Caches 3460 and 3461 – Pre-Halloween Capers

24/10/2014 – Welcome to the Halloween Mega 2014 GC5B6Z1 – cache #3460
Eventually I got to the Travelodge at Kettering which was to be our base for the weekend, and eventually the rest of the Cachemag crew arrived (Angel78, Ladyjude75 and UKCacheMag) so we headed off for the Friday night Welcome Event  where we caught up with all the usual faces, everyone excited about what the next day would bring… but oh, those awful, awful bright red Onesies that the Essex Mega 2015 committee were trying to sell (I wouldn’t wear a onesie if you paid me !)…

jfriday night-1

24/10/2014 – Secret Squares GC32VGV – cache #3461
So it’s just gone 11pm at night, and the Pre-Halloween Mega event is winding down and the Cache Mag crew are just deciding it is time to head back down to the Travelodge for a nights sleep when the one of the visiting Vikings mrpb27 (better known as Ken Bate !) decides a bit of raping and pillaging is in order so asks Ladyjude75 if she would like to accompany him to the cache site of the local puzzle cache which his compatriot Talion48 and he had solved it being the nearest cache to the event venue.

Now Ladyjude75 being unaware of the full ramifications of what “oh it’s not far from here” actually meant and being a nice friendly person at heart says ‘go on then’ and makes the decision for all of us that we are going on a midnight cache hunt… not that we had GPS’s to show us where we were going. or torches to light our way, they were all in our bags back in the Travelodge waiting for what the next day would bring. Nor were we wearing caching clothes or shoes – we had gone for out a Friday night at the pub not a midnight caching expedition
So we set off into the dark, and to be fair the GZ wasn’t far – only 0.65 miles away… as the crow flies.
Unfortunately we aren’t crows so we had to look for a path – not that the cache appears to be on a path (unless you are a viking – ‘look it’s on this wiggly brown line, that’s a path isn’t it ?’ “No, that’s the 100mtr contour line !”) So we exited the pub and headed across the roundabout… two choices of direction, the A43 – busy dual carriageway, no lights, no footpath or the A14 – busy dual carriageway, no lights, but there is a footpath… so we set off alongside the A14… half an hour and one and a half miles later we get to the cache – it actually wasn’t that hard to get to and the paths though suffering from the occasional puddle were not muddy and we had enough torchlight to avoid the potholes and puddles.
Once the cache had been found (rejoice it’s Talion48’s first UK Puzzle cache find – well it’s only his second UK cache find of any type !) we decided to get back it looked shorter to carry on and walk up the side of the A43 rather than go back to the A14… so on we went. I don’t actually recommend walking up the A43 in the dark, it’s a dual carriageway with no lights and no footpath, but as it was now nearly midnight it wasn’t too busy.
Eventually we got back to the pub… and found that it was the same distance from pub to cache either way to within a few yards… the “oh it’s not far from here” cache took us an hour and a three mile walk… But we found it, and that’s the main thing 🙂
The moral of this tale is… keep your women away from marauding Vikings ! ! !

simplysquarecache

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