UK Mega Essex 2015

The 8th Annual UK Mega Event

At last the long anticipated day had arrived, we were off to Essex.  The time has just flown since it was announced that Essex would host the 2015 UK Mega event back in April 2014.

There were lots of side events planned in the run up to the MEGA but we were only able to attend from Friday to Sunday due to work commitments so we knew we were in for a fun-filled weekend.

We set our alarms for 4 (yes 4am!!) and left the house at 5am to arrive in time for the CITO event at Cudmore Country Park on Mersea Island for 9am.

After a good journey down we arrived to find lots of cachers already collecting litter, we had our own grabbers and bags and went off in search of litter.  There wasn't a lot to find as everyone had already done a great job of tidying up the place so we decided to go off and play the new Wherigo.

Everything but the kitchen sink

We met our Cornish caching friends in the car park, Spooky Luke, Cornish Candy and Stompy and Stampy so we decided to join forces out on the sea to play The Big Splash Wherigo.  We quickly inflated our kayak and headed down to the launching area.

Beautifully Calm Sea	Other crazies out at sea
A dog on a kayak?	Perfectly synchronised

We were so lucky with the weather, it was gorgeously sunny and the sea lovely and calm – in fact the sea was more like a mill pond, not at all what we were expecting.

Who gave Mark the camera?? - Down a bit!

After working our way through the zones we found our way to the final and we were all really chuffed to be FTF.  It was fantastic fun and we could have happily stayed out there all day padding around.  Once back at the shoreline we bumped into one of the cachers that had placed the cache for the Big Splash Wherigo and he told us that it was a different story when he placed the final, the sea was very choppy in really poor weather conditions!  Then it was back to the car for a picnic then onto the next event.

I have to confess but until I saw the listing for the Mersea Day event I had never heard of Mersea Island (pronounced the same as the river Mersey) but I suppose I can be forgiven as anyone I have mentioned it to since I came home hasn't heard of it either.  Mersea Island is the most easterly inhabited island in the United Kingdom and is one of 43 (unbridged) tidal islands which can be accessed on foot or by road from the British mainland and has an area of around 7 square miles.

A really nice touch was to include a little challenge for the day, this was an icon challenge.  We thought this was a really good idea and enjoyed going around the island ticking off all 9 icons.   The co-ords for the puzzle took you to the entrance of Mersea Roman Barrow and the Essex Mega Team had arranged for the barrow to be opened to visitors between 12 – 2pm, we arrived just before 2pm in time for the last tour.

Entrance

There was a really informative talk then we were allowed to look inside the barrow.  You didn’t need to go inside the barrow to get the answer to the puzzle but we wanted to as it was something you wouldn’t be able to do very often and certainly not with a guide so it was well worth it.

Inside Mersea Barrow

After going off to find the puzzle we headed off to find another Wherigo then back to the event to claim our prize.  Unfortunately we had just missed the organisers but our caching friends from the Isle of Man – Stillroaming and Two of Nine were just about to leave so we enjoyed a lovely long chat in the early evening sunshine with them before going off for a bite to eat.

Then it was off to the next event where we enjoyed a nice chat with caching friends old and new and were able to pick up our icon challenge prize.

What a fab day. Bring on the Mega!!

SATURDAY

Blank log book

We were up bright and early ready for the mega event.  The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, perfect!  We got to Barleylands at about 9am and cachers were just starting to arrive, registration was at 10 so we just milled around chatting until it was time.

Do I win a goldfish?

The lab caches were released at 10am so we decided to make a start on those first.  I’m not a massive fan of lab caches for one reason or another but you can’t argue that they are a great way to get cachers talking to each other at mega events – we've made lots of new friends this way and it's also a good way of keeping cachers at the event for longer.


These particular lab caches were very ingenious and are probably my favourite ones so far.   One of them involved going to the top of a climbing wall which I volunteered to do first then Mark straight after. This was such great fun.  There were some rather unique ways to get lab cache answers which included: hooking a duck, using a UV light, texting, emailing, riding a bike!, scrabble and sticking your hand in a box of goo and gunge – yuk!


