It was cold, wet and windy this morning so I decided to head out for a cycle with a spot of Geocaching along the way! Mad? I know, but I'd seen a new cache published recently (
Irvine New Town Trail Mega Multi) which no-one had found yet so wanted to try for an FTF on it. The only problem was that it was a Multi-Cache. That means that to find the coordinates I would have to visit several other locations and solve some clues. Easy, well no! The clues to solve the coordinates were spread out around the 19km New Town Trail and there were no less than 15 clues to find.
It had already started raining when I left the house and I was getting cold by the time I reached the first clue (actually number 13 in the set). The clue for this one had me look at a sign for a certain word and count the number of letters. Further on I had to reach a certain place and count the number of people I could see. When I got there I couldn't see anyone (until a muggle and his duggle walked past but I didn't think they counted!), decided the answer was zero and moved on, only to realise I had been in the wrong place! Over to Eglinton Castle and the third clue was soon solved too.
By the time I reached Irvine town centre I was fed up collecting clues and decided to look for a few other caches. First up I looked for Where's the Baileys Gone but there was a queue of traffic overlooking the location so I moved on only to find the trail blocked by a construction site with no obvious alternative route to follow.
After a very long diversion I came back to the bridge and resumed the hunt for clues. Then once again I found my route blocked by yet more construction work. This forced me along a different path where I happened to know there were a few caches I had yet to find. The
Meeting of the Waters was easy although I needed to use the torch application on my phone and
Get your kicks on route 73 @ Milgarholm was very similar.
At about this point the sun made an appearance so I took a small detour over to
Under the Boardwalk. I'm glad I did as I found a nice little loch with a nice trail around it. This cache was quite interesting too although a little on the wet side.
Back to clue hunting and the sun disappeared once again. I'd decided that I was now just heading for home via the remaining clue locations but when I reached clue 10 and I saw I was near
Get your kicks on route 73 @ Dreghorn I couldn't resist going to have a look. I'd tried to find this cache (unsuccessfully) before and had managed to lock myself out of the van so I wasn't too hopeful. Today however I decided to trust the coordinates and the clue and sure enough I found the cache within a few minutes.
The rest of my journey was spent solving clues. I'd really had enough by this point. I was cold, wet and and filthy. I'd been through mud and puddles deep enough to submerge my pedals but still hadn't found the Multi-Cache. To do so I needed to take the clues I'd solved and apply them to a formula given in the cache description. To do this, I headed for home.
I've now worked out the coordinates, and verified them but still need to go out and find the cache. It's pitch dark outside and even colder and wetter than it was today so I think that will need to wait until tomorrow... hope no-one finds it in the meantime!
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