What’s Goin’ On
A Saturday in April, and we’d got older daugher back from university for the Easter break. Our plan was to go and meet up with SortingHat and attempt a series of his caches along the Grand Union canal that required some special equipment. Special equipment means high terrain, usually, so I was up for it as the series offered the chance for me to fill in a couple of missing slots on my Difficulty/Terrain Grid.
We’d arranged to meet SortingHat quite late in the morning, so we had time to go do a few drive-bys beforehand, as you do. These include a bunch of multis in Whilton and Great Brington and then a set of Ad Labs up in Long Buckby. That passed the time a little bit and got us 10 finds on the board before the official start of the caching day.
The Main Event
The special equipment required along the canal consisted of a ladder for the first five caches and pole with a hook on the end for the next five. Both of these were in the owner’s possession and were of the “extending” variety, meaning that they’d fit into a car.
It was an out-and-back walk, but not too far and there were four of us, so it was easy to spread the load of carrying equipment.
The ladder-climbing ones were all entertaining. We all had a go, but as ever, Ami elbowed her way to the front every time there was one that was a long way up.
The poles were something I’d never done before. He’d hung the caches a very long way up (too high for a ladder). What was required was a long extendable pole with a hook on the end. That allowed us to lift each cache off a branch and gently lower it down. There was exception to this general format. Rather than being upwards, one of them was on the other side of the Grand Union. It’s surprising how much strength you need to hold an 8m flagpole horizontally. We also had to wait a while for canal barges to pass us. We thought it would be impolite to stick a flagpole across the water as they were passing us. Anyway, that one took longer than the others and involved significant risk of dropping the cache in the water.
Afters
When we were done with ladders and poles, SortingHat accompanied us up Daventry to do a D4/T3.5 puzzle of his, and then we took him back to his car and started to pick our way home.
We clearly couldn’t go straight home though. We drove our way through Farthingstone and Litchborough before getting back on the A5 and picking off a few near the roadside just north of Towcester.
It was a good day overall, with decent weather (cool but sunny). Not a huge number of finds, but it did my D/T grid some good and the ladders and poles were definitely something I’d not done before.
