Great Scots

(I make no apologies for the blog spam today - this is my diary!)

We had a day off work on Monday to unpack, wash and generally relax from the excesses of Ireland before returning to work on Tuesday. However by 5pm I was fed up of being in a stuffy house so, encouraged by an email from Patrick, we spoke and arranged a quick night caching trip out to pick up a new series near North Anston - Great Scots.

Each cache in the series was related to a Great Scot, for example Sean Connery and William Wallace, and we thought it an amazing coincidence that as we sat in the car waiting for Patrick that Radio Two were interviewing an author who had just published a book on Robert The Bruce - or cache #5 as we'd later call him!!

Patrick arrived at 6:15pm, in the bitterly cold darkness, and we set off on a 3 mile stroll through woodland and open fields. This is a pretty simple, yet very good series on flat terrain, which was made more difficult by the cold and the dark. (I've found a fault with my super-high-powered police-issue torch - it's metal and it's flipping freezing!!)

Time for the gloves to come out methinks.

It was great to catch up with Patrick and tell him all the Irish gossip and to see what he'd been up to without us this weekend. A very good geocaching friend indeed.

We got home about 8:10pm having logged 3.1 miles and 6 more caches, cold and fresh I knew I'd sleep well later that night.

Geocaching in Dublin - Day 3

Today we went out primarily to visit the shops and mop up a couple of caches. We found a great one called 'The loneliest bin in the World' (GC20VM8) which was hidden in a hedge behind a railing fence and I must say I felt quite sorry for it! We found one that was hidden so well I even paid for international Internet access just so I could download a spoiler picture to help us. (It's called Firefly series #1 if you're interested - GC263R0.)

We did a virtual cache (GCC2DE) down on the River Liffey which involved reading about the Great Famine and this then led us, having piqued our interest, to the famine museum based onboard a replica 18th century sailing ship moored on the Liffey. It was a very good guided tour led by an enthusaistic Canadian which had little to do with the actual famine but was primarily about the voyages taken from Ireland to Canada and back during the famine.


Today we also had our first DNF - Did Not Find - hugely frustrating but we had to let go because we couldn't search as well as we'd like given the huge Muggle factor - something we'd been amazingly lucky about all holiday.

Day three in Ireland complete. 5 caches found. One boat museum and dozens of shops visited. 7 miles walked. One pair of ladies boots purchased (not for me I hasten to add!) and still no Guinness consumed although not from illness but from guilt about my health!

We left the hotel at 5pm and were back in our own bed by midnight. A fantastic break to an amazing city with so many sights, sounds and drinks savoured and as a bonus to it all it was our first international geocaching trip.

A huge hugs must go to Hannah for arranging it. Thanks babes xx

Geocaching in Dublin - Day 2

After another hearty breakfast we set off for Phoenix park. This park is about 3 miles to the west of Dublin and I had previously planned to go here because it had one of the largest caches around and would be ideal to leave a couple of travel bugs inside and perhaps bring a couple back with us.

I also wanted to do this walk today as penance and also to make us, theoretically, feel better after the previous nights excess.

We took a convoluted route to the park, passing through Temple Bar (the tourist part of Dublin with overpriced bars and shops) and heading out west. Once at the park we popped into the zoo (we had free tickets) and spent a couple of hours looking at various tigers, sealions and penguins and generally feeling pretty ill. We then did the extra 3 mile walk into the centre of the park to get the Phoenix cache and back out. Disappointingly all the logged travel bugs were missing but I hoped these were simply a loggers oversight as all the remaining contents seemed to be in order.

By the time we were leaving the park (Europe's largest city park) around 4pm we were both struggling. We'd walked a good 10 miles, had slept badly and were both aching. Fortunately the heaven's opened and it started to belt it down. This was the final encouragement I needed to give up and flag down a taxi back to the hotel!

In the evening we went to a fabulous restaurant and logged in another 3 miles walking although no caches.


Day two tally:
13 miles walked.
5 caches found.
2 aching legs.
1 zoo visited.
1 sore head.
0 Guinness consumed.

Drinking in Dublin - Day 1

Spandannah and I took an evening flight from Leeds/Bradford to Dublin for a long weekend on Thursday night. We didn't arrive at our city centre hotel until it was too late to do anything, apart from a quick Guinness in the bar, so we simply unpacked and looked forward to our three days in Ireland - a place I'd never been to.

After a hearty (too hearty!) breakfast on Friday morning we decided to wander randomly around the sites of the city centre and drift off in the direction of any caches that popped up within a reasonable range.

Within 30 seconds of leaving the hotel we got two firsts: our first Irish cache which was also our first webcam cache. I'd seen this cache before we left England but hadn't realised how close to the hotel it would be. I texted two work friends who both watched us appear on the webcam and then saved a copy of the picture for us.

This break was our first big urban caching session (apart from York which had been carefully pre-routed) and a lesson has been learnt for the next time - I think we'll remove all the puzzles & multi-caches from our listings and leave the simple traditional caches, virtual caches and webcam caches. This is because these are generally easier to pick-up on random wanderings and don't require any pre-planned routing. Quite a high proportion of Dublin's city centre caches are puzzle caches, some admittedly very simple, but when you are on a short timescale and in unknown territory I think it is easier to sightsee and wander randomly without letting geocaching interfere too much. (Perhaps on a return trip you could pre-plan these routes more capably?)

So on Friday we wandered randomly, we met three fellow Geocachers inside the castle and ultimately headed off towards the Guinness Storehouse - which is an exhibition/museum and also the brewery where they make most of the Guinness for the whole World (there are 3 breweries in Africa for that continent, everything else is brewed in Dublin - 3 million pints per day, 5 million for St Patrick's day and Christmas!)

Having been a Guinness drinker for about 22 years I was quite looking forward to the visit and after picking up a cache at the gate we went in and spent a fabulous 3 hours wandering around seeing how the 'Black Magic' is made, marketed, served and drunk. We had a pint each at the top of Storehouse in the 360 degree viewing room looking over the whole of Dublin, and then made plans for the evening.


(I tried to take an 'Arty' photo of the two free samples we got at the Storehouse.)

Plans plus drink.

They don't work do they.

We planned to have tea about 8pm after sampling a few local beers & bars whilst wandering roughly back towards the hotel. We had two rounds at the first bar, wandered further and then found another friendly bar and got chatting to a talkative local and the landlord - the most perfect landlord I have ever met because he gave away rounds every now and then.

At 8pm they convinced us that restaurants are open all night, besides who needs to eat anyway?

At about 11pm we were in an American restaurant, goodness knows where, eating a burger meal. Well Hannah was eating, I was sleeping. The next thing either of us remember is waking up at the hotel, 8:30am, with next to no idea how we got there.

So day one in Ireland was over. 8 caches found. Two museums visited. 7 miles walked (excluding distance inside the museums). 11 pints of Guinness consumed. Ouch.