A week leading up to the Mega Event

UK'S FIRST MEGA EVENT 3rd AUGUST 2008

12 Days to go before we leave on our week's leave to the Scottish Highlands and then to the UK's first ever MEGA EVENT. I have been doing the preparation for the trip up to the event and on the trip alone there are about 61 caches for us to find, thats not including ones we find while we are staying at various locations, that still has to be done. The Mega Event is to take place in The Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate N/Yorkshire on the 3rd August, so far there is rumored to be over 900 attending so this could quite possibly be the biggest event in Europe.

We catch the ferry at Larne, N/Ireland for the 1:30min trip to Troon, Scotland in the fast ferry. Arriving at Troon we have a trip of 270km to drive to Invermoriston, right beside Loch Ness, well almost. Spending 3 nights there and doing the tourist thing and of course loads of caching we leave for Richmond, another long drive.

Invermoriston to Richmond via Edinburgh

The first leg of the journey to Edinburgh is about 266km long, when we arrive there it will only be a brief stop and we are hoping to meet up with fellow South African cachers, Discombob and Goofster. From Edinburgh it's another whopping 240km to Richomond, so by far the longest day of the trip, which will take us the whole day as we have plenty caches to do and only so much time to do it in. In Richmond we are staying with a mate of mine for 2 nights before we leave for Harrogate and the Mega Event.

Richmond to Harrogate

From Richmond to Harrogate is a quick 65km, but as usual there are caches to be done and that could take awhile.
http://www.megaevent.org.uk/.

25 July 2008
With 2 more days to go the excitement is mounting. All the caches are loaded onto my 60cs, I just have to still load them onto my Nuvi. My pocket queries are done, just to load onto my pda. So we are all set to go almost. Sam will do the packing while i finish my last day of work.

27 July 2008, 07:30
Far to early for this. We got up at 03:30 to leave at 04:30, an hours drive to the ferry port of Larne. We are on board now on our way to Troon, relaxing sipping coffee and feeling a little sleepy with the motion of the ship as it makes its way wonder to bonnie Scotland. The weather is cool but thick with fog.

18:06:2008
Having recently moved to N/Ireland caching has taken on a different meaning for us, as it's now a means of exploring the Island as the locals know best.
We arrived in September 2008, to be greeted with lots of rain and wind, go figure. I had already done a pocket query so that i could have all the caches at hand. It was not for 2 weeks before we got round to finding our first Irish cache, in a forest just like I have always wanted to find a cache. The walk was a lovely a circular route that took us past one of the areas of early civilization here in Coleraine. Finding the container was relatively easy, did the swap thing and we made our way back to home.
It was interesting caching by public transport as you could only get so close and would then have to hoff it to the location, it was useful as we had no alternative. It was not for another two weeks until i found work which came with a company car that we found our next cache. Needless to say the day i got the job and the van i was off to find another cache, this one was called the Irish Pyramids, strange as that sounds here is this pyramid in the middle of a small forest just outside of this small town. Im still not sure of its significance though.