The Mega event was extremely well organised, in fact you couldn’t fault it, there was loads of parking right next to the venue and helpful signposts pointing people in the right direction around the venue.  Even on the Friday at the Mersea Island events there were mega volunteers posted around the island and they would pop up and offer help out of nowhere.   The mega committee deserve a massive pat on the back for putting on such a brilliant mega. Their efforts really are appreciated. 

Quick puncture repair

After leaving the mega event we headed off to Hadleigh Park – stopping off to find LQ Essex on the way - Hadleigh Park was the venue for the 2012 Olympic mountain bike event and is now open to the public as a free to use trail centre.  There were 2 Mountain biking Wherigos set for the mega event. We had our bikes with us and it was a great way to spend the rest of the afternoon although hardgoing in hot sunshine.

I was absolutely thrilled to bits to see an adder snake on the path – but as is often the case with wildlife, by the time I'd got my camera out of the bag the snake had slithered into the grass, I just about managed to take a pic as it disappeared.

An Adder!!

After sweating it out on the course we headed off to find some tea before going off to do a bit of urban exploration– this time it was on an abandoned pier – known as the Occidental Pier – I've uploaded a short video below.  We had read up about this pier before our visit and we weren’t sure what the access was going to be like but some caching friends that had visited earlier in the week told us that, rather helpfully, someone has left a ladder to make access onto the dilapidated steps a little easier.  If there weren’t caches at the end of it we would’ve been a bit more wary but we thought – why not, let’s go for it.  It is an abandoned oil refinery jetty.  The Occidental site was abandoned in 1975 leaving a half-built oil refinery, storage tanks and the unused mile long jetty which cost around £10 million of the approximate total of £60 million spent on the project.

That's where we're headin'

As it was going to be a 2-mile round trip and light was fading fast we decided to take our bikes with us – yes you did read that correctly - our bikes.  This proved very tricky taking two bikes up a ladder then up dilapidated steps but undeterred we folded up the bikes and I managed to lift them one at a time half way so Mark could grab them and carry them to the top of the tower.

Once at the top of the pier it was plain sailing as the surface was a good concrete road – so we whizzed along on our bikes to the end, stopping to find the caches along the way and to take photos – this was such an exciting place to explore – and we spent quite some time taking in the peaceful tranquillity as the sun went down.

We would recommend this place to anyone with a sense of adventure and a head for heights  - the fencing/barrier is missing in quite a few places so not at all suitable for youngsters. 

What a brilliant day - more fun tomorrow.

SUNDAY

Has the kettle boiled yet?

We headed of to the Big Breakfast Event first where we enjoyed a bit of caching and chatting.

The Big Breakfast

First geo-cat we've ever met

Log book flags from all the side events

Next stop, Langdon Plotlands CITO event.  We arrived before it started and waited patiently to be split into groups - there was  group for digging holes and putting up a fence, one for litter picking and another for bramble clearing and pruning - we already had our trusty grabbers with us so went in the litter picking group.  We found a good bag of rubbish and a few caches along the way too.  Great fun.  We spent a lot longer at this event than we had originally intended, we didn't leave until getting on for 2pm so we decided to just head straight home as we had a good 150 mile journey ahead of us.

Cows at a CITO - makes no sense

Doing our bit

What a brilliant weekend, we really didn't want it to end, we had a fabulous time, met so many lovely people and generally had a lot of fun - I would even go as far as to say that this is my favourite UK mega so far!

Looking back on the last 8 Annual UK Mega Events

The UK's First Mega Event - Harrogate

This was the 8th 'Annual UK Mega Event' and along with only a handful of other caching teams we have been lucky to have been able to attend them all - The years have flown and we have enjoyed all of them.

I was having a little look at Project GC today and comparing stats on all the UK Mega Events (obviously not counting 2015 just yet and excluding Piratemania/Halloween/Kent) and it makes quite interesting reading:

The 2013 West Midlands Mega has been the best attended so far with 855 logged.  Closely followed by 4th UK Mega in Swansea in 2011 with 770 and in 3rd place the North West Mega in 2012 with 719.

