Butttercup:
I cannot explain quite how sad I am to have to archive this cache. The cat can now come out of the proverbial bag. For those that did not know the cache was placed in the pedestrian tunnel along the canal towpath underneath the road (which has now been widened and removed the difficulty).
Amongst the reasons for the difficulty level are, in no particular order
- there is no GPSr reception for quite some way from either end of the tunnel due to the depth of the cutting
- access to the canal from the road at GZ is not possible - in fact it is not even clear from the map that there is a canal which has clearly confused a cacher or two in the past
- once IN the tunnel (by the way "suntanned globlet" is an anagram of Edgbaston Tunnel) the tricky part was to be able to stop and look as the path itself was only lit at each end in the early years, some lightlng came along but was not great a few years ago, was only wide enough for 2 people to pass (just) and if one had a bike it was tricky.
- given the proximity to the University the "traffic" in the tunnel was incessant - even during the night I am told - and because of how narrow it was people would see if the tunnel was in use and would wait for the people in the tunnel to exit - this meant for many cache seekers several walks along the tunnel just to be polite!
- the co-ordinates (at the top) take you near to a pedestrian crossing of the zebra variety which meas that traffic stops for cache seekers which can also lead to several crossings of the zebra just to be polite!
- the cache was hidden in a crevice at the base of the wall (a gap in the bricks) which pretty well meant that to find it you had to be on the ground - difficult if people are waiting at one end for you to exit and even more so if someone is behind you on a bike
- I could go on!
In all the years that it was live the cache never went missing once - I gave up doing maintenance visits after a few years as there were times when I found it more times in a year than everyone else put together.
The idea for the cache itself I cannot claim as mine, My good friend David, who sadly passed away 18 months ago, came up with the idea and placed it himself under the caching team name of "thecheekygirls" which I did the admin for.
I was very poorly at the time of placing and it was a real joy for me when the day came that I could actually get there to claim the find - of course, David was with me so it was easy for me! For years I read the various logs and emails out to him for his entertainment - one of my maintenance visits was when he was in hospital at the QE and I recall reading logs to him in the renal ward when he was waiting for dialysis - such memories are treasured to me particularly as they reminded him of better times. The rest is history.
Thanks for the visits, the logs and the memories.