Being at a loose end on a Bank Holiday is not something that happens to me very often. Yesterday, my wife and me were trying to think of ways of making use of the day. We ended up phoning up Mr and Mrs Sparhawk and all piling into his car and heading down he motorway to London. We’d decided to break with tradition, and go for a few City-based Geocaches, to see where it led us. I’m glad we did, because its opened up a whole new world of explorarion to us.
I never thought caching in a city would be so interesting. The thing is, in London, the sheer volume of caches is incredible. Ioaded up the Garmin eTrex with the waypoints for the 500 caches closest to central london, then took a look at the map and was blown away at the density of them. By the time we got there (after much tube-based frustration - I’ve never been ‘de-trained’ before!), we only ended up doing four, as time was getting on. It’s given me the taste for it though, and I’m screaming to go back for a whole day or so to carry on now!
We stated around Leicester Square, and walked from there to our first cache (link), at St Giles-In-The-Field church. There. we were thwarted by none other than a tramp having a kip on the bench (which ended up being where the cache was hidden).
Sparhawk Replacing the Cache
So we moved on to a few more in the city. The first was at the old Tramway Tunnel near Holborn Tube station (link). This was amazing, for no other reason than it was so exposed (see the pic of Sparhawk replacing it!). It’s amazing that tens of thousands of people a day pass this way and nobody notices it! Means you have to be quite stealthy putting it back though.
The next caches were micros (35mm film canisters or smaller) with just a log for you to record your visit. These tend to take you to interesting places, which you may not find otherwise. The first was at an old water pump in Gray’s Inn (link), and the last was situated underneath the largest stained glass window in London (allegedly!) at St Ethelreda’s church, which is hidden away in the City (link). We then made our way back to St Giles to find that the resident had moved on, and we could retrieve the final one of the day.
First (and last) Cache of the day
This trip has certainly served to change my views of urban caching. It takes you to places (like any other sort of caching!) that you’d never go to. In London, one of the big joys of it is that you can find a cache, then punch in the next nearest on the GPSr and it’s not generally more than about a third of a mile away! I’m really looking forward to getting into this a bit more, and will be back down the motorway the first chance I get. Its also opened me up to the idea of placing some caches in more urban areas. I suppose i’ve never really thought about the fact that some people just dont have the transport to get out to more remote places easily, and it’s great for these people to have easy access to the same volume of caches as the rest of us do. I may place a few micros around Newport or Cardiff, and see how they go.
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