Anyone who has ever woken up in the middle of the night with cramps in legs, ankles and feet, will know how agonising the pain is. You end up throwing off all the bedclothes and jigging around doing the St Vitus dance in an attempt to get rid of the tension in the muscles. (The ankles are the worst).
But! Dr RoughSeas has the answer for you all. A wholesome natural remedy (sort of). The internet. An hour or so messing around on here totally distracts you from the tensed-up muscles and you fall into bed happily.
So the other night, cramped from toes to kneecaps, I flicked on my emails and discovered the latest weekly geocaching newsletter.
I gave it a desultory glance and – WAIT! – there was a new cache in Gib. A multi-cache based on some of the lesser known military memorials in Gib. And no-one had found it.
Cramps forgotten in a second. In fact I was almost considering starting doing the thing at 3am in a desperate attempt to be first to find. But sensibility kicked in, and I decided to see if I could find answers to any of the clues via the tinties.
I did. And I had a good idea where some of the waypoints were. What a challenge!! ‘Do it tomorrow,’ said Partner sleepily.
‘Yay’. A day off the cleaning messing around Gib doing nothing at all apart from playing treasure-hunting.
A quick breakfast and I was off and running walking fast. I keyed in the co-ords and discovered there was no satellite reception in the flat. Not a good start.
Went outside, armed with camera, a couple of quid, the GPS, a pen, the paperwork, and a mobile. All the essentials of today’s life.
Found a bench to check the co-ords. The first waypoint was a kilometre in the WRONG direction. I was not walking to the first waypoint only to have to walk back. Oh. No. My sneaky bit of internet work meant I could by-pass that one anyway. Onto the second one. That was in the wrong direction too.
What about the third? Finally – something that didn’t mean I was re-tracing my steps. Yes, dear reader, I did not start at the beginning.
I set off happily for Europa Point. I passed the Anchorage, Camp Bay and the memorial to Sapper Ward, and then approached Europa. I knew where I was going because I’d seen the memorial plaque to the trumpeter who had fallen in the sea before. The cache was within my grasp.
It was a quiet morning, well, it was pretty early, and the weather was alternately cloudy and sunny. I enjoyed the walk. But when I got to Europa, the plaque to the trumpeter wasn’t where I thought. I staggered around the bay a little further – and – there it was. Phew. I looked around, wondering where the final waypoint and eventual cache were.
Some views en route
I keyed in the missing numbers for the co-ordinates of the last waypoint excitedly (still hoping no-one had beaten me to it). Holy fucking shit!! It was more than three kilometres north. At the other end of Gibraltar basically. Re-tracing my steps or what?? Ha! Hollow laugh. So much for being smart and by-passing the first couple of points. I’d walked to one end of Gib and had to walk all the way back. Gloom.
Heart sank. I decided to wander around Europa and look at the changes in the new touristification (is that a word?) of the area. I decided to look for the other cache at Europa and couldn’t find that. I set off on the trudge back. It started raining. Could this day get any more successful, I thought?
Run-off water after a rainy night in Gib
I stopped off at home, wet and starving, after walking at least 6kms. Still, with a little bit of tasty tapas, I decided to bite the bullet and go chase that last part of that wretched cache. I had an idea where it could be. I was wrong. It was much further away. It started to rain again. I couldn’t find the next waypoint.
Disaster! I’m on the far side of Gib, soaking wet, and can’t find this cache and so want it …. and then … I saw it.
What a wonderful way to spend a day.
Memorial to the Black Watch
