Hoorn Mega

Where's Hoorn?  Hoorn's here!

Hoorn Mega

We first became aware of this potential Mega Event while at the Catalonia Mega last October. We kept an eye on it and when it went mega we decided attending might be in order. The original plan was for both of us to go and spend a long weekend in the area, catching the overnight ferry from Harwich – a crossing we’ve done in the past. However, as time moved on, other travel plans fell into place and we abandoned our plans to attend the Hoorn Mega.  We decided it would use up too much of our holiday and, although we’d intended to use Tesco Clubcard vouchers for the ferry crossing, we’d found a better deal to use them on our main holiday later in the year.

Naturally, the story doesn’t end there…. If it had it wouldn't have made a very interesting blog.

An email arrived from P&O a few weeks ago offering Dover to Calais day trips for £24 return…. Hmm
Plus an extra £5 for weekend crossings and a plan started forming:

Drive to Dover in the afternoon, catch the earliest crossing possible, whiz up to Hoorn, attend Mega find some caches, attend CITO whiz back to Calais, cross back to Dover and drive home.
No problem!
Apart from the distances that is! We live about 200 miles from Dover and Hoorn is 250 miles from Calais!!!
Needless to say, Donna wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of 14+ hours’ driving so said that I could go by myself if I wanted.



Friday 13th March
Left home about 14:30 and headed towards Kent. I’d planned to find a few caches in Kent on the way. All was going fine until all sorts of strange warning lights came on in the car.  The car is only a year old and we’ve not had any problems at all with it in that time so this wasn’t looking good.  Then the fuel gauge suddenly showed empty … not good at all.  The car was still running OK so I left the M25 near Chertsey and filled up at Tesco. I continued to Ashford and did the caches I had planned and then thought maybe it would be a good idea to get an opinion on these warning lights.
I phoned the breakdown bods telling them I was due to board a ferry at 02:00 and they arranged for a mechanic to meet me in Dover just after 22:00.
Of course, when the mechanic arrived he could find no faults and said that it should be OK to continue my journey. Super!

Cachemobile having a health check!

I checked in at the port and waited in the queue for boarding. Phone rang. It was the breakdown cover bods informing me that although the mechanic couldn’t find a problem they would not be able to cover the cost if I broke-down on the other side of The Channel as it was now an ‘existing fault’ (or something like that). This was not really something I wanted to hear.

Saturday 14th March
I was actually put on a 00:45 ferry and it was absolutely packed. I managed to find a nice comfy sofa  and settle down to sleep with my pillow and sleeping-bag  (essential for anything closely resembling sleep).

 Arrived in Calais and headed Northwards. After about 100 miles the warning lights came on again!!
Arrgghhh!!  Turn back or carry on?
Carry on of course! Luckily, the journey was uneventful and I arrived in Hoorn in plenty of time to do a few caches before continuing on to the Mega for 10:00

Hoorn Town Centre

The Shipboys of Bontekoe

One thing that was very noticeable was that, unlike back home, there was no sign of Spring anywhere! There were no snowdrops, daffodils or trees in blossom. It was quite bleak actually.

The Mega event was a similar format to the Bruges Bier Mega and had the usual trade stands, GSAK and Wherigo workshops etc.  There was also a load of new caches including some Wherigos and six Lab caches. Four of the Lab caches were within the building and involved solving a puzzle or performing a task of some sort to get the code. Of the other two, one was about 7 miles away so I didn’t bother with it but the final one was back in Hoorn exactly where I had been caching earlier.

Mark	Mega Venue
One of the many rooms being used	Not many attendees from the UK, but it was still quite early

I completed two of the new Wherigos and Lab Caches before heading back into Hoorn for the other Lab Cache and finish off a Wherigo I had started earlier.

All done, now to head to the CITO for 15:00.  The CITO was due to run until 16:00 but had started a bit early and by 15:30 it was clear that there was no more litter picking to do so we all dispersed.

CITO

Super! This would give me a bit more time to get to Calais for the 20:55 crossing. This was just as well really as it took aaaaaaages to get though passport control.  I know they have to be thorough and all that but perhaps they could have more than just two of the possible ten barriers in action.  In the end I checked-in with only 35 minutes to spare. The ferry was only half-full this time.

Stopped for a short sleep in one of the motorway services on the way home and arrived home at 02:00

All in all an enjoyable trip, wasn’t quite the same on my own as Donna and I love to travel together but it was fun and as is usual when visiting mega events I met some very friendly people and hopefully made a few new friends.

