view from the top was impressive, but possibly not good enough to offset the pain incurred when I brushed against a cactus and got covered in cactus barbs. I spent a chunk of the afternoon sitting very still while Kas pulled bits of cactus out of me with some tweezers, and I decided not to bother with attempting to recover either the shirt or the trousers. Both were riddled with barbs and I couldn’t be bothered to try to get them out.
In between all this, the four of us spent bits of time packing things away into our suitcases, as we had a fairly early start planned for the morning and we couldn’t afford much time for packing then.
By late afternoon we’d had enough, so we got cleaned up and took one final walk down to the seafront in Sant Feliu and revisited our favourite restaurant so far – called Meraki. It was excellent again.
The walk back up the hill would be our final time, and there was a lot of slightly miserable joking about everything being the “final” time. I certainly won’t miss that hill though.
We got tucked up in bed fairly early, as we’d got a long day in front of us.
Today was the day for going home. Boo. hiss, and grumpetty-grump, and all that. Our two weeks by the seaside had been rendered down into a large collection of memories and photos, and a requirement to make one final journey in the trusty Volvo.
We didn’t quite go straight home though. We got a little side-tracked on the way to the airport.
A week and a bit previously, when we’d tried to do our “Gaudí” day (see Not the Full Gaudi/), we’d been unable to get into the Sagrada Familia as a result of us not having thought to book tickets in advance. So we decided it would be a good thing to do on the way home, as we were being chucked out of the apartment at 10 am but weren’t flying home until 5 pm.
We had an 11 am appointment at said massive, half-built church, but we were all ready to go quite early, so we loaded up the car a little after 8 am and carried the last sack of rubbish down the hill whilst stalking the carrier in the car. We’d done most of the rubbish clearance the previous night, on the way down to the restaurant.
We stopped for some breakfast at the place we’d stopped on our day of arrival (only on the other side of the road). This allowed me to disappear under a bridge to find a lurking geocache. Might as well. We were parked within 30 yards of it.
When we arrived in Barcelona it was relatively easy to find the Sagrada Familia itself, but a little more time consuming to find a car park. What we eventually found was an underground one beneath an apartment block which was available for public parking as well as residents. It was a bit tight getting in though. I got Kas to get out and confirm I wasn’t about to scrape the car on anything, and I wasn’t looking forward to having to get back out again.
We walked a block or so down to the Sagrada Familia and discovered that there was no option to get in earlier than our tickets said, so we were left with three-quarters of an hour or so to waste. We used it wisely by checking out some touristy artwork and finding a couple of caches in the park outside.
We’d booked the self-guided tour with no tower-climbing, which meant we were free to pootle around at our own speed, reading the displays and admiring the architecture as we went. It really is a stunning building, and I’m sure it will be great when it’s finished. It’s weird to look at in some areas because some bits of it have been there so long that the rocks are quite significantly weathered, and these sit right next to chunks of rock that look like they were placed yesterday. The thing is constantly growing and developing too. It was considerably bigger and more complete than the picture I had in my mind from doing basic research in tour guides and on Wikipedia. The inside is particularly spectacular. OK, so I know that Gaudi’s fairly unique style is not appreciated by a lot of more traditionalist worshippers or students of ecclesiastical architecture, but my personal view is that if you’re going to believe in paying homage to an omnipresent super-being, this would be a pretty good place to be doing it. I can’t understand why people would rave over the massively detailed decoration on cathedrals in Milan, Rouen or Cologne and then lambast this one for being a bit over the top. Maybe I’m biased on the basis that it’s also a bit of a geological sensation, and I find that interesting. I find it inspiring the way that Gaudí wanted to use differing stones, as well as glasses, woods, coloured tiles and lights to impress the eye with a cascade of colour throughout the structure. And it is certainly unique. I have never seen another church that looks even remotely like this one.
Having had our fill of Sagrada Familia, we had a brief break to buy souvenirs and make some enormous bubbles before making our way to the airport, via a refuelling stop. We were hopelessly early for our flight but once we’d left the Sagrada Familia we’d all pretty much decided that the holiday was over, and it was time to go sit somewhere peaceful whilst waiting for an aeroplane.
We had a rather busy lunch of pizzas and pastas in the “pre-passport” zone before plodding through to our gate and sitting on the relevant airport spur watching planes going in and out.
There were a couple of huge ones parked up beneath us when we got there.
