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Saturday 29th April 2023
I was up extra early this morning and caught the 0538 into town. I alighted at West Ham and worked my way through the DLR system down to Royal Albert. When I did the EU Challenge series a few weeks back, I inexplicably missed out Finland so I was here to complete the set. Thinking about our day in Helsinki, I returned to the Prince and caught a train to Shadwell. I was after the ST trad here and I spotted the original entrance to the station which opened in 1840 when it was part of the Commercial Railway. Whilst I was in the neighbourhood, I found the Li or Fe mystery.
I jumped the DLR to the terminus, Tower Gateway and headed down to Tower Bridge. There was the final base of the SpectacledBear on Holiday in London here as well as the penultimate base of the Londres AdLab series. I quickly added them to the tally.😀 Now the next cache on my list was over a mile away at the Millenium Bridge. There was no other way to get there than to walk along the South Bank so off I strode. Once I got there I had another try for the 4.5/1.5 Wobbly Bridge trad. After about ten minutes I finally spotted the cache placed totally at odds with the hint but hayho, I'd found the 2007 golden oldie.😀 I had to cross the bridge and half way along was a base of the Harry Potter's London 1 AdLab series.
I continued across the bridge, through St Paul's Churchyardand, past Pudding Lane, the starting place of the Great Fire of London in 1666 and stopped near St Bart's Hospital. I used to work nearby in Bart's Close but today I am settling on a base of the I am Sherlocked AL series. Apparently the actor playing Sherlock in the last television series fell off the roof here (acting, of course)!🥴
I walked through Smithfield Market which was devoid of bummarees today and down to Farringdon tube. It was one stop to King's Cross and I walked through the queues outside St Pancras to get to the final stage of the non changing face of King's Cross multi. It was MIA last time but I made a quick find this time.😀 I tried for Goldpot's Hanging Gardens of Lonerica trad but couldn't find the entrance to the canal side nature park. I looked at my plan for the day and the next cache was in Camden Town so I did something radical.🤔 I caught a cab.😀
The journey flew past, talking about cabs, ubers and how long it took him to learn the knowledge, five years🥴 and he was dropping me off opposite the final stage of the RST London AL series bonus. I quickly found the cache and looked for somewhere that would do me a breakfast. Mario's in Kentish Town fitted the bill and he did me a full English with two'er toast and coffee for less than a tenner.😀
After breakfast, I walked for a few minutes down to the Requiem for Wolfgirl mystery. However, I turned a corner and came across a scene which seemed almost impossible. Well, it wasn't as I could see it with my own eyes.😀 Look at the photo! How it occurred, gawd knows. I spoke to the owner of the white car. He was awoken in the early hours by the law who suggested that the blue car had been stolen by drunks, crashed and then run off.🤣🤣🤣🤣
I reached Wolfgirl's Requiem and had a quick find. Shortly after this I realised that I was near Camden Lock. I headed up to Chalk Farm Station for the ST multi but the info requested didn't make sense so I left it. Not far away was the RST Primrose Hill trad which didn't take long to find. This wasn't so for the FP multi down the road but I eventually found all the info and then the cunningly placed cache. Who knew that Friedrich Engels lived around here?
I walked across Primrose Hill Park to Prince Albert Road and the entrance to London Zoo. My final base of the Harry Potter's AL 2 series was here and with this one dusted off, I headed into Regent's Park. I spent a couple of hours here admiring all the different tee-shirts worn by all the geocachers wandering around looking for the bases of the Memorials, Fountains and Statues and the LC23 - A Walk with Sherlock AL series. I took time out from the tramping to visit The Secret Garden virtual. Unfortunately the garden was closed due to waterlogging but in this case a photo of moi at the closed gates would suffice. Luckily one of the geocachers milling around took the photo for me.😀
It was 1215 and time to head down to the Mega. On the way, I found the 4/1.5 Lions of London mystery which had taken me weeks to solve and then checked into the Mega. There weren't many stalls to look round and there were too many cachers queuing for the AL series set up in the hall. I had hoped to see more cachers that I knew but they were few and far between. I gave it an hour or so and then left to find some more caches.
Outside of the hall, I stumbled across the lady half of the creepycrawlies. After the chat I paced out the An Ode to Scale Events wherigo and then bumped into dixiegooners at the final stage.😀 We walked down to the A Monkey Puzzle mystery together and then parted company as he wanted to go down to the K6 x 4 mystery. I wanted to head in the other direction for the OS05 multi next to another base of the Musical Blue Plaque AL series. With these two sorted, I realised that I had forgotten about the CM St Mary's, Marylebone multi. With this one sorted, I walked up to Baker Street Station for another LC23 AL series. This took about ten minutes to crack and by this time,I was getting weary.
I jumped a bus down to Great Portland Street and walked up to the final stage of The Anglo-Jellingstenene mystery. Now I really had had enough. I got back to the bus stop that I'd left about twenty minutes before and waited for a 205 that would take me to Aldgate. However, I got fed up with waiting so I crossed the road over to the tube station and headed for home.
PS I realised that I qualified for the 2.5/3 Geocaching Pioneers 2010 Challenge cache in the week so I claimed it.😀
1 Mega 1 Virtual 1 Wherigo 3 Multi 3 Traditional 6 Mystery 34 AdLab
#16947