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Do you ever struggle to find the common theme to solve a series of puzzle caches and when you do, become obsessed with solving the lot of them?😀 Do you then want to get out there and grab them all?
I had struggled with the S is for South London series of mysteries in Kemsing before and then gave up when I couldn’t find the theme. I came back to it again recently and worked my way through Trinity House Lighthouses, Steam trains and other dead ends before locking on.😀
Having solved the 17 puzzles, I was very keen to get down there and find them all. I had visited Kemsing before for another of jazzyjessups circular series, the Kemsing something or other but those were all trads and now archived.
I parked up in the free village car park just before dawn and donned my boots. There were some multis and a Wherigo here so I gathered the info to get me in to the reverse Wherigo VS Kemsing and took a reading. I always triangulate these reverse caches rather than wander around blindly for a while. It works for me.
I realised that the “S” was actually a piece of Geo Art as I set off up the hill towards #1. I had a quick find here but there was a problem at #2 as it was missing. 🥴 The previous seeker also couldn’t find it so it was MIA.
The walk was going to be in a counter clockwise direction so I carried on through Kemsing and down into Noah’s Ark, yes, there is such a place, gathering the caches until I got to the railway bridge. I picked up the cache here and then set off through the woods, hugging the railway line for quite a while. It was near the railway line that I heard the soft drumming of a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. These sparrow sized birds are almost impossible to see but I have been lucky before in a few woods in Essex.
Now out of the woods, I headed north through the sheep grazing fields towards the M20 until I got to #10 of the series, a 5/2 with no hint.😨 I had read in previous logs that the coords were spot on, “search both sides of the hedge, stand back for a better view“ and those very annoying “I had a quick and easy find” comments.🤯
Well, I searched for 40 minutes. I searched both sides, stood back, got on my knees, texted a friend but no joy. A 5/2 is not to be discarded lightly but in the end, I had to go. I came back for another look, in fact, I had more come backs than Frank Sinatra.😀
I continued north and crossed the M20 bridge, picking up caches and taking some more Wherigo readings. I worked my way back to the village and then had a short break back at the car.
There were a trio of multis in the village, a CM, VHs and a WM as well as the VS Wherigo. So I set about gathering up the info for the multis so as not to waste journey time. All the multis had an element of cunning about them but I soon had three sets of coords and could see what was what.😀
The VHs was quickly found thanks to its relavent hint and next up was the Wherigo. This took me ages to get into the search area but at least I had a quick find when I did. The next two caches were a short drive to the outskirts of the village but both of them were easy finds. For one of the caches, I was near to the 5/3.5 “Virtually 100” Challenge Cache. I don’t normally sign challenges until I have qualified for them but as I have 98 Virtuals and plans to get the other two shortly, I did.😀
Now with Kemsing sorted, I drove down to Noah’s Ark for another trio of caches. There were a Fine Pair multi, a VS Letterbox and a WM multi here and the FP, with its lady in the phone box, was the only one that I found. The WM multi final seemed wrong so I took photos to sort it out at home and the VS is almost too embarrassing to talk about.🥴 Oh, go on then! Look at the title and you can almost work it out from there.😀 But I put the coords in wrong, drove down the road to somewhere obscure, put the right coords in and then came back and settled on the wrong hint item. I decided to move on as I knew that I was coming back for the WM.
I drove down the road to Kemsing railway station, noting a decent parking place for the #10 South London return visit, to look for the ST multi which luckily was a very quick find. I was running out of time but reckoned that I could visit Seal for the CM multi and VS mystery.
The CM was a clever, intricate calculation giving me the coords to a drainage hole, obscured by ivy in a wall. Luckily the container had a grabber attached to it for extraction purposes only.🥴 However, the drainage hole was also home to a colony of guardian snails who were reluctant to vacate the premises but they were eventually evicted.
I parked up near to the library where the VS mystery was and gathered the info that I needed. I realised that this was a projection mystery so I saved everything for another day. I got back to the car and managed to convince myself that I had lost my keys but after a short search found the blighters. I really do have too many pockets.😀
1 Wherigo 6 Multi 15 Mystery
#11982