We also saw the King of Spain (no, not the King of Spin) land for his walk around central Barcelona with tens of thousands of others in memory of the people who’d lost their lives in the previous week’s terrorist attack on La Rambla.
Our flight home was nicely on time, but sadly Luton Airport wasn’t. It took flippin’ ages to get through, mainly because of a massive bottleneck in passport control.
The car was where we left it, but there was a bit of early grumping when we discovered one of the brakes had seized a bit and was making nasty clunking noises until the first time I really push the pedal hard. I suppose the car had been standing there for 15 days.
The house was pretty much where we’d left it, and Izzy and me made haste with the unloading while Kas and Ami very kindly went out to fetch curry and wine. It had been a long but very rewarding holiday, with many things achieved, including a bit of family bonding.
by Kevin | Jul 15, 2017
What’s Going On?
“If you’re going to have one, have a big one” is what I often say. I’m not sure why, but to be honest that’s not important right now. I do say that, and I say it quite often. By the normal scale of things, this was the very biggest of the big. A new personal best, in fact. I’m not sure I was planning for it to be a new PB, but it was a nice summer day and the walking (and caching) at the start was fast and furious, albeit without Vin Diesel. I’d returned to the site of previous monster days for a walk around the villages of Orwell and Eversden.
There was so much caching involved that there’s not a lot I can say about the day. I didn’t take my camera and generally didn’t hang around at any point during the day.
On the radar were (at least) the Eversden Extravaganza and Orwell Orbital series, with a few general outliers and a couple of drive-bys at the end to get me over the PB line.
Walking the Walk
It was a long old day.
I parked in Orwell in the same car park I used when I set my previous PB, and headed off through the Orwell Clunch Pit again. Anyone would think the local COs had simply replaced one series with another.
I bumped into a bunch of other cachers going the other way around at one point. I’d gone armed with a bunch of spares, having previously asked the CO if he minded me replacing the disabled ones, but in the end I didn’t have to replace any of them, because this bunch of guys started earlier than me and had already done the doings on all of the missing ones. Result.
When I’d finished adding everything up, I’d completed a pretty spectacular 114 finds. They were :
by Kevin | Jul 14, 2017
The Sketch
A quick dash through MK on a Friday night chasing after a puzzle series that appeared recently.
I’d got all of them solved by this time, and as the higher numbered ones are all in Tattenhoe, I’d also already been to find those ones. The lower numbered ones start all the way up near the concrete cows and run right through the heart of the town’s western side, through the near-continuous line of parkland from North Loughton Valley Park, through Wymbush, Loughton, South Loughton Valley Park, The Bowl, Furzton and Emerson Valley into Tattenhoe.
In essence, that’s a route where I needed someone to drop me off and then I could walk home. Kas provided the “dropping off” service and I set off walking at about 6:30pm. It was early July, so the light would be good until well after 9pm, I thought.
Walking Highlights
It was a pleasant night and most of the walk was though public parks, so it was all good. One highlight was undoubtedly having to skirt around a burst water main just north of Loughton. It probably wasn’t a highlight for people who had no water, or for people who had to come out and fix it, but it was a highlight to walk past.
Back at the plot, some of the caches were quite tricky to find and the series is quite spread out, which meant progress was a little slow. It was already after 8:30 when I reached the side of Furzton Lake, and by the time I left Furzton Lake looking for #19 it was getting distinctly gloomy. I DNF’d #19 and then exprienced a series of DNF’s before eventually jacking it in and going home. It really was getting quite dark, and I had some work to do to prepare for the following day.
So all in all I found 20 of this MK puzzle series on the evening. I’d done a couple of the others already (in lunch breaks) and was able to finish remaining one over the next couple of weeks. The full set were :
by Kevin | Jul 1, 2017
Ye Olde Survey Monuments (GC45CC) was a travelling geocache that was owned by outforthehunt. The cache moved around the country and you could be looking for a specific survey monument, pillar, surface block, rivet or bolt. Groundspeak decided in 2017 or so that this type of cache was no longer welcome in the fold, so the cache was archived, which is a shame.
Finding a YOSM was little like trigpointing (see www.trigpointinguk.com) except you could only log ones where the owner of the cache had randomly moved the YOSM cache to it.
It was moved a couple of times each month though, which was many more than I was ever going to get around to finding, especially seeing as the chosen locations were literally at all ends of the country.
