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Today, I shall be mainly caching around Letchworth. Letchworth🤔, why choose Letchworth? Two reasons - I need to find a Wherigo in January for a challenge and there’s one that I have just about solved in Letchworth.😀 The other reason is that it’s in Hertfordshire and I need to bump up my county numbers.
The Mrs Howard Hall was a reverse wherigo so I had previously taken a couple of readings and knew the area to look in. I wanted to be in Letchworth for dawn there or thereabouts so I started off early as there a bit of mist around. I was in the fast lane heading up the A1(M) just past Welwyn when the world exploded.🤯🤯🤯
They say that it happens in slow motion and for a second I thought that I was watching a disaster movie. I imagined a car spinning around the carriage way and then realised that all this was for real.😱 Cars and lorries were swerving, debris was flying everywhere and then my sanity kicked in - hazards, mirror, bralong and coming to a halt.
Amazingly some vehicles in front of me had carried on and I was at the front. Some idiots were still weaving around the debris as I ran across the motorway to the remains of a car somehow parked perfectly on the hard shoulder. I thought for a moment that the engine compartment had disappeared but then realised that this was the rear of the car.🥴 I intrepidly went to the driver‘s window and knocked on it. I could see that the chap in his early 60s was alive as he gave me a thumbs up.😀😀
He said that he had been in the slow lane doing 55mph when a car overtaking a lorry had clipped it and then hit him and spun him. I said that he was lucky to be alive and to keep calm and seated as I was concerned about a possible heart attack coming. He said that his boot lid was up and I said that “you haven’t got a boot, mate.”
Two ladies arrived from a taxi and said that the emergency services had been called. I looked at the road scene and there was still debris and tools everywhere but vehicles were still trying to weave around it. I wished the driver well and left the two ladies with him.
I set about clearing up debris whilst cars weaved around me and it. In the end I just cleared the debris from in front of me and set off. Just up the road, a damaged car was sitting at the side of the road with two occupants and a bit further on was a lorry parked by the side of the road with the driver walking back to the accident.
I drove on very carefully towards Letchworth and parked up near to my wherigo starting point. I only had a hundred yards to walk and I was soon at the search area. I quickly found the well hidden cache and I had qualified for yet another challenge cache. I must start looking for some of them soon. 🤔
I checked where I was on the Geocaching map and I was surrounded by caches so it seemed silly not to look for a few. However, there were also a couple of AdLab series nearby and I have tried to weave the reporting of caches found with the AdLab bases but it all got a bit complicated. So I’m going to gloss over it. I found multis, trads and the First British Circular Junction virtual. I also failed at the VS - Letchworth multi but the sign was missing.🤫
Once I got back to the car I drove up to the last to base of the Letchworth Garden City Part 2 AdLabs at JFK Gardens. I was now looking for a parking spot and found a free two hour slot up near the rail station just before ten o’clock. I was hungry so I found a Costa for my usual and planned my next burst of caching.
The start of the 1st Letchworth Garden City AdLab series was just around the corner so I started a circular walk that also took in some trads including the SideTracked and the WM multi. There was a bonus cache associated with the AdLab series but I didn’t have time for that yet as I got back to the car with minutes to spare.🙄
The next one on my list was the CM - Letchworth Pentecostal multI. I had failed here before and I have failed here again. I contacted the CO who said that the cache had probably gone missing again. So I carried on collecting more trads and multis and chucked in the CM - Norton Methodist mystery for good luck.
I had to travel a couple of miles up the road to the CM - Norton Parish multI. To gain some of the info I had to visit some WW1 graves of Belgian soldiers. Goodness knows why the graves are here. Perhaps they were evacuated from field hospitals near the Somme battlefield to convalescent homes over here.
There was a Victoria‘s Post Box letterbox here too which was a a coordinates projection cache. I had to follow a track across wet and muddy fields for this one but it was soon found. Time was getting on and I was going to go down to Willian next.
I picked up the bonus cache for the 1st LGC AdLab series on the way. When I got close to the designated parking area in Willian, I realised that I‘d been here before. I parked up and set about tackling the LB - Willian multi. The coords were quickly sorted but could I find the cache. I double checked the coords, was at the hint item but no joy. I searched all along the fence line and found that there were two hint items.🤬🤬🤬
I thought about calling it a day but could see that I had two solved mystery caches just a short walk away. So I added the LB - Willian #2 and the WM to the day’s tally and did call it a day. It had been eventful.🥴
1 Letterbox 1 Virtual 1 Wherigo 4 Mystery 6 Multi 11 AdLab 19 Traditional
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