When I picked up my son, NottersXi, from university at the start of the summer holidays, I bagged a few caches en route. Admittedly, no real planning had gone into the trip, but I was pretty sure I'd qualified for SuperDred's 5 Counties Challenge. But no! Missed out on a technicality: one of the caches had been a puzzle.
When I took him back three months later, I was determined not to make the same mistake again. So, with a bit of careful planning, I completed a personal challenge, finding fifteen traditional caches in fifteen different counties in one day - coincidentally, the 15th of September. See my Bookmark List or view the route taken by the IceColdUK Geomobile.
I'm now extending this challenge to you.
There is NO requirement for the caches to be part of the Motorway Mayhem series, though these may well come in handy - you're likely to be making good use of the UK's motorway network to complete this challenge in a day. I used the M3, M25, M1, M42, M40, A404(M), M4 and A329(M) on my road trip from Surrey to Nottinghamshire and back.
The only criteria for qualification are:
- You must have found caches in 15 different UK counties.
There is no restriction on cache types - puzzles and multis might take you across county borders, but it's the published coordinates that count for qualification purposes.
- All finds must be on the same calendar day.
- This cache cannot be used as a qualifier.
I won't be upset if you find this cache 'along the way', but you can't claim your smiley until you've completed the challenge.
For verification, please run this Project-GC Challenge Checker and post the results in your log.
It would also be interesting to know how many miles you covered in the day and, unless your journey was undertaken purely for caching purposes, how this compared to the optimum (non-cachers) route. I drove 338 miles, 16.5% further than the 290 miles up and down the M1 suggested by my SatNav.
Although this has been set as 5* challenge, the cache itself should be a straightforward 1* find.
Good luck!
Congratulations on the FTF to mashworth.