Giga Event Xanten

The Plan

We really enjoyed the last two Giga events in Munich and Mainz and had considered attending  the Xanten Giga but we didn't know how feasible it would be to fit it in around other non-caching commitments so the decision to attend was only really made 3 weeks ago, in fact it was after chatting to some caching friends, Cache42bears, at the Mainz Giga event that we were persuaded to attend.  They told us what a great location it was going to be held at and that it was really worth a visit so when we arrived back home we decided to put the wheels in motion.   All our holiday and time off work has already been booked for this year so we knew that if we attended then it would have to be only for the weekend.  We managed to get flights from Luton to Dortmund for a fairly reasonable price so then we had a couple of weeks to plan our trip.

The actual drive from Dortmund airport to Xanten is only about 60 miles but that would have been far too easy for us   We had passed through Dortmund last year and had already done the nearby webcams so Mark had planned a different route further afield taking in three webcams and a couple of Wherigos and likewise, the return trip on Sunday would take in two webcams and as many Wherigos as possible.

Friday

We travelled down to Luton for our 16.10 flight, arriving in Dortmund an hour later!  We had booked a small hire car which we thought would be a Corsa or similar but when we went to pick it up we’d been given a free upgrade to a rather smart BMW – thanks Hertz!

We set off in the direction of Munster to do a webcam stopping to play a Wherigo on the way and as we approached the webcam we noticed there was someone behaving suspiciously like a cacher - it was Ovaron. We chatted while waiting for the picture to refresh and it turned out that he was a German cacher who lived in America, he had returned for the weekend and was finding mainly webcams.  It was nice to meet and chat to another cacher who was focussing on the rarer stuff.

The journey took a bit longer than planned and after stopping for another Wherigo and another webcam we started to get concerned that we wouldn't get to the accommodation before the arranged late check-in time between 11pm and midnight.

After experiencing such cold weather in the UK for so long it was lovely to finally enjoy some sunshine.  The weather was a lovely warm 20 degrees, it had struggled to get above 10 degrees back at home this week. However, the downside of nicer weather is possible thunderstorms and we drove through a real beauty! It absolutely threw it down and each flash of lightning lit up the landscape to reveal silhouettes of the trees and hills...

11pm - Driving through the thunder and lightning storm

Our accommodation was at Landhaus Spickerman a guest house about 3 miles out of Xanten.  We finally checked in at midnight then up again at 6.30 ready for breakfast at 7.30.  As it turned out our accommodation was big enough to sleep 6 and was lovely and spacious.

Landhaus

Saturday

Breakfast was served a couple of minutes drive away in a pub which was run by the guest house owners.  There were quite a few other cachers at breakfast so plenty of people to chat to and everyone was there to attend the Giga.

View from our room

We headed to the event next and as it was before 9am we joined the queue to buy tickets.  We had attempted to pre-book tickets but unfortunately the organisers didn't accept PayPal so there would have been a bank charge of around £9 so we had decided to risk it and purchase on the day but frustratingly this meant we weren't able to buy the official event geocoin.

Queue for the giga

We knew there would be bike hire available but we didn't hold out much hope as we hadn't pre-booked so we headed straight for the bike hire station after buying our entry tickets and we were in luck!  The bikes were brilliant fun and made very quick work of the 30 lab caches.  The lab caches had been released over the 3 days with the intention of doing 10 each day but we wanted to get them all done on the Saturday.

The venue for the Giga was the LVR-Archaeological Park in Xanten which was on the site of the ancient Roman city of Colonia Ulpia Traiana and is Germany´s biggest archaeological open-air museum, a very spacious area that could more than accommodate the number of geocachers attending. The partially reconstructed buildings had quite a surreal appearance.
 

The Lab caches were of three types, one set guided us around the town of Xanten itself  and involved answering questions relating to historic properties and locations.  The next set which we did simultaneously were available for just the one day and they had a Roman theme involving solving a puzzle at each one.  Some of these were pretty tough but the number of cachers meant the there was always someone to assist if need be and was a great way to get chatting to other cachers.