At the point when the geocache was archived, I had attempted the following Survey Monuments in the series :
When it was archived the random trig pillar was in Cornwall, and as a result most statistics sites show me having found a cache in Cornwall, even though I haven’t.
by Kevin | Jun 11, 2017
Saturday in Saint-Omer
Sunday at the Bunker
by Kevin | Jun 11, 2017
Ah! Time for GeoNord again. It was a great caching event last year (see Going Mega in France) so Izzy and I decided to go and have another pop at it to see if it would be as good this year. This year it was held in Saint-Omer, which is a conveniently short drive from Calais compared to last year. It was a good weekend.
Friday Night is M25 Night
Friday was our travelling day. It was still term time and hence I couldn’t really take Izzy out of school early. I know some parents do, but not me, well, not for this at least.
I took a half day off to make sure that I was actually ready to go as soon as Izzy was done with school, and I used the time between giving up work and fetching Izzy to get my car cleaned and to pack my bags for the weekend.
We had arranged to meet our companion for the weekend, Happy Hunter HP20, somewhere down near Milton Keynes railway station. We were a bit late because I forgot my walking boots, so I had to go home again. While we were there I thought I might as well let Izzy get changed out of her school clothes too. She had sort of grudgingly accepted the possibility of travelling to France without getting changed. So when the opportunity presented itself I figured we might as well exploit it. Anyway, despite us being late, HHHP20 was still at the station. Like he’s going to get a grump on and go home again for the sake of 5 minutes.
Back at the plot, all of this meant we found ourselves at Milton Keynes railway station with approximately 4 hours to relocate ourselves to the Channel Tunnel terminal at Folkestone. Under normal conditions that would be fine. However, this was abnormal by virtue of it being a Friday night in the summer. I have said in many previous blog posts that I don’t like to assume that the M25 will be OK on a Friday night.
Going Underground
On this occasion, it was not too bad, and we were around the other side of the QEII Bridge in less than two hours. Cool. We arrived at the terminal expecting we might get an earlier train, and true to normal form we were offered at check-in the opportunity to use a train 40 minutes earlier than my booking. Sorted. I like that. And look ! Here’s the photo of the bridge that I always add into posts where I’ve crossed it.
We had just about enough time to munch our way through some dinner of the fast-food variety before jumping back into the cache mobile and doing the doings. There were some shenanigans with people driving up the lane to my right and then attempting to butt their way into our stream. Some numpty in front of me actually let one car come across.
People apparently don’t realise that once you are through the passport control at Folkestone you’re just going on the next available train, regardless of what your ticket says. There is no need to jump lanes to try to get on your scheduled train. Anyway, the place was quite quiet. Once we got on the train, I noticed that the guy behind me, who’d been one of the “queue jumpers” that someone had apparently allowed to lane jump behind me, had a ticket for two trains later than the one he was now sitting on. So he wasn’t late for his scheduled train at all, he was just trying to queue jump.
Vive la France
The train journey was as uneventful as it ought to be, and we found ourselves in France at a nicely early 9:15 pm local time.
Our destination for the weekend, Saint-Omer, is only about 35km away from Calais, so even with a bit of suspect navigation we still found ourselves at the hotel in time to meet up in reception at 10 pm to go out for a beer.
Because it’s close to midsummer and France is an hour ahead of the UK, 10 pm is still tolerably light, and we were able to mooch our way up into the town centre via our first cache of the weekend (La cathedrale Notre-Dame) in decent light. We found a bar on the square that served my new favourite beer (the Half Moon Brewery’s Brugse Zot), and settled ourselves in for a relatively relaxed beer and a bit of a session planning what to do on Saturday. Well, we were going caching obviously, but the “where” and the “when” bits still needed to be finalised.
Saturday Morning
We agreed to meet in the hotel restaurant (in the loosest sense of the word) for our pre-paid continental breakfast at 8 am. We were staying at the Ibis Budget Saint Omer. If you’ve been to one of these then I don’t need to explain. If you haven’t, I would summarise that they are basic, not very expensive, but generally clean and with rooms that are big enough.
Anyway, on a caching weekend in the summer all we do in the room is sleep (and wash, I guess). We’re not there to enjoy a lavishly furnished room, massive swimming pool or Michelin starred restaurant. A decent bed, and some coffees and pastries in the morning are just fine thank you. The bed in question was the usual Ibis configuration of a double bed with a bunk single running crossways over the head of the double, so the rooms technically sleep 3 people.
