May 1st 2010 – Motorway Mayhem – M74 J5(version 2) GC1HAWA – cache #431
Heading North for a weeks holiday by Loch Ness with Angel78 and a bunch of friends, we stopped overnight in the Holiday Inn at Hamilton. Putting the GPS on in the Hotel room it said we were 121 feet away from the nearest cache, so in the morning before we left we went around the back of the hotel to find it. Not exactly in a very nice place, stuck on the back of a Fire Assembly Point sign on a verge that was covered in dumped rubbish.
May 3rd 2010 – Corrimony Cairns Cache GC17JFB – cache #432
We were out walking at a place called Dog Falls, where there was a wooden footbridge over the river. I was talking to Caroline, a non cacher and telling her that if the bridge had been in a more populated place it would have had a cache underneath it, with either a name or a hint mentioning trolls.
Later that day we visited an ancient chambered burial cairn, to get to it you had to cross a footbridge over a ditch… and underneath it was this cache and the hint said “A Troll might guard this one”
May 3rd 2010 – Grasshopper GCE82E – cache #433
After finding the first cache Angel78 decided that we would go to this one which was the nearest one to where we were staying… however it was near the top of the hill behind the lodge where we were staying and rather than walk up to it, she decided we would drive up to the top of the hill and walk the few yards down to it
(there is a picture of me with this cache on Angel78’s phone, when I get a copy I will post it here !)
May 5th 2010 – Monster Drive – Urquhart Castle GC1PAKM – cache #434
Early one morning, before the rest of the group were up Angel78 and I felt like we needed to get some air, so we decided to go and do a few local caches.
The first one we did was a nicely hidden drive by, but it didn’t take too much finding as the description and hint gave enough clues.
May 5th 2010 – Cobbs Memorial GC17JGC – cache #435
Next was a 35mm film cannister hidden in the Armco on the wrong side of the road to the parking area, quite glad we did this early in the morning before there was much traffic going up and down the road, cos crossing the road would at times be quite a challenging thing.
May 5th 2010 – Monster Drive – Hidden Bench GC1PAKQ – cache #436
Another few hundred yards down the road and another drive by cache… The Monster Drive series of caches are all supposedly easy drive-by’s, a series that goes right around the Loch
May 5th 2010 – Monster Drive – Drumnadrochit GC1PAKK – cache #437
Coming back to the town of Drumnadrochit (a mile from where we were staying) we got out of the car to do the two caches there, the first was this one, a 35mm film cannister hidden by a rock…
May 5th 2010 – Old Kilmore GC17JFY – cache #438
… and the second one was this one, a 35mm film cannister hidden by a rock. This was actually quite a struggle to find, it was in a graveyard by the wall of a ruined chapel, there were a lot of rocks that had to be turned over before we found the right one
May 6th 2010 – Of Tall Ships and Fairies GC11XTQ – cache #439
Next evening we went for an early Chinese Buffet in Inverness, so as we had to drive back to Drumnadrochit and had nothing else to do we stopped off for the drive by caches on the way.
The first of these was a magnetic key safe box at the swing bridge where the road crosses the canal, and was strange in that there were one and a half caches.
A previous log had said that the cache was missing altogether one day and then just the inside there the next… what I think must have happened is that the magnet had come unstuck from the box and the box had got dropped in the grass, the previous logger hadn’t looked too hard and so thought it was missing, a Danish cacher had come along, found the box, found that the inner bag was sodden and so put his business card in as a temporary log and stuck the box back on the magnet and left the sodden bag on the ground. I signed the Danish Business card !
May 6th 2010 – Monster Drive – Dochgarroch GC1PAKB – cache #440
A camouflaged 35mm film cannister hidden in the fork of a tree, easy to get in the evening when there’s no-one about.
May 6th 2010 – Monster Drive – Lochend GC1PAKE – cache #441
Loch Ness is not as ‘natural’ as it once was, the building of the Caledonian Canal meant they had to alter the banks somewhat and at Lochend a earth banking was built. This cache is on the banking and from it you get good views down the length of the loch.
May 6th 2010 – Monster Drive – Rock in the Loch GC1PAKH – cache #442
The layby at this cache has a track that leads down to a boatshed in the trees at the waters edge, someone had been down to the shed in the previous couple of days as there were tyre tracks and flattened grass. The shed is painted black and is actually quite spooky… it was getting a bit dark as I walked down the track and the shed door slowly swung open as I approached it… was it just the breeze ? or something more eerie ? (We had been watching horror videos the previous night !)
I didn’t hang around too long after replacing the cache in it’s hiding place under the shed.