It's always good to bump into caching friends at these type of events and it was lovely to see cachers we know from back home in the UK... DesG,  Stompy and Stampy, Linda of the_Dolans and Emma.  It was also really great to bump into our German caching friends Kikilotta who we first met at The Great War Mega Event, then bumped into them again in Munich and even at a CITO event in the UK!  It was lovely to meet up with Ovaron again, the German cacher we'd met yesterday at the webcam near Munster.

Event log book

After completing the two sets of Lab caches we embarked on the third set which were located around the Xantener Südsee (Xanten South Sea lake) and interwoven with a series of Traditional caches. We had planned just to circumnavigate the Südsee but as it was so much fun on the bikes and the weather so lovely we decided to go round the Nordsee  as well.


By now we'd work up quite an appetite - having only had a coffee and a piece of apple tart since breakfast so we handed back the bikes and headed to the cafe in the grounds of the park only to find they had just stopped serving hot food.  Oh well, Maccy's it is then!

We stopped off at McDonalds en route to webcam #3.

Is that the tallest McDonalds sign ever?

 On the way to the webcam I checked the picture on my phone and saw that it was virtually impossible to see anything due to the low sun so, to kill a bit of time we decided to play another Wherigo - of course!  A nice easy one and we were soon back at the webcam where the sun had dipped behind the buildings making for a much better picture.  Two more Wherigos before heading back to the our room. The end of a brilliant, fun-packed day and what has to be the best Giga event so far!

Sunday

Bit off a lie-in until 7.30 as breakfast was served from 08:30 after which we headed south to the first Wherigo of the day.  We had half-planned to attend one of the four or five morning events but that didn't start until 10:30 and it would have meant killing time which would have been better spent doing... you guessed it, more Wherigos and Webcams

Düsseldorf

The next webcam was in a market square in an area of Düsseldorf .  We couldn't find anywhere to park again so I had to jump out to get the picture while Mark waited with the car hoping that we weren't going to get a telling off, the picture only refreshed every 10 mins but luckily I got there on the 9th minute! The next webcam was a similar situation and it was even busier this time so another one grabbed quickly by myself and with this one the picture refreshed every every few seconds.

Just time for a few more Wherigos on the way back to the airport.  By the time we handed back the hire car we'd driven 330 miles and used about  £27 worth of diesel.  Pretty impressive as we weren't exactly crawling along on the autobahns!

So, back on the plane to Luton and then home to start planning the next trip...

Can't wait!

Mainz 2015

Back in July 2014 we logged our will attend on the Mainz Mega event, booked our hotel and flights and watched as the 'will attend' logs increased and then as we suspected, in March this year, the Gutenberg-Team announced that the mega event was to be upgraded to a Giga event.  We've been on a few trips to Germany so it was good to be organising another trip and this would be our second Giga Event! The first one being in Munich last August.

THURSDAY

I've been so excited waiting for the day to come and this morning we set our alarm clocks for 3.30am - yes you did read that correctly - to enable us to get to Birmingham Airport for our 6.20am Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.

Nice little cache-mobile

We arrived in Frankfurt at 8:50 CET, picked up our hire car and then set about finding the caches on our to-do list - no time to lose .  After leaving chilly Birmingham it was lovely to walk around in 20 degree sunshine all day, no coats or woolly hats and wearing T-shirts, if only I'd thought to pack shorts.  The cold weather has gone on for so long back home I'd forgotten what the warm weather felt like.

This is much more like it

We enjoyed a couple of lovely long walks around forests finding Wherigos but we made sure to smother ourselves in Skin-so-soft to try and repel the ticks - which are rife on the continent and quite a few of the woodland cache listings have the 'tick' attribute, which always fills me with dread.  So I'm always really cautious when it comes to walking in the forests or in long grass.  We had a tick-check (oo-er) back at the hotel and Mark had managed to pick up a few 'little visitors' but luckily we were able to brush the disgusting things off before they had taken a proper hold - so gross! - no photos you'll be pleased to hear.

Nice little room complete with transparent door to shower

After a long day we finally checked into our hotel in Mainz (the Ibis Budget) - wheesh! Time to prepare for Friday then fall into bed after 21 hours on the go.

I received a text from my daughter wishing us a good holiday - ha ha ha how we laughed, 'holiday'? Did someone mention holiday?  Aren't holidays for relaxing?  This was definitely more of the caching bootcamp type break I have become accustomed too.  But it was thoughtful of her to think of us anyway.

