Hard to find

‘Why don’t we go find some of those geocaches?’ he said.

Well, because I was planning on cleaning or paperwork, or or or ….

‘We could go on the bus, IF YOU COULD FIND YOUR ID CARD,’ he added pointedly. The one that has been missing for weeks and was probably hidden under all the unfiled paperwork.

‘Or we could drive,’ he finished with.

Needless to state that last one motivated me to have yet another search for the ID card. I can see no point in driving anywhere when a) I have two legs that don’t get used enough and b) the bus is free whereas fuel is not.

And needless to state yet again, I couldn’t find it in all the places I had looked before, not in my bag, not in any pockets, not slotted between the paperwork, not carefully stored in a drawer. Where could it be?

I checked out a bag I use on the extremely rare occasion I visit the supermarket. Yes! There it was. I’m sure I looked there before.

So off we set for the walk to Rosia where there was one cache, and another just up from there at Little Bay.

I like Rosia, especially when it is quiet in winter. Good time to lurk around suspiciously trying to find hidden tat pots of treasure. The co-ordinates on the geocaching page were for the ramp to the bay, but not the actual cache. Hmmm.

I don’t know how many times we walked up down and around the ramp, but no joy. I decided to walk out to the bay hoping inspiration would drop down onto me. It didn’t. We left without finding the cache.

I knew roughly where the next one would be, so through the tunnel and down to Camp Bay and then Little Bay. ‘Under a rock’ said the clue. We followed directions, got to the top of the steps to be faced with a lot of rocks. Or rather some rocks, some stones. We upturned them all. And found stuff all.

Result so far 0/2. Not going well.

So then we hiked on up to Europa Point. We couldn’t end the hunt without at least one cache, and there were two around the point. Again, I had a pretty good idea where this one would be. Although that hadn’t helped with the last two.

Down the spooky steps we went. Across the cliff tops, keeping well away from the edge. Over a spooky bridge (anything suspended in the air is spooky to me) and towards ‘the last wall’. Yet more Gib fortifications and gun emplacements on this southerly point of Europe.

spooky bridge

This time we were looking for a magnetic cache ie, it is stuck to something metallic with a magnet in the container. Well, it clearly wasn’t going to be hidden in the wall. But there was a huge long pipe running along there. Partner clambered up to look for cache-style objects hidden on top.

‘Is the pipe metal?’ I asked, rather sensibly in my opinion. He felt it.

‘Er no.’

‘What about the brackets?’

‘Yes.’

Well that narrowed it down a bit.

For once I had the GPS. Partner set off to check out some brackets and I zoned in on a likely one.

‘Here,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a bolt, don’t be stupid.’

‘Well the other brackets don’t have a bolt on them.’

‘You stay there, I’ll get up and look,’ he said bossily.

So I did. He took it down.

‘It’s a bolt, I told you so.’

‘Give it here.’

I unscrewed the top and pulled out the log to sign. Haha!!

An extremely clever cache.

Success. At last.

A Gib monkey

So off we went to the next one which was just off Europa Road, allegedly.

Walking around the eastern cliffs of Gib, we seemed to be heading away from it, so back we headed. And were still nowhere near it.

‘Let’s get the bus,’ he said. So we turned round and headed for the bus stop (which had moved).

I was busy trying to take some photos of the revamped Europa Point when the bus pulled in.

I’m not sure I like the revamp. I’m not a revamp person. It always looks too squeaky and artificial for me.

What they should really have done was put up a load of information boards, build a decent bar/cafe/restaurant, some free public toilets, and tidied up the promenade – in keeping – instead of making it all look so bland. Not that anyone ever asks my opinion. Sadly.

Nice, but ….

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