GC4JE47

Fifth one of the day for me, and possibly the one that caused the most trouble since we were tired, and had failed to make sense of the route on the survey map before setting out, so had to rely on our flagging wits.

We bumped into Brian and had a good old chin-wag until realising we'd forgotten where we were in all the chat so had to ask him, and he good-naturedly reminded us and left us to it. He sort of appears like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben and disappears just as quickly after sprinkling his magic.

Another goodie. The article referred to at the end of the route info is no longer present. It had to be removed. And so only the symbol is the clue. However if you obey the rules in the instructions there are only a few places to search, and all within a couple of feet of you.

Thanks for a great weekend Mr Magpie.

GC4JEK

Thanks for a great cache!

We totally ran this, being familiar with the lie of the land, the route, and the final location. Then we made a bit of a fist of finding the cache, but I put that down to being extreeeeeemely careful about soot and history.

Not a long log for this. Sorry. We grabbed a few and I'm reluctant to cut and paste it all. Suffice to say it was great as always, and made all the more enjoyable because, inexplicably, the usual entrance entirely failed to live up to its name.

GC4KVK9

We met the Janitor!

That would be an amusing and interesting thing to say were it not for the fact that I've been in here four times in my life I think, and I've met the Janitor every, single, time. Three cheers for all his hard work. The place looks AMAZING today - even more so than usual, and it's not just the bloody expensive torch I'm carrying making it look all shiny and new!

We had a bit of a faff following the instructions and ultimately managed by deciding to do the opposite of what they said to good effect.

In the end the cache container was simply brilliant. An absolutely must-find. We took lots of pictures and will post them in the gallery.

Not.

Thanks for a brilliant cache. Looking forward to more. Come on!

GC4P440

Hold on - THAT's not a muddy hole!

We were all business-like and health-and-efficiency today, trying to run four caches simultaneously while re-deciphering and altering the routes willy-nilly to suit our varied and opposing whims. And the first thing we noticed was... it's all so... incredibly... clean! We immediately suspected that Saintly Brian the Eternally Underthanked had taken to driving around the mine in one of these.



We met him. Again. Every time.

He was walking. But still.

Anyway. We treacled around. Better torches than before and a better sense of scale and majesty. And we saw places we'd not seen before, especially when Brian took us on a little tour.

Great cache. Thank you. Email to follow with answers. We assume the answer to question 2 is not allowed to be "miner"...

GC47KXJ

Well, we did everything possible to make this as seamless and straightforward as we possibly could including all the relevant surveys, local knowledge, walking it on paper first, kitting up, mystical potions and praying and sacrificing to the God of Clawz.

And off we set: 1.. 17.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 8.. 7.. 9.. 10.. A.. C.. B.. @.. 11..

The order doesn't matter. Right?! Hmm.

So when we got to the end - what we thought was the end - having diverted to grab the Earthcaches and the many and varied (and excellent) There and Back Again opencache, we found ourselves to be knackered, overburdened with codes, and failing miserably.

We took a cipher key with us too. Which is VITAL, but not as vital as taking the right one.

And, frankly, from bad planning and timing on my part, I was nursing a turtle for the entire five hours underground - and that's no picnic.

I don't care. It's my story and I'm going to tell it.

So anyway, we had to sacrifice another goat and got there this morning to finish the job. That last bit is a killer. Good luck with it!

Thank you, mysterious stranger, I'm not sure we'd have got there without you.

GC4JEJW

Well we had a plan to knock out Gruidae, Ugly Duckling, Janitor's Blither, Tour of Browns, Uncle Tom Cobley, and all. But we spent the entire day making a meal of Gruidae (and not - yet - finding it!) so I'm glad we nipped off first thing to pick up this one while waiting for party member #3 to arrive in Box. Piece of cake. Been here before. Ran in, rubbish torch, normal clothes, no helmet, found it, signed it, dropped a TB, and left to embark upon the enormous day of Gruiding.

Thanks for the cache.