FRIDAY

Frühstück

We made another really early start today, luckily breakfast was available from 6.30am so we were out by 7.   There were a couple of other cachers at breakfast, we suspected there'd be a few more tomorrow morning. We spent most of the day playing Wherigos again and also a couple more webcams.

The weather was fabulous, warm and sunny again all day and we spent a lovely relaxing evening in Bensheim.

We stopped off for supplies and enjoyed a fabulous picnic in the sunshine near a vineyard and rounded off the evening playing a Wherigo - what better way to end the day.

Tonight, we feast like kings

SATURDAY

Giga Day!

We had made half a plan to go for as many icons today as possible.  We managed 12 in Prague in 2013 but this was before the lab cache icon was introduced and although lab caches aren't included in the 'finds pocket query', they are certainly official Groundspeak caches that go towards the find count so therefore they are proper caches - this means that it would be possible, in theory, to achieve 13 icons today.  So we thought we'd at least give it a try as we'd met quite a few others at the morning CITO who were doing just that.  So we thought we'd and see if we could fit it in and it would be fun to try and aim for this anyway.

So to start us off we headed to a CITO in Urberach which was a 45km drive from our hotel, so we had a very quick breakfast and were out of our hotel by 7.00, arriving at the CITO for 7.40.  We arrived just after it had started and already all the bags and gloves had been given out - normally when we attend CITOs back home we take our own grabbers etc with us but having flown we were travelling light.  So we decided to walk around the area and see what we could find but the area was completely litter free as a few bags had already been collected!

Icon #1 - CITO

Next on the list was a traditional.  We managed to get one of these in the bag very early on in the day whilst we were walking around the CITO area.

We played a Wherigo next, in fact we did two of these in a row.  One was a play anywhere and one a reverse type.  It was quite amusing as when we arrived closer to the location for the reverse Wherigo, there were lots of cars parked and lot of cachers walking with purpose either to or from the woods - there were a couple of elderly gentleman looking puzzled and we tried to explain to them in basic German what everyone was doing - we had to give up in the end but they learnt a new word anyway 'geo-caching' which they kept on repeating as we walked away .

Icon #3 Wherigo

Next on the agenda was an event.  It was basically just turn up in a car park and sign a log book.  We spent some time chatting to other cachers and discovering trackables before heading for our next icon.

Icon # 4 - Event

Next was a virtual at a railway station.  We parked up at the same time as some French cachers so we tagged along with them.  Great fun!

Icon #5 - Virtual

Then onto the GIGA event itself.  The whole of the GIGA event seemed really well organised, even down to the parking and the public transport from the car park.  The cost of the bus was included in the GIGA ticket price. We parked in one of the IBM car parks, which was about a mile from the giga venue and headed to the bus stop, there were other cachers there so we got off the bus when they did.  Finding our way back to the car park wasn't quite so easy and it was difficult to work out which bus you needed to get on, but luckily there were a lot of muggle Germans that were only too happy to help us out.

Icon #7 - Giga Event

The event itself was held mainly indoors so compared to the Munich Giga (which was in an olympic stadium) it did feel a lot more crowded.  Although there were also quite a few activities going on outside, like climbing and segway rides.

Logbook

We had a great time milling around chatting to cachers from other countries and bumping into quite a few cachers we've met at previous events around Europe.  We met Cache42Bears first of all at the Cataluny Mega Event last year, they came to our Andorra event and we bumped into them again at this morning's CITO and then the main Giga.   It was also good to bump into lots of caching friends we know from the the UK and the IOM.

Our pin in the map

Now you're talkin'

We did a few of the lab caches but to do all of them in one day would've been too time consuming as there were 30 in total, so we decided to leave some for the Sunday.

6th Icon of the day - Lab cache

Next was the Earthcache.  There was a hive of activity at this one.  Luckily another cacher had the necessary specialist equipment and we were able to use this to get one of the answers.

Icon #8 - Earthcache

After yet another kaffee and kuchen stop (it would be rude not to) in Mainz marktplatz then it was back to the Giga venue for the GPS Maze.