Strangely, almost everyone else in the breakfast room seemed to be a geocacher. Some of them were British and some of those were people I recognised from previous events. Anyone would be thinking there was a geocaching event on.
Eventing
Speaking of which, we were out of the hotel at a very respectable 8:45 am. We made the short drive to Saint Omer Wizernes Airfield via a wherigo cache that I’d solved prior to the event. Yes, I have a way of extracting the final coordinates from a wherigo cartridge without playing the cartridge. Cheating, technically, but at Mega events loads of people cheat. They sponge puzzle coordinates or lab cache answers off other people. Or they cache in large groups when they don’t really go to every cache location individually.
It often takes as much time to decompile and process a wherigo cartridge as it would to play it. But it means you can spend that time in your pyjamas at home late at night rather than using valuable outdoor time on event day. I pretty much always try to pre-solve all puzzles and multis before travelling, which is fair game. So why not also pre-solve the wherigos?
Back at the plot, we reached the event site quite early and queued up for our event packs. I’d bought one “Premiere Class” entry (which allowed all the event activities) and one “Supporter Pack”, which was much the same, but also included a special geocoin and a whole ammo can. Rather than carry a big metal can around all morning we put it in the back of my car. Whilst there I picked up my sunglasses. That proved to be a wise move.
Lab Caches
At this event, they had gone over the usual levels with the lab caches. The going rate is to do 10 of them for a mega event. Brugse Beer this year did 19 lab caches (why not 20, I’ll never know). GeoNord this year did 20. All of them involved actual activities too. They were either physical things to find or to do. Some of the Brugse Beer ones just involved reading the event book or taking a photo of something. We did all 20 of them. Although as is often the case, we “did” some of them by swapping answers with others in the queue. All the ones that looked like fun physical activities (like the chuck-a-duck, chuck-a-frisbee, hopscotch, archery and laser-maze-using-string) were done properly by at least one of us anyway.
Of the 20 available, 16 were outdoors on the tarmac. Another three were in the big hangar where the bar was. The last one involved spotting a specific aeroplane on a fly-by, which no-one seemed actually to understand. However we did find someone who had acquired the answer by some foul means. I was logging them all onto my own account as we went around, just to make sure the “acquired” answers were actually correct.
By the time we’d done all this lot it was getting on towards drink o’clock, so we grabbed a seat at the trestle tables and Izzy dived into a sugar and cream topped waffle while the Happy Hunter and myself contented ourselves with a cold and fizzy one from the bar.
Real Caches Too
From here we decided to take a little walk to look for a few caches near to the event site. They’d placed a power trail of over 100 letterbox caches, and they’d also placed another 5 wherigos which had endpoints quite close. We targeted 2 of the wherigos and the first letterbox for a visit via Shanks’ Pony. The first letterbox was well off the given coordinates but was an absolutely huge (and practically unmissable) ammo can.
The first wherigo was exactly where I’d decoded and we found it quickly. The second proved more of a challenge. Wee only found it when a couple of other guys arrived and started looking for it too. There was supposedly another wherigo in the woods here but we couldn’t figure out how to get to it from where we were, so we went back to the event site and jumped into the car.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving to other wherigos and then around the letterboxes. We did a couple of short out-and-back walks, but mainly it was a process of me driving and HHHP20 jumping out to do the business. Of the 104 letterboxes, a good 50 of them could be reached from the roadside. And, thankfully, all of those ones were placed in locations where there was actually somewhere to get the car off the road. Lazy caching, I know, but it was a warm day, the caches were too far apart to walk all the way around (30 km total) and we didn’t have bikes.
While we were in the middle of doing this, we took the opportunity also to have a break at a cafe in Helfaut to grab some cold drinks and rather tasty pizzas.
Nuffski – Time for a Break
Eventually, we all hit the “meh!” point and decided to head for home. It was getting a bit late in the afternoon (probably “evening”, to be honest), so we did a quick turn around and headed out for a beer.
We were at the same bar as the previous night but they didn’t do ice creams, so they suggested we walk to the other end of the square to get an ice cream for Izzy, and then bring it back to their bar and grab ourselves a beer. That worked for me. Izzy picked a mint-choc-chip ice cream that tasted like actual real mint leaves. I’ve never tasted one like that before.
