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There’s a piece of Geo Art near Brands Hatch in Kent called Knatts Valley Invader Series. It a 57 cache series plus a bonus comprising of 51 mainly 2/3 Letterboxes and six mysteries, all on a circular walk. The puzzles were all based on pieces of street art anonymously put out around the world by the French Street Artist, Invader.
So the idea is, here‘s a piece of street art, identify where it is in the world, find out the location identifier and then work out the coords, lovely jubbly. I looked at a couple of them a year or so back and thought, nah.😬
However, a week or so back, I had another look and had a modicum of success. I got a good 50 or so of them solved and started to read some of the logs. I soon got an inkling that the whole series would be archived soon.🤯🤬 I contacted the CO who couldn’t have seen my message so I put a message on the Kent Geocachers FB page. Luckily the CO came back to me on there and asked me if I wouldn’t mind collecting up the containers for when I went for the series. He also gave me the coords for the few puzzles that I hadn’t solved.😀😀😀😀
So here I am this morning, nice and early, parked up at #1 and raring to go. It’s easy to forget how hilly Kent actually is. It isn’t flat like Essex with a few minor bumps. I was strolling along with a carrier bag that was getting fuller and heavier as I progressed.
I descended down into the valley and walked up Knatts Valley Road until I had to make the ascent out. Some of the caches were tricky to get out and a couple were DNFs. However the CO had also given me dispensation to claim these as well.😀
It took me five hours to complete the series and I had three DNFs but one had already been classed as MIA. I hadn’t seen a soul but had the sound of the practising at the Brands Hatch motor circuit to keep me company. Some of the terrain was treacherous with deep ruts filled with water but I got round these ok. Another bonus was that the expected rain hadn‘t materialised.👍🏻 I was a very happy bunny when I collected up the last container of the bonus cache and luckily my car wasn’t too far away.
I had finished the series but the day wasn’t done yet! There was some unfinished business from last week down in Kemsing. So after some refreshment, I drove the fifteen minutes or so down to that parking space near the railway bridge that I had noticed last week. I was after the WM Noah’s Ark multi and the #10 South London Mystery.
I donned my wellington boots as I knew that It would be muddy trudging through those woods. I reached the search area for the WM and I couldn’t find the cache so I gave it a miss for a while. I carried on until I reached the edge of the wood and then clambered over the five-bar gate into the open fields. As I approached #10 that I’d spent forty minutes searching for, I spotted the cache in a place that I hadn’t searched last week. I am embarrassed to say that it was probably within six feet of me for half an hour last week. Still I have a 5/2 under my belt and I’m chuffed.
So I returned to the WM and quickly spotted the cache as I approached it from a different angle. It was in the first place that I had looked.🥴
I got back to the car and got ready for the drive home. As I drove through Noah’s Ark, I remembered the VS Letterbox that I’d also struggled with last week. I couldn’t work out where I was going with it.🤔 The sums were easy but I hadn’t been able to spot the cache. As I approached the search area, I spotted another hint item that I didn’t notice last week. I wondered how I hadn’t seen it but there was the cache.🥴
1 Multi 9 Mystery 52 Letterbox
#12054