Our car has a travelbug on it and I think it's been 'discovered' more times at Hoorn than at any previous Event. Mind you, it was the only car in the carpark with British number plates so it was quite distinctive!

Total driving distance: 942 miles
Three new icons for The Netherlands: Mega, CITO and Lab Cache meaning we have now found twelve different type in The Netherlands

Road Trip to Germany

Back in April 2013 Mark asked if I'd like to go to the Bruges Mega Event but as he was only going for the day I decided to give it a miss and he went on his own.  When he got home we agreed that we'd both go this year and make it into a holiday.  As the weeks went on, plans started to fall into place and then Mark suggested we could go to Germany after the Mega event as there was a great looking  wherigo series in Göttingen which was inspired by the Cornish wherigo series we did last May ...... Hold on a minute! Germany? That's quite a long drive from Bruges!

So here is a very succinct account of our trip.  Check out our profile for all the caches we found and the wherigos we played, I've only detailed the highlights and any funny stories as to list everything would get a bit boring to read and take far too long, also I've tried not to give any spoilers away:

EAT, SLEEP, CACHE, REPEAT......EAT, SLEEP, CACHE.......

We have been planning this epic trip for months and at last the time has come to set off on our crazy adventure.  Our destination is Göttingen in Germany to do the Farbenspiel Wherigo trail.  On the way we'll be attending the Bruges mega event, visiting the beautiful and historic city of Bruges, hosting our own event in Best near Eindhoven, Holland and finding as many wherigos and webcams as possible along the way as we travel through Belgium, Holland and Germany.

We love the challenge of learning other languages in preparation for caching trips.  Mark can speak fairly good German and mine is, let's say, conversational holiday standard - so we brushed up on a bit of Dutch beforehand and realised that a lot of Dutch words are pretty similar to German - the rest the smartphone app will hopefully be able to handle.

We made up our minds when on holiday last year that we'd concentrate on doing less common cache types, such as wherigos, webcams and virtuals as when you visit an area they are generally in more interesting locations than the nearest power trail.  So this holiday we decided to concentrate on mainly wherigos and web cams.

The pic above is our B and B, right in the centre of Bruges and was perfect for exploring the city.  The owner was a lovely lady,  really warm and friendly, she asked us we'd like breakfast around 10 and we asked if we could have it earlier (we are cachers we don't do Sunday lie-ins) she answered 'how early?' 'Erm.... Is 8 ok?' We didn't dare ask for earlier as it seemed a bit cheeky.  She was a little surprised that we didn't want a lie-in on a Sunday and said she'd get up earlier.  I felt really bad but she was so lovely and didn't seem to mind.  Incidentally Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson stayed in the same B and B in 2007 whilst filming the movie 'In Bruges' and there was a photo of him and the landlady in the guest book.

Brugse Beer IV Mega Event



Enjoyed mingling and meeting other cachers. It was good to meet the organisers of the UK Mega 2015.

and also Zuurtsje who originally placed the BP's Brownsea Island cache in 2001 which we found in August 2012.

Discovered lots of trackables, chatted to lots of other cachers, bought a nice shiny new geocoin then it was time do the next leg of our journey.

Next stop.... Eindhoven, Holland

This doesn't look too far on the map but obviously we didn't go the direct route so instead via Utrecht some way to the North.  Unfortunately one of the wherigos we'd planned to do had been archived a few weeks ago so we decided to attempt another one which looked a bit daunting as it was completely in Dutch and looked like it might be quite involved.

This wherigo was extremely challenging, mainly because our Dutch is very limited and we had to keep stopping to translate any words we couldn't understand.  Just when we thought we had reached the final stage we were told to stop and enjoy a coffee, the information made it sound as though this was where the final location for the cache was, we had a look around the grounds of the cafe but wouldn't see anything so went inside, ordered a coffee, translated as best we could the information but still we couldn't understand where we were supposed to look so Mark decided that the waiter must know where the geocache was hidden as the cartridge mentioned the co's relative worked there but he replied that he only had 'normal cash', we asked if he knew the person mentioned in the wherigo and even showed him the photo and he said he didn't, we even showed him another hint picture which he didn't recognise either, by this point I think he was getting ready to call security so we decided to beat a hasty retreat.

So we got back on our bikes, scratched our heads a bit more and then I spotted the hint item that was in the picture further down the road, it was nothing to do with the cafe after all, doh!  The final was brilliant and we were really pleased to find it even though we were close to giving up at times.

Goedavend event

When we are away from home, especially in another country we love meeting other cachers but it's not often you get to just bump into people in such a short space of time.  Last year we decided it would be good fun to host our own event to meet up with local cachers and we held a very successful event in Hungary.  We thought we'd continue the theme from last year and find a prominent landmark statue to gather at.

