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Going underground for my 100th
I wanted my 100th find to be something special so I looked around for a 5/5 and came up instead with a 4/4, GCWK44 Avernum, which looked really interesting. The clue described a tunnel unto the underworld with cold, deep water going some 50-75m into the hillside.
On reading the previous logs, people spoke about ending up chest deep in water and the ghost of a baron goosing them in the darkness (ooh-er!). Another finder logged that this would be an excellent cache to attempt at night.
Well that made my mind up! I was going for it. I asked my long suffering wife, Fiona, if she would come along if I asked my parents to baby sit our Geokids (5, 3 and 3) but she opted to stay put, so I turned to my brother, Ben. Ben is a LARPer - Live Action Role Player, who can often be seen tramping through forests in all manner of middle-earth type costumes with latex weaponry and armour. He’d just become a daddy in last couple of weeks and seemed up for the adventure.
I planned what kit we should need... Torches (obviously), wellington boots (judged as ok looking at the cache gallery), hard hat and wetsuit. I’m a self-confessed wimp when it comes to cold water, so I decided to wear my beach wetsuit under my clothes to keep my nether regions warm in the netherworld. I finished off the ensemble with a waterproof lock-and-lock box to put the GPS, mobile phone, walkie talkie and spare torches in – just in case I got wet. A change of clothes would remain in the car.
I printed off the clue and the coordinates and stuck them on the kitchen cupboard along with the grid reference of where the tunnel was and where we were parking so that Fiona could alert the emergency services if we didn’t resurface.
After dark we set off on the 10 mile drive to Mary Tavy and parked at the church as planned. Ben’s preparation consisted solely of a big bottle of diet coke, a change of clothes. He wore a heavy leather coat and big, big leather boots that would not have looked out of place on Rubeus Hagrid.
We followed the foot path down the hill in the dark, occasionally switching off our torches to see just how dark it was. Eventually we crossed the foot bridge and arrived at a hole in the hillside with a stream running out of it.
Ben chose to go first and sploshed into the cave quickly arriving at a 6-foot diameter pool of crystal clear water. We could easily see the bottom and guessed this was a filled-in mine shaft. Against one wall was a farm gate which had rusted badly, but some previous cachers had laid down old branches to allow the chance to traverse the pool in the dry. Ben got half way across before the branch shifted (I suppose I should have been holding it steady) and he fell in getting soaked up to his neck. I followed and, by placing my hands on the roof of the cave, managed to cross without incident.
The tunnel was now about 5-feet and 3 feet wide and the air got colder as we made our way into the hill and our torches picked out misty patches in the air along with the metallic mineral deposits on the rock. Finally, we reached a spot where the tunnel widened and the cache was hidden under a pile of stones against one wall. We signed the log and made our way back along the tunnel. At the pool, I went first and got across safely – Ben went in again!
Once out in the fresh air, I sent a chatty text to my wife letting her know we were ok and an ETA for getting home. Ben sent a one-word text message to his partner: “Alive.”
This was an excellent cache – many of my friends have commented on the facebook video I took on my camera and as we went along the tunnel. My father said: “How did I come to have such a pair of idiot sons?” I said: “Genetics”
Fiona and my son, Elliot (5) enjoyed hearing about the adventure and they want to go now and sign the log too.... dry clothes on standby.