Meeester Nik

Hiding a geocache is no easy task.

You have to find somewhere interesting, nowhere near another cache, secluded enough to not be stumbled upon by accident and not on private land. And not only do you have to do all that; you also have to prove it to the moderators.

So – as I say – not easy, which of course we didn’t know when we decided to hide our own.

We thought we’d struck gold two weeks back when we found a large tree by a distinctive hole in a crumbling wall, and picked up enough rubble and debris to hide our cache quite safely. Then we found another one close by and I had to cycle back down there next morning and get it back without being seen.

So we tried again on Saturday night and found a cosy dark spot under the trunk of a fallen tree by the river, covered our box with leaves and bark and went back home to log it.

And the following morning it was duly rejected on the ‘can you prove it’ grounds.

So this morning, at seven-twenty-early, I was out there again taking it back. It was a beautiful time to be down by the river. A heavy mist was rising up from the pancake-flat surface of the water, from out of which came the disembodied voices of the ducks. The horses had been moved down to the water’s edge where they were having their breakfast as the low sun shot its first weak beams of the day through the trees.

There were a dozen walkers or more, all out with their dogs, which made things more difficult as the animals were excited by the crispy frost fizzing their feet. And it felt like a magical time to be walking by the river, and had I not had a train to catch I would have stayed much longer.

As it turned out, the trains were running late so perhaps I should have done.

Perhaps having your cache rejected is no bad thing.

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geocaching

I don’t think I’ve been stung by nettles since I was 10. I’d forgotten that they actually hurt as soon as you touch them, almost like a little shock; I had some crazed, incorrect recollection that they only stung a few hours later when the bumps came up, but it turns out that’s not right.

Anyhow, I headed out geocaching. It’s about three weeks since I last went hunting for treasure, and I was keen to make the most of the fantastic hot day we’ve just had, so I scooted off after lunch and parked up in a small lane in the middle of nowhere and set off with the GPS, following a series of cryptic clues through countryside packed with wildlife.

The first check-point was a style, for which I already had the coordinates, but from there things got much more tricky. The person who had hidden the treasure hadn’t given an easy route to find in. Instead, they’d referenced the coordinates with features of the landscape. So, getting to the style and counting the arrows on either side gave the next location as follows:

a = number of arrows on the front
b = number of arrows on the back
c = a + b
d = c / b
e = c + d
f = d – b
g = b + f + d

And that gives you the coordinates of checkpoint two which, after you’d substituted the letters for the numbers they represented, was N 51.ab.bbf E 00.bd.ega

There were six check points in total, the fifth being a small box hidden inside a tree stump, inside which were the coordinates for the treasure, coded up just like the ones above. In all it took about an hour and a half of walking and working things out to find the treasure, hidden under an old log in an ammunition box. It was obvious nobody had been there in weeks, as it was covered in cob webs.

It was a fantastic long walk. I didn’t see anyone for the whole time I was out, but I was absolutely surrounded by wildlife. Apart from the pheasants, hares and squirrels, the most common animal I saw was deer. I was counting them to start with, but once I got beyond 40 I gave up. They were quite timid, but they were still running across the paths in the woods just in front of me, just a few metres away.

The treasure itself was well worth the hunt, despite being stung so many times by the nettles (serves me right for geocaching in shorts). The ammo box (above) was quite large, so could hold some good stuff, and people had filled it with books and pens and puzzles. I almost took The Bookseller of Kabul, as it’s something I had been intending to read, but I then found a strange wooden board game below it that I’d never seen before and, realising I could buy Bookseller anywhere but might never see this game again, took that instead. I don’t know what it’s called, or how you play it, so hopefully some Googling will turn up a clue.

In all, a fantastic day out in the countryside, and I may even have got a little bit tanned.

Ze Frank is trying to make the earth into a sandwich. A simple idea: you put your slice of bread on the ground somewhere, take a picture and plot its location on Google Maps. That pinpoints the opposite spot, so someone else can put a slice there, take another picture and, voila, earth sandwich.

Not so good for us Brits, as the opposing halves of our muddy croque monsieurs are adrift somewhere south of the Falklands.

Find it all here.

The tubes were a mess this morning. Of the four lines I can get to work, three were out of action, leaving x-thousand people to cram onto the already struggling Central Line.

So, I walked. I hadn’t planned on walking more than a couple of stations, but by the time I got to St Paul’s, heading across the river to Waterloo looked like a better bet than soldiering on. So, I took the wobbly Millennium Bridge and remembered, half way across, that I’d been reading about a geocache on the far side.

It was small, wrapped in tin foil and held in place by magnets, apparently. So, I walked along slowly, carefully examining the metal superstructure for bits of tin foil, and almost gave up when I saw a film canister nestled in between two metal struts. It didn’t look like it could have fallen there; it was upright, and perfectly positioned.

So, I paused for a moment and looked into the water and waited for a crowd of people to pass, then bent down to fix my shoe and picked it up.

‘Geocache,’ it said on the outside. ‘Contents non-harmful. Please leave in place.’

I took a quick look inside, but it contained no treasure – just a small strip of paper for people to log their visits. I didn’t sign it; just slipped it back, snapped on the lid and dropped it back where I found it.

Four caches in five days. Not bad going.