After a bit of research Mark found a 50ft statue of Michael Jackson in the car park of a Mcdonalds, we're not particularly big fans of Michael's but thought the location would be ideal for a short 'meet and greet' event.  The Maccys is the first of its kind we have been to and was all done out in 50s diner style complete with Wurlitzer juke box, life-sized Marilyn Monroe and Chevrolet Corvette hanging from the ceiling!

We were a bit surprised at how many will attends came in as soon as it was published and not sure how many would turn up on the night but there were 40+ names in the log book so an excellent turnout.  We had so much fun, everyone was so friendly and once again, as a Dutch cacher once said to us back in 2010 when we were in Belgium 'we all speak the common language of geocaching', my favourite geocaching quote, it's so true and you always have something to talk about.

Cache Hopper

After chatting to as many cachers as we could, including Cache Hopper who has found at least one cache every day since Feb 2008 and the setter of the Speeltuin Wherigo that we'd had great fun playing earlier in the day and exchanging and discovering trackables it was time for us to go back to our hotel as we're off to Germany tomorrow.

GERMANY

Arrived at Göttingen in the dark and the rain after an 'exciting' 313 mile drive from Eindhoven, great fun blasting along the autobahns but not so much fun when it's raining!

Farbenspiel wherigos

This series of wherigos was the main reason for our trip, we first spotted them about a year ago and noticed how many favourite points they had and that they were also doable by bike.

 The questions at each stage were all in German but we managed to translate enough to understand what we had to do.  Apart from one stage, we'd completely misinterpreted what we had to do next and spent ages looking for the cache only to realise we were just at a 'via punkt' and was placed to show what path to take next.

The location was beautiful and we saw loads of red squirrels and lots of unusual birds.  Thoroughly enjoyed the series.

Later in the evening we enjoyed a bike ride back to the area to do an earthcache.

We'd originally planned to stay 3 nights in Göttingen but decided to check out a day early and stop a night south of Bonn to break up the journey back to Leuven in Belgium.

After doing some of the local caches we headed off to do the Picture Postcard from Cologne webcam, it took us ages to find somewhere to park and had to go around the ring roads quite a few times before we could make Tom Tom understand where we wanted to go.

The picture refreshed regularly so we were able to get a few pics.  Great fun and lovely view from the bridge.

You can just about see us standing on the bridge

Then as we had about 30 mins left on our parking ticket we headed off to find a nearby traditional that has had  2696 finds since 2007 and met caching team Katunde who were already searching.

BELGIUM

Arrived at our B and B in Leuven.

We'd visited Leuven back in 2010, after a day out in Brussels while on a family holiday at Erpeheide Centerparcs but didn't really have much time to explore so it was great to come back and have a proper look around.  The

Leuven Anders wherigo was perfect for seeing the sights (English version available).

So then we'd reached the end of our trip and it was time to head to Calais to the Eurotunnel.

TRIP SUMMARY:

Miles travelled: 1752
Nights away: 8
Hotels stayed in: 6
Countries visited: 4
Wherigos completed: 47
Webcam photos taken: 6
Mega Events attended: 1
Events hosted/attended: 1
Cakes eaten: lost count
Max speed on autobahn: erm... not saying


Hope you've enjoyed reading our blog.

G'ebbes & other (crazy) stuff

This blog is written by Mark for a change.  

A few cachers have asked me about my trip so I thought others might be interested to read about my crazy 'day' trip.

Our 'Month Set' or 'Jasmer Challenge grid' has had a noticeable empty square in 2001 for some time now.  It's always been empty but only noticeable since the rest of the row was completed in 2011.

(Jasmer Challenge: Find a cache hidden in every month since May 2000, when geocaching started)

Caches for March 2001 aren't particularly rare - there are 193 world wide but none in the UK. The nearest one is G'ebbes in The Netherlands.  Rather annoyingly, we drove within 25 miles of it in 2008 and we were less than 50 miles in 2010 but we weren't trying to fill the grid at that time so didn't realise..... Consequently it's been nagging at us for a while.

So when an email arrived saying 'ferry to France for £11.50 (£23 return)' I thought 'hmm... '
My work also like us to spread our holidays more evenly over the year and ask us to take five days before the end of March.  I had one day left to take.  Hmm, now where could I go? ....

Long way to go for one cache though.  How about finding some more cache types for France, Belgium and Netherlands at the same time to go towards qualifying for a Challenge Cache we are planning to find in the summer.   I decided to try and get the number of types up to eight for each country and set about researching which ones would be en route and easy - and also identified a few 'back-up' ones just in case of DNFs.