Also these numbers don't take into account total number of cachers signing in on the day but it makes interesting reading all the same.  Wonder what the total will be for this year..........


Bring on North Wales Mega 2016 ....... although not too soon I might add as we'll be another year older then Arrghhh! .... also I don't want to wish it away too quickly as we've got a lot to fit in before then.

 

A day out in the Peak District

Monsal Dale

One of our favourite areas of the country to visit is the Peak District but we don't visit anywhere near as often as we'd like to.  Our daughter is at Uni right on the edge of the Peak District and has enjoyed many walks with the uni walking club and is always showing us photos of the fantastic places she's been - when we go there it's usually just to pick her up or drop her off, or most recently to move her belongings from her flat to her house so there's usually very little time to go on any decent walks.

We were only free on the Saturday this weekend so decided to visit Piratemania just for the day and at the same time take the opportunity while in the area to find some must-do caches.

Harry's Place

This was a virtual at Monsal Dale.  The car park at Monsal Head wasn't free so we managed to find free roadside parking further down the road.  The view from Monsal Head is breathtaking, we have driven this way before but have never found time to stop so it was great to finally be able to explore the area.  The walk down into Monsal Dale was simply beautiful and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk.  We made a circular walk of it which took us back along Headstone Viaduct and into Headstsone Tunnel which is part of the Monsal Trail. 

The Monsal Trail runs along the former Midland Railway line for 8.5 miles between Blackwell Mill, in Chee Dale and Coombs Road, at Bakewell.  The route was opened to the public in 1981 but four of the six railway tunnels remained closed due to safety reasons and reopened again in 2011.  We walked through the tunnel and back again before heading back up to Monsal Head.

The Tunnel is one of six on the Monsal Trail.  We will definitely be back another day to cycle the full Monsal Trail as it looks amazing.

Then it was off to Froggatt Edge to do Jonah's Journey.  This has been on our to-do list for many years, in fact we originally had the plan to come here when we were at the first Piratemania back in 2008 but ran out of time, since then it's been pushed down the to-do list but finally, today was the day - and also it meant that it would tick off the Geocaching Road Trip Let's Get Extreme Souvenir rather nicely.

Then it was back to the mega event to finish finding the lab caches and to play the Wherigo, Pegleg's Treasure (which we'd finally been able to download after driving around to find network coverage for our phones).  This took quite some time as we were stopping to chat to lots of other pirates along the way so by the time we'd finished it was time to set sail and head back home.  Stopping on the way to find LQ: Derbyshire.

Little Quest

We're making quite good progress on this series - the last few months we've been combining trips to National Trust properties (another of my many interests) with ticking off more LQ caches.  It's been so much fun and has taken us to some great locations.   Our latest find, LQ: Derbyshire, was in a great spot next to Riber Castle which overlooks Matlock - a great location with fantastic views.  Incidentally, Riber Castle was used as one of the filming location for the 2004 film 'Dead Man's Shoes', I remember watching it back then recognising the location from a previous visit to the area in 2001 so I was really pleased to see this cache was near to it.  Unfortunately the area is fenced off so we couldn't explore.

We had such a fantastic day and we are definitely going to make the effort to explore this area more often in the future as our visit has left me craving for more.

Luxembourg Mega

Luxembourg Mega

We'd stopped off in Luxembourg in September 2010 on the way home from a family holiday in Belgium. We only had time for one cache but that was enough to ‘colour in ‘ the country on the stats map.  However, since 2013 we’ve tried to find different cache types in each country we visit so the one solitary cache for Luxembourg stood out in our ever increasing list

So, when a Mega event was announced we knew we’d have to go. The timing wasn’t ideal as we'd already booked a short break to Berlin for the week before.  Anyway, a plan soon took shape and the idea was to drive down to Kent on the Wednesday evening, cross on the tunnel early Thursday and return Sunday evening

We hadn’t reckoned on ferry strikes and watched the news with interest as this obviously had a knock-on effect for Eurostar.  In the end we decided to shorten the trip and make the crossing early Saturday morning and return Sunday hoping that the worst of the ferry problems would have blown over by then.