After the beer we took a walk through central Saint-Omer to collect 7 wherigo caches and then returned back to the hotel.
Once back at the hotel we did a very quick turnaround and then went out once again to get dinner. By this time it was 9:30 pm, so well past Izzy’s normal bedtime, but she was coping well and we were a bit hungry. We found a decent looking restaurant close to our favourite bar and had a light dinner. Those lunchtime pizzas were still weighing us down a bit. It was nice though.
Saturday’s Pickings
So back home to bed, with sixty-something caches completed plus 20 lab caches. Not a bad total for one day. Here they are….
Sunday Morning
Sunday morning greeted us with more bright sunshine and another tray full of juice, coffee, pastries and bread at the hotel. Me and Izzy got down a few minutes before our agreed 8 am call (again) and so managed to avoid the massive 8 am queue (again).
The morning activity for the day was another event cache. This one was held at the La Coupole in Helfaut. It’s an old V2 storage bunker and launch site that has been converted into a war museum. We had tickets for a tour of the facility, followed by the caching event itself, which was being held on the lawns just up from the car park. The tour was interesting but I guess I would have liked to have gone there on a day when we weren’t also trying to get some caching done. We spent about 90 minutes inside. Izzy and me left a little early as Izzy was getting a bit cold and hence wasn’t really enjoying herself.
Outside in the sunshine we found a wherigo cache in the car park before HHHP20 came out. From there we did a walk around the back to grab another 4 of the letterbox series and two earthcaches. At the second of these, we had the bizarre experience of bumping into a very familiar-looking Dutch guy. It was the same one that had given me a look of some disgust at the GeoNord event last year while I was dismantling a field puzzle cache with a screwdriver (because we didn’t have the code to do it properly). He signed it though. And we didn’t actually do any damage to the container. Anyway, it was him, and he did recognise me once I’d spoken to him and taken my big hat off. Small world!
Walking in the Sunshine
Adding in the event and another wherigo just over the road that meant we’d found 10 caches in the morning, and we decided we’d better get a move on with our main event of the day, which was a series of puzzles and wherigos that I solved some time ago in anticipation of coming to the event. There were 24 in the series plus yet further wherigos in the vicinity. That made a total of 27 planned for this bit of the walk.
We started heading off on a clockwise loop, having singularly failed to acquire chilled beverages at the main station. We couldn’t see a single kiosk or shop. By the time we’d done three caches we made a policy decision that continuing without drinks was a bad idea,#. So we did an about turn and headed back to the town to try to find a shop. We didn’t find one. We did, however, find a small bar, so we had the fastest drink ever before moving on. If we were in the bar for five minutes I’d be surprised. We felt a bit refreshed afterwards though.
From that point things perked up for a bit. We were walking alongside a wide canal on the edge of Saint-Omer’s centre, heading southwards. The series was sort of a loop, only one that has been flattened out a bit. Essentially you walk out down one side of the canal and back up the other side. We were going around in reverse order, but who cares.
Time to Start Heading Home
It turned out to be quite a long walk and we’d all had enough by the time we got back to the car. Anyway, time was marching onwards and we’d discussed and agreed that if we had an hour spare we’d go to Belgium so HHHP20 could do a single cache there. So after the walk we decided to head for drinks at McDonalds. The one we went to didn’t have milkshakes though, which was a big disappointment, so instead we popped into the Subway next door and bought a load of cold drinks, some crisps and some cookies (for Izzy). The first bottle of diet coke didn’t touch the sides.
We took the scenic route up to Dunkirk from here rather than the autoroute. It went quite quickly and we were handily placed for hopping over the border into Belgium. The closest town was Adinkerke, scene of one of mine and Ami’s escapades in April (see Jeux Sans Frontieres), so the easiest caches in town were off limits.
We drove around a bit and stopped for a while looking for a cache that looked quick and easy to do. We were in a bit of an empty spot, but eventually we picked one close to where we’d driven in and hoped we could find somewhere to park there. About 150m away there was a lay-by with a space, so we just had to make a short walk and then decide whether to look on top of the bridge or beneath it (a big road bridge). Gut feel said to go below, and the gut was right. So that’s Belgium “done” for HHHP20 with plenty of time left to drive back to Calais, despite the roadworks and queue on the motorway.
