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As I have said in my latest Cache Chat piece, I’m Changing Tack.🤔
I‘m taking my daughter and her friend to Gatwick Airport to catch an 0830 flight to Split in Croatia. I’ve cached there. So we set off at 0500 to be there in plenty of time. It turns out that the M25 is closed between junctions 4 and 5. There had been a couple of accidents in the night. There hadn’t been any collisions as the emergency services found out when they arrived. Two bloody great sink holes had opened up in the carriage ways and the vehicles had gone down those.
Cut a long story short but add that the road planners hadn’t accounted for car and crane transporters trying to negotiate some of the small roundabouts between the M20 and the M26 and you can guess some of the panic in my car as the time ticked away. The check in time was 0740 and the girls got there with 5 minutes to spare.🙏
Of course, my caching plans had sunk along with the ballast in the sink holes. I had hoped to get a decent run at CMs, STs, VSs and VHSs around Surrey so I did the best that I could. Of course, in the back of my mind was, would the M25 be repaired and how would this impact on the journey home?
I changed my plans and started picking off some series caches in Hookwood, Horley and then Salfords. I hadn‘t eaten and I spotted a cafe so a breakfast was calling me. Whilst eating the splendid hand cut toast, I noticed that I had a message from a local cacher, Beagle-80. Patrick had noted me picking off a lot of his caches and he was following my progress. He gave me some info on one of his disabled VHS multi caches and would allow me to claim it as long as I sent him a photo from the search area.😀 I thanked him for messaging me and he said “that’s what it’s all about, helping each other out“ and he thanked me for looking for his caches.😀
After breakfast, I carried on caching through South Nutfield and Nutfield. At CM Nutfield, the church clerk helped get the info for the multi, asking if I would be parked here for long as she had a funeral at one.🤔 I said that hopefully I wouldn’t be long and I wasn’t although the coords were a bit out. I was also able to solve Patrick’s VHS Christ Church here.
Time was getting on and I was thinking about the journey home. I failed at the CM Earlswood - Baptist, another of Patrick‘s multis but although I was in the right place, I couldn’t find it. I checked the traffic and the M25 was now open but there were delays at J6 due to an accident so I changed plans and would leave Redhill and its plethora of CMs for another day.
I’ve been working on the 4.5/2 Unknown ABC Challenge where you have to find mystery caches that start with each letter of the alphabet and I’m missing an X.🤔 I have solved the 4/2.5 Xudoku in Croydon though. So my plan was to miss J6 on the M25 and detour through Croydon. Mistake 🤯 it cost me money to park, I couldn’t find the cache but there’s a chance that it’s MIA and I got caught up in terrible suburban traffic. Still I got home in one piece.🙏
5 Traditional 10 Multi or put another way - 1 ST 6 VHS 7 CM and a 1/1
#9487