Next day was a trip to the Apedale mining museum and country park (well the country park is actually just the slag heap, but it’s not the only one of them like this, in fact it’s about all you can do with slag heaps as they are industrial waste and perhaps inherently unstable (remember Aberfan) and so planting them with grass, trees and shrubbery keeps the surface together)
Caches No’s 5971 to 5983 – West Mids Mega Day 2
Thanks to the last couple of days I was now at a stage where I had to limit the number of caches I could find to make sure I didn’t get to #6,000 too soon – Which was good as I was needed a quiet day to rest my leg.
The First day time event was a trip on the Churnet Valley Railway – another of the Heritage Railways of the area.
Caches No’s 5949 to 5970 – West Mids Mega Day 1
On the Sunday I had done almost half of the caches I needed to find to get to my 6,000th, I was down to only needing 51, 17 a day, 3 sets of Labs and an event and I was there.
Monday, time to check out of the hotel near Bakewell, then drive over to Uttoxeter and check into the hotel there.
Caches No’s 5903 to 5948 – Piratemania 14 Part II
The Sunday of Piratemania started off with the usual Flash Mob, all gather together, many in Pirate costume and generally hand around for 30 minutes – then it seemed like half the attendees went to the local supermarket to get some breakfast !
I was definitely conscious that my leg was not doing well, I couldn’t do much more than slowly limp along, but my plan was to get to 6,000 caches by Wednesday night so I needed to do 92 or 93 caches and the rest would be events .
Caches No’s 5868 to 5902 – Piratemania 14 Part I
The Piratemania / UK Mega has become my main holiday of the year, and certainly the time I do the most caching.
This year Piratemania was in Bakewell as it was in 2015, but unlike then I didn’t just go down for the day, I stayed in a hotel just outside Bakewell for the whole weekend.
Caches No’s 5857 to 5867 – Spofforth & Wetherby Labs
I had been working on the Saturday, so took the Monday off work in lieu of it. It was a nice day so I decided to go and grab a couple of (reasonably) local Lab cache sets.
The first was in Spofforth, a village near Harrogate with a ruined ‘Castle’ – a fortified Manor House really, whose main claim to fame is that the Magna Carta was written here in 1215