Sunday Sums
Adding up all those caches found near Saint Omer took us up to the high thirties for the day. That’s just over 120 for the weekend, which is a tidy sum for a 2-day trip, I reckon. And despite going home on Friday night to collect my walking boots, they remained unused all weekend.
So here are Sunday’s finds in glorious map-o-vision……
More Training
As we checked in we weren’t offered an early train, however, the terminal itself was far more empty than any previous trip I’d made through there. We barely had to queue to get food. Irritatingly, though, they seem to close the gents toilets at this time of day (about 7pm) for cleaning. That happened in April too. Having decided we could hold on for a while, we went straight to our train. We didn’t have to queue for that either.
As I drove into the start of the lane I noticed a green light at the other end. So for the first time ever I didn’t have to stop at all once we’d left the terminal. We drove straight onto the train and Bob’s yer proverbial. The train we got onto also left a good 20 minutes before the time our ticket said. I guess it was so quiet that they couldn’t be bothered. Excellent news.
Having failed to use the gents in France though, we needed a stop in the UK at the first opportunity. HHHP20 wanted to be eligible for a “three countries in a day” challenge cache. So we stopped at the Folkestone services and did a cache in the car park. And then we pulled into the fuel stop to fill up the car and empty ourselves.
From there it was a fairly dull journey home aside from the mandatory queue to get through the Dartford Tunnels. We got round to dropping HHHP20 of in HP20 (Aylesbury) at about 9:30 and just made it home for 10pm, whereupon Izzy proceeded directly to bed, without passing “Go” or collecting £200. She’d been awake the whole journey, picking her way through another Harry Potter book.
by Kevin | Jun 4, 2017
The Sketch
I set out with the great aspiration of completing two of my missing counties on the UK & Ireland map. I’ve been five short of the proverbial “full English” for a couple of years now and haven’t really bust a gut to do anything about it. Well, today was the day. I was going to Suffolk, but only just, because I was going to its border with Essex. This would allow me to do two of the five, the others being somewhat further afield. It turned out to be a rather frustrating and disappointing day, for various reasons.
I had chosen a likely looking loop around the village of Glemsford but ended up parking on the rather pretty main street in Cavendish, partly because I’d had enough of driving and partly because there were loads of parking spaces as I was driving through. This would allow me to join my chosen loop at about three-quarters of the way around the numbered sequence. Before joining that loop there was a multi-church micro, for which I found the information but then didn’t find the cache. This sort of set the tone for the rest of my day.
Legging It
Once onto the chosen series, I ended up having a very similar experience to my bad day in Thrapston (see Thrapston Crapston). Maybe it was a bad day for the same reason. It was June, and we’d had lots of warm damp weather through April and May, so the proverbial undergrowth was now overgrowth, especially the nettles. Anyway, whatever the reason, I had a bit of a nightmare.
The length of the series and the number of caches available meant I was planning to do about 50 caches and then, if time allowed, maybe hack my way around another series which leads from Cavendish over to Clare. This second series crosses the River Stour and therefore takes you over into the northern edge of Essex. I didn’t get anything like that far though.
Glemsford
The Glemsford series was posted as about 8 miles of walking, which with 46 caches I would expect should take me around 4 to 4.5 hours. I actually walked nearer to 12 miles than 8, and I only managed to find about two-thirds of the caches. I think I DNF’d 18 of them – and by halfway around it was apparent that I was going to have a rubbish day. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to just give up and go home. Sadly, at the point where I lost the will to live I was as far away from the car as I was going to get. I basically figured I might as well keep limping my way around the series and attempting some of the caches, as I’d got to do the walking anyway.
So why did I miss so many? Well, the nettles and general undergrowth was one reason, for sure. Another was that many of the caches were in the category of “very small cache hidden on a very large item.” I struggle with these at the best of times. Partly because I can’t see the point of leaving a micro the size of my little finger end in an ivy-covered oak tree the size of Wales. Especially when that tree is a couple of miles from the nearest human habitation. I regard that as a near-criminal waste of a perfectly reasonable location for a large container. That’s a part of it.
Misrepresentation
But seriously, when I’m faced with the prospect of looking for a tiny cache on a massive ICT several times in a row my enthusiasm drops off quite quickly. I can’t say they are bad caches – to each his own – but it’s not what I like doing. And I personally wouldn’t put such a thing as a Difficulty 1.5 or 2, which most of these were. As far as I’m concerned, a Difficulty 1.5 should be bleedin’ obvious. A needle in a haystack should be at least a D3 so that you’ve got some warning. I specifically chose this series because it was 8 miles of low difficulty caches. Maybe they’re easier in the winter.
