Ashridge

Tuesday 16 September 2014

I laugh in the face of spiders (and then run away!)

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.

In we went. I led the way. We had heard from others that the tunnel has water running through it sometimes, but not today, it was just very slippery. Being a shorty, I had the advantage over Nigel and could walk through without stooping. On the downside, I was practically doing the splits trying to straddle the uneven brickwork on the ground. I shone my torch above me and that's when I saw Them. So many different types of spiders. On the walls, in the pipes, potentially on me! From that point on, I concentrated the beam of the torch at my feet. With logic that only makes sense to me, I figured that if I couldn't see Them then they weren't really there.

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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