We had been to the GPS Maze in Prague and to avoid the crowds there we visited it at 6 in the morning as it was available 24hrs per day there.  We weren't quite so lucky this time and hadn't timed it quite so well, the queue was very long and we had no alternative but to join the queue and wait.  A real pity the opening times were so much shorter this time.

Long queue for the Maze

After nearly 2 hours we're almost inside

Mark nipped out of the queue to chat to some caching friends further along the line and they had already waited nearly 2 hours so we knew we were in for a loooooong wait - and wait we did.... and wait.... and wait ......... and wait until eventually it was our turn.

Icon #9 - GPS Maze

We had planned to go on the segways and some of the other activities but the 2 hours that we'd wasted queuing meant less time for other things and we still had 4 more icons to find and it was already fast approaching 6pm.

Flexi-bus back to the car park

We got back on the bus and headed back to the car so we we could venture off to the nearest webcam.  This was just a few miles away called Rheincam.  I jumped out of the car to sort the link to the webcam while Mark went off to look for a parking space.  There was a hive of activity with cachers coming and going, I heard someone call out my name and it was Amaya Tom and Skippy and Pingu.  It was so much fun with cachers helping each other with the link to the webcam etc.

Icon #10 - Webcam

The plan next was to find a puzzle cache - the route we needed to take was closed and the alternative route on our sat nav kept sending us back the way we came so we had to take a much longer route.  We began to think we would never achieve the 13 icons.  On the way I noticed that we had actually picked a T5 puzzle - arrghh!!  Why did we not notice this before?  On arrival there were some other cachers and they were just putting away their specialist equipment (an extendable ladder) and they asked if we'd like to use it.  Brilliant as without it we would have failed for sure and would've had to find another one.

Icon #11 - Puzzle

Next was the letterbox.  Can you believe yet another road closure, what is it with Mainz and the roadworks??  The closest we could get was 0.25mi away from the letterbox so we parked up and then noticed the car next to us had a TB sticker on it and the occupants pointed which way we needed to go - on the way we met quite a few other cachers on their way back and they all said 'good luck!'  This unnerved us a little and one of them explained that the climb up the bank was extremely steep presumably due to the fact we couldn't take the intended route to GZ.  They weren't wrong it was really steep but luckily there were branches to pull on to help ourselves up - coming down was a bit hairy!

Icon #12 - Letterbox

YAY just one more to go - the end is in sight.  We just hoped it was going to be a simple multi.  We arrived as the light was fading at the listed co-ords to find 2 other cachers doing the sums, so we compared answers and walked off to GZ together - we spent ages looking but couldn't find it, we were just starting to think that after all our efforts we'd fail and luckily one of the cachers managed to lay his hands on the nano and we knew then that we'd done it.  Best of all this was only 0.25 miles from our hotel.

Icon #13 - Multi

13 Icons in one day!

It was really great fun and it was good to have a challenge to focus on for the day.

SUNDAY

This was our last day of our break but we had another full day as our flight back to Birmingham wasn't until later tonight and we didn't need to check in until about 9pm.  So another fun-filled day in the sunshine.

'Fox, Chicken, Grain' - Mainz style

We decided to start the day by finishing off the lab caches.  This entailed quite a bit of walking around but was lovely to see some more sights around historic Mainz and it also gave us the opportunity to play the City View of Mainz Wherigo.

50 degrees latitude

In the afternoon we did quite a bit of driving around and played a few more Wherigos and a couple of webcams.

When we arrived at Gustav Eberlein beobachtet Euch webcam there were some people walking towards the exact spot we needed to be, it was Stompy and Stampy, some cachers we know from Cornwall, such a coincidence that we arrived at that spot at exactly the same time!   We had a nice long chat about Wherigos and they mentioned they had just come from the Feldberg-SolSys: Sonne webcam.  It was one that was on our to-do list but we were unsure if we'd have enough time to do it but after chatting to them about it we decided to detour on the way to the airport (via a wherigo) to do it.

We were really glad we did too as it was in a really picturesque place on top of  the Großer Feldberg which is the highest mountain (878 metres) in the Taunus mountains.  There was a hive of activity as we parked up at the summit, it's really popular with motorbikers and cyclists.

Feldberg Taunus Transmitter

That was all we had time for and it was time to head to the airport.  The end of another fun packed break.

We met so many lovely people and the weather was perfect.