I also had an issue with the terrain rating on a couple of them. Two of the caches were tree climbs. One was rated as Terrain 4.5, which ought to need special equipment, but this one didn’t. The cache was only 15 feet up and the tree had branches the size of telegraph poles. The other climbing one was rated as Terrain 3.5, and therefore ought to be easier than the first. I spent ages looking for it on the assumption it should be lower down than the previous, but it wasn’t. Once I read the logs I picked up the hint it was higher. Indeed it was higher. I’d estimate probably 35-40 feet from ground level. And it was up a tree which was comparatively feeble looking, especially for someone of my size.
And then, to make matters worse, I dropped a full bottle of drink at one of the caches and so was left with only a few swigs to survive the back half of the walk.
Anyway, all of that sounds like moaning. And it is. But I’ll get over it eventually.
Back at the Motor
By the time I got back to Cavendish, it was time to head home, which meant that I’d have to find some other way of getting a cache in Essex. I didn’t want to drive to just one out of the chosen series, as that would be a waste, so I checked out the villages on the way home, as I’d noticed some signs for Essex on the way in.
Sure enough, Sturmer was just inside the Essex border. I missed the assigned parking for the cache I was trying to find (one from a short series) so I pulled off in the entrance to a long drive to weigh up my options. The easiest option seemed to be to find the cache I’d parked next to. I could see it from inside the car. So that was Essex coloured in. I might go do it properly one day, but for now it’s coloured in and I’m done with it.
Summary
So that was all a bit cack because I was out caching (i.e. not driving there and back, just the caching part) for nearly 7 hours, and I managed to find just 32 caches.
by Kevin | Apr 29, 2017
A Glorious Spring Day in Kent
by Kevin | Apr 29, 2017
Do what John?
OK, so I was really, really struggling to come up with some kind of funny pun on a Kentish theme. Oast with the Most was the best I could come up with. Get Dover it! Deal with it! Don’t turn it into more Thanet needs to be.
It was kind of a short-notice decision anyway, so little time to plan anything funnier. In fact, I decided on Wednesday evening that I was going to an event in Kent on Saturday. That middle bit rhymes, you know.
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of things I always do, due to a lack of intelligence, creativity or enthusiasm (delete as appropriate, or just leave all of them there if you want), here is the obligatory picture of the QEII Bridge. When I crossed it on this day it was still dark (just) and it was still free (just). But more of that later, like in the next paragraph.
The plan for the day, such as it was, was to go to the 2017 Kent Mega event. It was being held at its normal location of The Hop Farm. It’s Kent’s premier family day out and home to the world’s largest collection of Oast Houses. Well, it’s Kent’s premier day out if you’re a cacher and you’re there on the day of the Kent Mega. It must be popular because it has brown signs up on the M20. Anyway, that sounds like I’m extracting the Michael, which is not my intent. It’s a great location for a caching event. It has masses of open space for eventing, caching and parking.
Drive Time
This particular part of Kent is at least 2 hours drive from home, even at the crack of sparrow-fart. So it was either going to be a full day of caching, or I wasn’t going to go at all. I took this decision at some point after getting home on Wednesday night. I’d been on a business trip to Munich. I had to agree the plan with Senior Management before deciding upon a more detailed schedule.
The event was scheduled from 10 am to 4 pm. So any serious caching would have to be done either before or after the event (or both). I opted for “before” with a decision to set off really early. I planned to do a load of caches, and then chill out a bit at the event in the afternoon. Any further finds made after visiting the event would be regarded as a Brucie Bonus. This meant an early start, and the early start meant I was going alone. Well, the kids have been out caching on more than one occasion in April anyway. And my late decision pretty much assured that all the other cachers I know had already made plans.
So, back at the plot, I was in my car at a very fresh (bordering on downright cold) 4:15 am, heading off down the motorway after first stopping to fill up both the car and myself. I didn’t really buy anything for lunch though, just breakfast and travelling snacks. Anyway, I’m not a great fan of the supermarket sandwich. It promised to be a long day, especially if you don’t like puns.
Short Circuit
My first stop for caching was a part of jazzyjessups’ COE series (“Counties of Europe”), which seem very new and were therefore likely to have been put out specifically for the event. These consist of a couple of hundred caches of varying types.
