I don't like walking
without a purpose, I get bored of that quickly. That's one of the reasons I
love geocaching. I could quite happily walk for miles to find a geocache.
Everyone has their own reasons for getting outside and finding hides; it might
be to find as many as possible, to complete the Alphanumeric Challenge, to
claim the coveted title of FTF or one of many other personal goals. For me it
is all about the adventure.
The majority of
caches out there are relatively easy to find and are run of the mill. Don't get
me wrong though, I appreciate every single one of those hides and fully
understand the time and effort that goes into them. My own two caches are of
the 'run of the mill' type. Each one has its own merits and each one is special
in some way.
There are cache
owners out there however that go completely above and beyond, some would say
insanely so, but they do it in spectacular fashion.
Our mission last
weekend was to find one of these "extreme" caches. These types of
caches have cropped up in conversation many times when we talk to fellow
cachers at events so our 'to do' list is steadily growing. Are You Afraid Of The Dark? is the cache that we had heard most about, so this is the one we
decided to undertake. Seeing as it would be quite a drive to get there, we
spent the night before looking for caches in the same area.
Sunday came round
and we set off for Hoddesdon where today's adventure would start. We began with
a small circuit of caches set in the woods consisting of eight traditionals and
a multi bonus called HPW. Then we went into Hoddesdon itself to pick up a few
in that area. The were all easy finds and served as a warm up for the more
difficult ones later on.
So far so good. We
had found eleven traditionals, a multi, a Travel Bug and a Geocoin. We were on
a roll.
"So what's the
next one?" asked Nige as we got to the car.
"A small series
called 'Off Yer Trolley'. Seems simple enough, the first is a cache and dash in
a supermarket car park. How hard can that be?" I replied.
As we arrived at GZ,
we realised that this would be challenging to say the least, but I thought I'd
give it a go anyway. Nige parked up, I jumped out of the car and headed to
where my GPSr said the cache was just as a car parked up in the space next to it.
I looked back at Nige, he just sat in the car laughing at me. I tried my best
to have a look around but my attempt at being stealthy just made it look like I
was checking cars out to boost! So before security was called on my suspicious
behaviour, I ran back to the car. This was our first DNF of the day. We decided
against the other two caches in that series, figuring we would encounter the
same problem. Not to worry though as, we still had a church micro, a
traditional and the main event to go for.
The traditional and
the church micro were found without a fuss so we headed for our final cache of
the day. Before continuing, I should tell you a little about the things that
scare me. The list is quite short as I am not phased by an awful lot. My biggest
fears are planes, dentists and spiders. So on with the cache, Are you afraid of
the Dark.
We found a parking
spot across the road from where we were told to start this cache. Crossing the
road we found a gap in the bushes and ducked through. We had high expectations
of this cache and as we climbed down to the tunnel entrance we were not disappointed.
I shone my torch inside and the beam was swallowed by the darkness. As I stood
in front of this pitch black tunnel, it suddenly occurred to me that this is
exactly the sort of place that spiders like to call 'Home, Sweet Home'. I was
here now so I just had to suck it up.
Sunlight had
disappeared behind us and there was no sign of it ahead. I had no concept of
how far we had travelled through the tunnel, it seemed never ending though. We
stopped for a brief second and turned the torches off. The darkness was
absolute. I don't have a problem with the dark and for a moment I forgot what
was living in this tunnel.
We continued making
steady progress and it wasn't long before we saw the end of the tunnel ahead.
We emerged into the sunshine and I gave myself a mental high five for not
freaking out about the spiders.
'I used to be a
kickboxer. One of you hairy little suckers touches me and I'll slam you into
next week!' I thought as I headed back into the tunnel. I lead the way again
but this time I actually had to look for the cache which meant shining my torch
on the walls and ceiling. This seemed to highlight every single spider in the
tunnel. Every nook and cranny I looked in seemed to house a spider and they
seemed to be getting bigger and uglier the further we went in. After a few
sweeps of the torch, something caught my eye.
"It's
here!" I shouted trying to contain the urge to jump up and down, thus
cracking my head on the ceiling "you can retrieve it though cos I ain't
touching it!".
I took a few steps
back in case removing the cache from it's home unleashed an arachnid avalanche
on my head. We signed the log and took the time to replace the container
exactly as we had found it. It was time to head back up the tunnel. Nigel
turned to me and asked
"What would you
do if a velociraptor came up the tunnel right now?"
Yes, we have some
strange conversations sometimes, but it's wise to have a plan for all types of
eventualities. Before I could answer, however, we heard the cry of an animal.
Now, I'm pretty sure it was a horse, but I wasn't leaving anything to chance and
started back up the tunnel post haste... With Nigel behind me of course!
We finally emerged
from the tunnel, triumphant and elated. We had done it! This cache took us to a
new level of geocaching that we had yet to experience and straight away we
started discussing the next one to go after.
A big thank you has
to go to the cache owners, Noztradamus and JackNano, for taking the time and effort to hide this amazing cache. This
is certainly one that we will not be forgetting any time soon and will
definitely be recommending it to everyone.
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