Shortening the trip meant that Donna wasn't quite so keen (can't understand why) so I decided to go it alone.  I left home Friday afternoon and made my way down to Kent  to do a couple of Wherigos on the way.  I took my time going to Kent and by the time I got there the mpg-ometer was showing an average of over 63 mpg!

The crossing was booked for 3:20 so I arrived early in the hope of getting on an earlier crossing. No such luck.  Although the access road was jammed full of queuing lorries, the car park was almost empty and the crossings were being delayed due to illegal immigrants in the tunnel at Calais.




Eventually arrived in Calais and headed to Luxembourg -  a mere 260 miles or so.  Arrived at the Mega venue, paid the 10 Euros fee and headed into the building.


The venue appeared to be a disused warehouse and contained the usual assortment of stalls. Chatted to few cachers and played the new Mastermind themed Wherigo before heading off to do the Lab caches.  Some of the Lab Caches were at the Mega venue but others were quite a distance away.  No problem though with my handy geo-bicycle.  Called in at the Mystery solving event, and also found a solved-at-home-puzzle.

One of the Lab Caches was in a wood at the top of a hill and in the heat.... oh yeah I didn’t mention the heat.  It was hot – very hot!  34 degrees!

Sculpture

Abandoned machinery at the top of the hill

By the time I’d reached the top I was fit to collapse, running low on water and having difficulty thinking clearly.  I needed a Multi and one started at the same location so I worked out the final but decided it would take too much effort in the heat to get to GZ.  The whizz back down the hill was nice and cooling and the sudden downpour on the way to the Wherigo final was pretty refreshing.

Anyway, time to go further afield to find a few more cache types so back at the car, thirst quenched and aircon on. I soon started feeling human again.

Next cache  Letterbox Hybrid. There’s only four in the whole of the country and luckily the closest one (about 10 miles away) looked the easiest.  No problems, now to find a Virtual
Once again, there’s only four in the country and the closest one (about another ten miles away) looked pretty quick and easy.

Moai

No problem – now for a Multi. The selected one was about a mile or so from the Virtual as was a bit unusual as it was a three-chirp cache! We’ve done a two chirp before but never a three. Pleasant walk through a cool wood.  The Oregon detected the chirps perfectly and the cache was a quick find.

Next cache type EarthCache.  The road to the parking location was closed and the satnav insisted on taking a spurious long route to the other side but didn’t actually get there! Returned to the original route, drove past the barrier and parked by the part where a bridge was being repaired which was actually ideal parking location for the EarthCache.  No problems with the EarthCache, - beautiful location.

Now all possible cache types done for the day so headed off to do another Wherigo (only two left in the country to do) before heading back to Dudelange for the evening. There was music blasting out at the Mega and lots of people drinking and eating hotdogs etc but I just took the opportunity to rinse out my salt encrusted T-shirt before turning in for the night.

Had a pretty good nights sleep and after breakfast headed to the car park for the CITO.  First to arrive about  07:30 - I had planned to cycle round the town doing a few more caches but after getting about 100 metres up the road decided it was far too hot and returned to the car to wait for the organisers and other attendees to arrive.

One of the organisers had brought croissants for everyone to enjoy before the litter pick – very nice.
The park itself looked pretty tidy at first glance but it was surprising just how much litter there was and very soon quite a few bin bags had been filled. Refreshments in the form or bottles of water were very welcome and then it was time to depart.

Yum!

Nom!

Great idea for a logbook!

'Bin' to a CITO :)

Cachers starting to arrive..

One of a few piles of bags

Next stop, the final Lux Wherigo. Another enjoyable walk around a wood 

What a great word!

Right! The only thing left on the to-do list was a French Wherigo.  Although there are more Wherigos in France than in England, none were near to our usual routes by Calais – until now that is! One was published near Gravelines just a few months ago so I stopped off to play it on the way back to the channel tunnel.

Arrived at the Channel Tunnel early and was offered an earlier crossing – super!

Finally arrived home at 22:25 having driven 1024 miles with the car showing an overall average of 48 mpg.  Pretty good I thought.

Time to start planning the next trip.......