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There was supposed to be a national rail strike today but luckily our line, the C2C wasn't affected. The tubes were on strike yesterday but would slowly return to service. So there was no reason not to head up to town today for a day's geocaching.
The train was quieter than normal and I reached the terminus just after seven. I headed round the corner to catch the 15 bus but buses were passing and not stopping cos they were chocka. I decided to walk and see if I could jump a bus further down the road. In the end, I got to St Paul's before I could squeeze aboard. I alighted just past the Law Courts and proceeded to hunt for one base of the Harry Potter 1 AdLab series and the final two bases of the Suffragettes AdLab series.😀
I made my way through Covent Garden and down to Fishers Alley (Harry Potter : Diagon Alley). I was now armed with an NFC tag reader so I shouldn't have any trouble with the trad here. I could have done with being a wizard here as the reader didn't give me a code.🤬 I downloaded another reader but still no magic. I came to the conclusion that I was never going to get this one so I sent a message to the CO (who had been most helpful) saying that I would have to leave this one.🙁
I started on the recently published Ale Trail - heritage pubs in the West End AdLab series. I was just completing the first base at the Lamb & Flag when by magic, I received the access code from the CO.😀 I whizzed back to Fishers Alley and quickly accessed the log book. After sending a message of thanks, I set off around Soho looking for old pubs again. I added blue plaques from the A Musical Blue Plaque Walk AdLab series to the hunt.
I found Keith Moon, who lived opposite the original Marquee Club in Wardour Street, one of my old stomping grounds - Led Zeppelin every Friday night for a while. I then found David Bowie who recorded in St Anne's Court. Now in the old days, this was a less than salubrious part of town that you had to move very speedily through as it was full of clip joints and seedy picture houses.
I had been looking out for my old drinker back in the day, The Intrepid Fox, where I used to meet up with the members of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac when they were playing the Marquee. Greeny has unfortunately passed but Mick and John are still gigging in California.
I found somewhere for breakfast and then continued tramping, fitting in one base of the I am Sherlocked and one more of the Harry Potter 1 AdLab series. I headed down into Gerrard Street for another stage of the Lions in London mystery. Unfortunately, I had messed up the sequence of stages so just took some coords for reference.
I was starting to visit some of the stages of some marathon caches - the One Day in London multi and the No. 9 Routemaster Bus mystery. I picked a few of these up and then added the final base of the Ale Trail to the tally. Fittingly it was my favourite pub in town, The Harp. Good job it was closed.🙄
I headed down to Parliament Square picking up bases of the Londres and the Spectacled Bear in London AdLab series. One of the bases took me over to the London Eye which was handy as I wanted to gather the info for the Older than London itself EC. After taking measurements to determine the weight of water moved during high and low tide, I had enough and it was time to move on.
I jumped a bus on Westminster Bridge that took me to Victoria. After sorting out the new Welcome to Victoria virtual, I heade for the tube to get down to Pimlico. It was then that I found out that the tubes were still on strike 🤯 so I went outside and jumped another bus back to Trafalgar Square. I was going to have a go at the Sprint not a Marathon wherigo but there was some renovation work going on and I couldn't get close to the gates under the Arch to start the game.
So I left that for another day and headed off down The Mall towards Buckingham Palace picking up another of the I am Sherlocked on the way. Once at the Palace gates, I quickly sorted out where I had gone wrong with the Lions of London.😀 There were two virtual caches passing through here - Central London Team Quest 1 and 2. I worked out the final stages for both Quests. No. 1 was within walking distance so I resolved that and found myself in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park. Unfortunately, I found myself in a bit of a transport black hole due to the strikes so I flagged a cab to take me up to Baker Street.
I wanted to find The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is ... virtual and the info was swiftly sorted. I wanted to head up to St Johns Wood and decided to catch a bus. Now I was in an unfamiliar part of town and every bus that I got on turned left instead of going straight on. I eventually reached the top of Regents Park and alighted for the GC GREENS mystery. The nearby multi had a string of DNFs so I worked my way up to the defunct Marlborough Road station. There was a RST multi here as well as the final base (for me) of the REALLY SideTracked - London AdLab series. I worked out where the bonus cache for this was but it was off of today's route.
I found the final stage of the multi and jumped a 113 back down to Baker Street. I had planned to find some caches in Regents Park but I was short on time. I waited for a 205 which I knew ran from Paddington to Aldgate. I got off at St Botolph's ignoring the nearby EC but quickly found the Police public call post trad near Aldgate Station. It was only a short walk down to Fenchurch so here ended the day's geocaching.😀
1 Multi 1 Mystery 2 Earthcache 2 Traditional 3 Virtual 20 AdLab
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