A New Game
Well, not a completely new game, but a recent expansion of the main game. There’s been a trend towards setting masses of adventure labs in the same place, with really easy multi-choice questions. This means fundamentally that you can sit in a nearby cafe and rack up hundreds of new finds whilst sitting on your proverbial. There’s a bit of this in Winchester, but this trip was my first attempt at one of the “serious” ones – the Notts Labcache Pool.
What? Where’s that?
The Notts Labcache Pool has been growing over the course of this year. It’s not yet at the level of the two big ones in The Netherlands, at Delft and Assen, but it’s getting there. It’s located at the very bottom end of Nottinghamshire in the rather large village of East Leake.
The general gist of these things is that cache owners that have a credit for a new Adventure Lab can offer it to the admin of the pool, whereupon they are furnished with a general theme, some coordinates, and some boilerplate text to be used on the description. the CO then creates a set of labs at the prescribed location so it’s available for others. The admins of the pool maintain the coordinates so they create a nice geoart. Or sometimes, they don’t.
Anyway, I gave one of my credits to the 2024 UK Mega in Sussex. I’ve also promised another to a new pool that is forming in Cheshire. That’s partly because I’m running out of ideas in Milton Keynes, but also because I’m intrigued by the idea and I believe it’s worthy of a couple of small donations. I haven’t donated to the Notts Labcache Pool, but they didn’t seem to need more volunteers.
A Bit of Backstory
There’s often a bit of backstory for me when I go caching. In this case, East leake is the home of a large gypsum mine and plasterboard factory. My backstory here is that when I was a student (of mining) is was sponsored by British Gypsum and one of the gigs was that they employed me in a selection of their mines during my summer break. In my first year I went to Robertsbridge in Sussex, and in my second year I worked at their opencast pits in Newark. In my third, and final, summer vacation I was employed at the mine in East Leake. I remember some time spent underground in the mine, but also some time taking samples on spoil heaps to see if they were too wet to stand up. They also had me build a simple computer system to manage the maintenance schedules for some of the digging equipment. Simple by today’s standards, but bizarrely an omen for what came in my professional career after university.
Breakfast O’Clock
I drove up the M1 fairly early in the morning for an hour and a half, taking care to stop for diesel and coffee on the way out. The given location for the labs is a car park in the centre of East Leake. It was easy enough to find (with a sat-nav) and I was settled in for about 9:30 in the morning.
Because I’d only bought coffee, not breakfast, I decided I’d start the logging in a nearby cafe. Very nearby, in fact. Bryer’s is a fairly unassuming place that’s right next to the car park. It was moderately busy, but still with plenty of room. After I’d taken care of the necessary, I ordered myself a coffee and some blueberry pancakes, and grabbed a small table looking out of the window. So let the logging begin.
I was armed with both my phone and my iPad, and the external battery, just in case. Thankfully I had a nice, strong signal and I could rattle through the logging of labs with gay abandon. I didn’t attempt to log the sets of labs in numeric order, because that would involve finding them on the map. It was far easier just to work my way around the geoart picking the next one. Anyway, breakfast arrived, so I was a bit slower for a while as I ate my pancakes and applied a thin film of maple syrup and blueberry juice to the iPad’s screen.
Either buy something, or leave….
After an hour and a half I reckoned I was about halfway through. At this point I was done with drinking and eating, and I had a mini-attack of guilt. The cafe had gotten more busy, so I figured I either needed to buy something else, or go sit in my car. I chose to go sit in the car.
I should say at this point also that it had been teeming with rain the whole time I was in the cafe, but it seemed to be slowing when I returned to the car.
Finishing off the labs took another hour, so I was clearly past halfway when I moved. When I finished the labs I’d made a frankly ridiculous 570 finds in 150 minutes. When I set off the previous night I’d reckoned there were 113 sets, making 565 finds. I thought this all the way until I got home. Someone else did them on the same day and they’d done 570. So I rechecked. I’d either miscounted the previous night, or a new set had been released. But seriously, 570 finds in a morning? It’s madness I tell you, madness!
Cut down on your Porklife
East Leake also contains a handful of other caches. I reckoned I couldn’t just do the labs. Well, there were two bonus caches for the labs for a start. And by this time it had stopped raining. So I decided I should go walk as far as I could be bothered with.
My walking route took me west through Meadow Park, which contained a nice series of traditional caches. The park was nice but rather full of dog walkers. Finishing this walk bought me very nicely back onto the road I used to drive in. Here were a few more caches – some puzzles and some traditionals.
I was able to follow this road back into the centre of the village and then walk up some backstreets to find caches in the south of the village.
Eventually I completed 18 “proper” caches to add to the 570 labs. That, rather unsurprisingly, made a new record for one day. I’m not sure I’m counting it though. Doing that many labs in a short time feels like a cheat. I’d left a couple of caches in the village – and unsolved puzzle and a multi that I’m sure wasn’t there. But all-in-all, and excellent day for the numbers, and a decent place to go caching anyway, even without the labs.
The Footnote
Clearly they haven’t finished yet. I took a look at the map a few days after this day and discovered that another 10 sets have appeared since I was there. So 50 more available finds. I guess I’m going back at some point.
