A fine summer night and with Kelso full of drunks for the Civic Week it was time to test out geocaching.com – geocaching is the sport where someone puts a set of goodies and a notebook and pen into a tupperware container with the latitude and longitude stored on a web site for others to find it – and swap out a gift for something you bring.
GPS is not pinpoint accurate otherwise intercontinental missiles constructed by schoolchildren from googling ‘ICBM for the DIY enthusiast’ would be a danger – so they are accurate to within a few metres…
We decided to play it difficult by going by the latitude/longitude details of the geocache and not by making a waypoint and seeing the map, which would have been too easy. As a result we ended up driving over the Catcleugh dam, parking in a layby with a very smelly toilet and navigating to what we thought was a deserted wood. We found a hole with a spade and started to dig – thinking that this was an especially difficult geocache – whilst Stuart was digging and excitedly reporting that he had hit something, I checked the GPS to find that we were at least 2 minutes east of the reported location and several seconds north. It then turned out on closer examination that we were actually in someones back garden – so sheepishly made our escape along the A68 back to the smelly toilet and the car and drove to the next likely spot.
After finding ourselves at the side of the reservoir with no clues we then turned on mapping to find out that it was actually on the other side of the reservoir and raced around as we were losing the chance to both find the geocache and dine. A forestry track and a short walk led to the exact GPS reading – success – well sort of, remember GPS is not pinpoint accurate to foil those pesky missile building kids. Fifteen minutes of scurrying around fairy dells, falling into ditches and wondering if this was really a serial killers web that we had fallen into, whilst rereading an unhelpful encrypted clue with a ‘click here to decrypt’ tantalisingly unavailable on the printout – Stuart braved the slug infested logs and rocks to find the magical black bag and the geocache treasures.
We swapped a nice yellow duck, which we attached to our GPS, with an ‘Only Fools and Horses’ DVD and added our names to the guest list and congratulated ourselves on our quest. No holy grail but a yellow duck was an acceptable compromise.
We raced back to find all the restaurants enroute closed (in the height of tourist season they cater for anorexics in the Scottish Borders). We made it back to Kelso and the Waggon Inn for a welcome drink and fodder and drove back avoiding the Civic week drunks.
We then planted our own Lempitlaw geocache, and then headed off to a geocache with a ‘Travel Bug’ in it – an item that wanted to move around and had a goal.
The nearest geocache to us with this was at Harbottle Castle, near Rothbury, in a castle moat inbetween various military danger areas (we almost got knocked off the orad by a racing military ambulance). Alasdair and Stuart vied to be the first geofinder whilst we examined the poetry on a standing stone. Ali ran up the steep grass walls of the moat with a geocache treasure – we went through the goodies and selected the one eyed Mike (Monsters Inc) with a ‘Travel Bug’ dogtag on him – he wanted to be in Paris – didn’t we all.
We dined in the Cross Keys pub in Thrupton, which was very busy for a Wednesday evening, but attractively served and delicious fare including the two eyed Mike’s Nile Perch which was superb – watched over by a fairy in the terraced garden.
The next couple of caches were near Tweed Horizons at the Temple of the Muses – deep in a nettle field – my legs are still stinging as I type. The cache even had a bottle of sparkly wine in it – since Ali’s watch had been trashed in the washing machine he seized the Simpsons watch as if fate had led him there! We also caught a lovely light over the Eildons from Scott’s View and from the Wallace Statue. Secondly the lovely Greenknowe Tower outside Gordon with the cache hidden inside.
Our first virtual cache was at Sodden Flodden with a side trip to the wonderfully bizarre “Cement Menagerie” and the default and totally delicious luncheon in the Blue Bell Inn at Cornhill.