This first batch were mainly traditionals with a couple of multis thrown in for good measure. This first loop was just to the north of East Peckham, beginning at the redundant St Michael’s Church. I’d measured this stretch at something less than 4 miles and with a total of 22 caches. At normal caching speed for me, that means about 2 hours.
I think I signed my first log at just after 6:30 am. As it turned out, 2 hours was quite generous, and I was back at my car at 8:10 am, having found everything pretty much without incident. That’s a good start.
Long Haul
From there I drove down to another bit of East Peckham and set off on a somewhat longer loop, having done a couple of drive-bys on the way through. This second loop was supposed to be somewhere between 8 and 9 miles and contained 58 caches or so. In the end, it turned out to be 10 miles, mainly because I didn’t execute my walking plan very well. I found myself at the end of all the caches but with a mile to walk back to my car.
Anyway, by the time I drove down to the event site I’d got 82 finds on the board and it was only 1:30 in the afternoon. I now see how people manage to do silly numbers like 200 in a day. I’d made 82 finds in a little under 7 hours and if I’d pushed it I could have started at least an hour earlier. At this time of year on a sunny day, it’s tolerably light until after 8 pm. Maybe one day over the summer, huh?
At the Event
Back at today, I did a trad stuck to the back of a sign on the way into the event site and then meandered up to the actual event. The event tent was very quiet compared to some I’ve visited. I guess lots of people were out doing caches. Anyway, I bumped into the Happy Hunter at the chip van (sounds like a cue for a song), and took note of the locations of the lab caches. They were across a field and in a small wooded area. They were quite good fun, as these things go.
Then back at the chip van, I bumped into the Happy Hunter again, this time along with Miss Chief and Nigel. As they were having a quick snack I joined them for a bit. My little legs were ready for a sit-down, and anyway it was warm. The lunchtime queue had gone, so my restorative tray of chips with mayo and fizzy drink were served up in double-quick time.
Wherever I go, so does me go
Feeling somewhat refreshed it was then time to have a crack at the interesting looking Wherigo they’d placed at the event site ( Count to Five (HHCIB) ). The idea of this game is that you have to walk 100m or so out along each of five different footpaths trying to establish which is numbered 1, then 2, then 3, etc. Which number represents which path is determined randomly for each player as they start the cartridge, and at any point if you get your numbers out of sequence you have to go all the way through from #1 again.
I started off walking randomly with Miss Chief and Nigel and as it turned out, the first place we walked was #1 for me but not for them, as a result of which we then split up to complete the task. Having found my #1 I then had 4 shots at finding #2. It took me all 4 before getting the correct one, hence four trips back to my #1 point. When I eventually found #2 I then had a one-in-three choice for my #3 and as luck would have it I chose correctly first time. Three down, two to go. Except I managed to guess correctly for my #4 as well. So I was done apart from actually walking into my #5 zone to end the cartridge and get the cache coordinates.
I then stood around for 20 minutes extra waiting for Miss Chief and Nigel (OK, mainly Miss Chief) as they managed to get every single choice incorrect – 5 attempts at #1, then 4 attempts at #2, then 3 attempts at #3, etc. – each time having to return to their start point to work all the way through again. It was truly impressive to watch.
Too Early for Giving Up
By the time they’d done the event had officially finished, so we walked across the field to grab the actual Wherigo cache box and then returned to the event hall before parting ways. By this time I was sufficiently close to 100 finds that I couldn’t contemplate giving up. In fact, I was toying with the idea of heading for a new PB at 112 finds.
I left the event site and managed to find 5 more in pretty quick order. They were in effect just off the event site and were accessible by car. After this, I picked my way along towards Laddingford and a couple of puzzles that I’d managed to acquire the solutions for, but by this time I was rapidly losing my enthusiasm, even though it wasn’t even 6 pm. I reckon a keen person could have kept caching around here through all the hours of daylight and got very close to 200 finds.
By the time I got home and added up all the doings, I’d found 100 “normal” caches plus the 10 lab caches, for a very handy total of 110 in the day. I started driving home at 6pm because I’d really had enough for one day. I got home at about 8 pm, including a stop for Chinese takeaway on the way in. And I then proceeded to drink far too much wine far too quickly whilst typing up logs and waiting for Match of the Day to come on. The football was rubbish, but it had been a good day of caching.
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