The Secret City

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Tuesday 1st February 2024

I arrived at the Woolwich Arsenal DLR whilst it was still dark and once I had found my bearings, set off towards the river and the Royal Arsenal complex. There were two AL series in there and I started visiting bases of The Secret City series and the Ship building and a Military Centre since AD1512 series. There were so many examples of old cannon and artillery placed all around the site and many of the bases included visits to some of them.

Along this stretch of the Thames, RubyShoos had placed a series of UK and International Power Challenges. I found all the caches but only qualified for three of them. 🥴 Walking along the river bank, I was able to sort out the Secret City EC and the rest of the AL bases which gave me the means to find the two bonus caches. Unfortunately I was unable to find the Look At My Guns trad. 🙁 The two bonus caches were some way apart but one of them was close to the Britain's Biggest Mortar so it was the case of "two birds with one stone" here.

I had some brunch and then worked my way up to the Greenwich Peninsula using buses picking up three of the A Sprint Not A Marathon series of trads. I was hoping to finish up the Greenwich Peninsula AL series but the penultimate base, Solar Sundial was the only one that I could get to. I continued on and completed the final two bases of The London Cable Car AL series.

Up at the point, I passed the O2 arena and visited three bases of the Greenwich Meridian: The London Crossing AL series. I only solved a couple of them by using wikipedia as the answers were not immediately visible. I had hoped to complete two Earthcaches here which needed me to get down on the shore. However, the tide was rising and I could have been cut off so I made do with the Thames Meandering EC.

I had been meaning to visit Canary Wharf for sometime and I came out into the sunlight to find people hurrying everywhere like the crowd leaving a football ground on the final whistle. The GPS signal was bouncing off the skyscrapers like the ball in a pinball machine and I was no wizard!🥴 I struggled to get two of the Let's get arty! AL series and by then I'd had enough. If I had seen a cab, I'd have jumped it and told the cabbie to just drive. As it was I found my way to the station, visiting the base for the SIDETRACKED : ELIZABETH LINE AL series and headed out of town. 

The first train was going to Whitechapel so I took the opportunity to grab the last one of the ELIZABETH LINE AL series. I was checking the app for any local caches that I had missed and spotted an AL series. So I set off down the Whitechapel Road visiting the bases of the Whitechapel Saints & Sinners. There were more Saints than Sinners here with a visit to The Blind Beggar pub being the only reference to rogues. I knew that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell at the bar but didn't know that Bobby Moore had owned the place.

1 Multi 2 Earthcache 3 Traditional 5 Mystery 25 AdLab   
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