Down In The Forest III – Recovering the Cache

On Sunday, I was mostly wading in a stream, fully clothed (or thereabouts), but more of that later. There is other information to be imparted first. Background: On Saturday, there was a barbecue at the pub for *ahem* a few geocaching friends (you have to be careful what you say in public, you may be accused of belonging to a seekrit society and ostracised as a result). Omally was the in absentia evil mastermind behind the three-part multi-cache and, following reconnaissance missions by him, me and Lorry, his evil helpers, we (with admirable help from KronA) set the cache on Friday evening, cunningly using two bikes between three of us – which involved KronA doing a lot of running! During the journey, and on her turn with a bike, Lorry approached a large patch of mud with the remark "Ooh! Look! Mud!" which you would expect would result in a tactical avoidance of same – noooo! She ended up sunk in the middle of it with tyres and trainers liberally covered! Omally was otherwise engaged at Donnie Osmond Park to watch people on motor bicycles going brrm! brrm! and mrowwwwww!. And he got one set of co-ordinates wrong! Ner! Swedish monarchs aren’t necessarily perfect! He will deny it, of course. But, apparently, Corals are offering 12-1 on it being true! Ooh! *bets £20 million* As the evening wore on, it got quite dark (especially amongst the trees) because the second stage took quite a long time to execute by virtue of its extreme cunningness, with wires and canisters and things, but the deed eventually was done and the helpers repaired to the Best Pub In The Universe to: (a) drink and (b) practise their evil gloating. Anyway, as I said earlier, I was wading on Sunday. This is because a number of clues had been magnetically attached to the metal supports on the underside of a bridge and which needed to be retrieved. Well, when we placed them, the bridge spanned an arid expanse of pebbles. What happened on Saturday night and Sunday morning? Extensive precipitation, that’s what. So I decided to wait until much later in the day to venture into the forest. The weather duly cleared up and I embarked upon my mission. When I arrived at the bridge, the stream had returned, courtesy of the aforementioned precipitation! Realising that I had been entrusted with a task the importance of which was akin to a quest for the Holy Grail, I gritted my teeth and feet and threw off my slip on/slip off trainers and began to wade. Because of the aged and decrepit nature of my body (and the irritating varifocal spectacles I have to wear), I was unable to contort to an extent sufficient to identify all of the magneticlues and I could only find six of the eight originally placed. And I girded the legs of my shorts so that I could kneel in the water as well! Is this above and beyond the call of duty, or what? On top of that, I had to explain to three sets of muggles why I was wading in the stream in the first place! The rest of the geocaching impedimenta was easily recovered and I returned home, whereupon, following an unusual burst of enthusiasm, I cleaned both bikes! It was all worthwhile.