View from my 'bed' on the ferry.

I left home 19:15 Sunday 10th March and trundled down to Dover to get the ferry at 02:20.  Amazingly, the car was showing an average of 58 mpg!   Arrived in Dover with plenty of time to have a doze in the car before setting off. The ferry was delayed by 30 minutes or so when entering Calais.

Ammo box in Gent

 First stop, a Letterbox Hybrid just off the E40 near Gent.  No problem.

  
Next G'ebbes. G'ebbes is in a nature reserve and with about three miles to go the roads were closed because of a light dusting of snow!  No way! I had just travelled 450 miles and I wasn't going to be put off that easily.  I took the roads very slowly and parked within 0.3 of a mile of GZ.

Log stamped for G'ebbes

 Next a Wherigo nearby. No problems although the cache was covered in snow so took a bit of finding
A Puzzle was next on the list. Another easy find.

Logging in our Wherigo coin

Now for  a Letterbox Hybrid - the one earlier in the day was in Belgium remember.  The one I had selected was in a service area of the motorway and it meant going 4 miles past it to the next junction and coming back down the other side. A DNF.  No sign of it anywhere.

Most of the Letterbox Hybrids in Netherlands seem to be tricky multi-stage things. I had made a note of  a simple reserve one but for some reason I forgot to download the details.  A quick text to gaz_zippy asking for co-ords and hint soon solved that problem.

Webcam next. This was 'fun'.
It's always best to try out webcams in advance because some require additional downloads etc.  This one was one of those. I'd got it to work OK on our little netbook but I hadn't managed to persuade anyone else to install the dodgey Java plug in.  I emailed the CO and he kindly offered to grab the image for me when I got there and he also gave me his wife's phone number just in case.

I got to GZ and phoned the CO: voice mail
I phoned his wife, also voice mail.

Got out the netbook and dongle and it worked fine
........ then the battery died.

Phoned CO again and he tried to access it but he couldn't because he was on a works pc.
plugged netbook into inverter and fired it up again.

Placed netbook on top of car (with powerlead going through window to the inverter) and got an old Dutch bloke, who didn't speak much English, to press print-screen when I was in the picture
I was just about in the picture so it will have to do.

You can just see my new Dutch friend to let the left in this pic

The reserve Letterbox now.  No problems.
So, that was an extra four cache types in Holland bringing the total to eight.
Next stop a webcam in Belgium. This was quite a drive but it was in the right direction (sort of) Parked about 300ft from GZ and phoned gaz_zippy in a howling blizzard/sandstorm. Luckily this webcam is a straight forward static image so it was very quick.

A Belgian Wherigo next.  I had identified a fairly easy one and drove through the snowstorm to where it was and soon had that one ticked off as well.
So, that was another three cache types for Belgium bringing the total to eight.

I had a Puzzle, Letterbox and Multi selected for France next but I was over 50 miles from Calais and the detour would have made it to 88 or so.  Not a problem but it was getting dark and the lanes were getting really bad with snow so I decided to call it a day and head straight to the port.

I passed a couple of accidents on the E40 but the traffic was running fairly well.  I checked-in and was told that I would be on the 18:50 crossing which was running three hours late due to the weather.
Not a problem.  It was some time later that we were actually on board and setting off. The captain had warned that the sea was choppy and there was a strong wind.

I found somewhere to sleep and was woken a couple of hours later by an announcement saying that they had received a message from the UK police that the roads out of Dover were all closed and we would have to stay on the ferry until further notice.

Luckily, further notice came just before we docked , albeit somewhat later than expected, and we were able to disembark after waiting about half an hour or so in the car listening to BBC Kent. This made very interesting listening as it consisted mainly of horror stories from listeners who had been stuck in their cars for up to eight hours! Oh dear!

The exit I wanted from the docks was closed and the police were diverting the traffic toward the A2
Hang on, I'm sure that was the road that was mentioned repeatedly on the radio. TomTom kept insisting that I made a U Turn and it eventually gave up suggesting it after five or six miles.  The road was passable - just about - unlike the other carriageway which was stationary behind a broken-down lorry and other minor bumps.

I eventually joined the M20 at Maidstone and headed north to the M26 then the M25. I stopped at a very snowy Clacket Lane services at 01:45 for 30 minutes sleep before continuing homeward finally arriving home at 04:40

Total distance driven 941 miles
Caches found 8
DNFs 1
Satisfaction: 100%
Chance of a repeat journey: Nil