Night Caching

I have never cached or letterboxed at night, so when I ran across an event that featured geocaching at night, I signed up immediately. I had to give it a try.

So I went to this event last Saturday - Dusk 'til Dawn - held around the Chilterns in Oxfordshire. We were to start off at 11pm and end at 8am with breakfast at the pub where we were meeting. I thought I would give myself a little room and get there before 10:30pm. Good thing. It took me about an hour and a half and I ended up arriving right at 11pm. (this after the sat nav took me along some one lane 'cow paths' to this pub which must have been in the middle of nowhere. The only good thing about the drive was coming across a real live hedgehog crossing the road - my first time seeing a live one in the wild. lol.)

As I arrived the group was already out front and getting ready to leave. The plan was to do 3 loops of caches. The first was a special loop devised by the event planners. The other 2 were existing caches. After pictures, we headed out on the dark road and into the woods. When I say dark, I mean dark. The US looks so wasteful as we use street lights everywhere. Not in England. There are hardly any outside of bigger towns - at least that I've noticed. I was glad I remembered to bring not only my big flashlight with battery backups, but also my headlamp. Not sure when I actually bought this, but I was patting myself on the back for the purchase. It was perfect for this outing - bright enough to see clearly and kept my hands free. Quite a few of the people there had headlamps.

The first loop was full of creative caches - puzzle clues, reflective dots you had to find on trees in the woods (imagine finding one of these dots which were about the size of a penny or less). Tricky. The clues were fun and a few lead to some creative cache containers. I was thankful the cache owner was with us - even with 20-25 people, we had a hard time with the answers or finding some of them. And one container, which I think I heard was a fake rat, was gone. We figured some fox must have found that one. Poor thing.

I was completely worn out with this loop. Since I was late in getting there, I passed up getting some snacks and more drinks to take with me. My energy was draining. Up and down hills, across moonlit pastures (this was cool as it was a full moon night), etc. It took us just under 5hrs of walking to find 20 caches. (I should mention that I had already spent the day at the Farnborough Airshow walking all around there!)

After the first loop, about half of the group broke off to go home. I really wanted to stay, but I didn't have any more food or drinks on me and my toe was aching in my boot. Besides, I figured, I really thought the next loop - a ramble through the Chilterns - sounded like something that would be more fun in the daytime with the nice scenery all around. We missed all that in the woods. So I headed home arriving back at about 5:30am with the sun already fully up. I hit my pillow and was gone.

The event was really a great experience. I enjoyed myself and hope to do some more.