Brno Mega trip Sat 27th to Mon 29th February
We received news that there was an event in Czech Republic's second city Brno and that there was a very good chance that it would go Mega. Ian kept his eye on it and when it got to 300 will attends we decided that it was definitely going to get Mega status sooner rather than later.
It was then that we had a look round for cheap flights and managed to bag some return flights for £32!
There was no looking back, cheap flights and a cheap 4 star hotel in a very cheap city.
It was 5 weeks away which meant plenty of time to plan.
The event gained Mega status not long after we had booked and although we don't like to shout out about achievements it was nice knowing that there wouldn't be many Brits to attend a Mega on a Leap Year Day.
The day soon came round and we had picked a few caches to do on route to Stansted Airport. We wanted to pick up a 2001 cache, a few solved puzzles and then find a nice series.
Saturday 27th February
There was a very light shower of snow as we left home but the rest of the day was dry and quite mild.The series we had decided to do was the Hauxton Hokey Cokey by Ryo62 so we did some Church Micro and solved puzzle caches first before heading to the parking area to begin the walk.
Hauxton Hokey Cokey
There are 28 caches in the series and around 10 extras that can be collected on route. We found all of the caches without any problems at all and walked the 6 miles in just over 2 hours.
The walk was flat with nice wide tracks and a little bit of pavement walking. There was no mud and no livestock.
It was one of the nicest walks we have done for a bit and we are glad we chose it.
We had to move quickly today as we really wanted to take advantage of being close to another 2001 cache, which is also one of the UK's 100 oldest active caches.
After doing a 2004 cache and a couple of 2006 caches we were on our way to our objective for the journey down.
Bartlow Hills (Historic site)
We love finding old caches and decided after completing the Jasmer Challenge that we would carry on grabbing them when we are somewhere near to them. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to check out the Barrow but we will definitely be back.
That's it, we need to park the car up at Stansted, as we have a flight to catch.
We arrived a little earlier than scheduled at Brno airport which meant that we could grab the earlier bus to the city.
Another bonus was that our hotel was just over the road from the bus station, so a quick check in and freshen up and we were enjoying a few glasses of Starobrno in the bar.
We were staying at the Grand Hotel which cost us a budget £75 for 2 nights with breakfast included.
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| View of bus station from hotel |
A few very cheap drinks later and we were off to bed ready for an early start.
Saturday 28th February
A big day today taking in as many caches as we could but making sure we got the must do caches in and finding all the Lab cache answers.
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| The Měnín Gate - Lab |
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| Mahen theatre - Lab |
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| In Lužánky Park. |
Brno is quite a lot different from Prague but it still has a lovely feel about it and has some nice parks and stunning architecture. The Lab caches and one puzzle cache in particular took us round all of the places of interest.
We set of in the direction of the old town and up out of the inner city to Lužánky Park.
Just North of the Park was the first cache that we really wanted which was at an abandoned football stadium and former home of Zbrojovka Brno FC. The stadium's size did not meet the requirements and in 2001 it played it's last game.
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| A City Tram. |
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| Not sure what this was. |
Basketcase Crew love lost buildings etc and this was a highlight of the trip and the hide was very good too. Opusteny stadion/Abandoned stadium is the name of the cache.
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| Abandoned Stadium. |
From here we headed West across a little, past lots of residential areas and picked up some nice caches too.
One really good cache that is right up there in our favourite ever finds was Brnensky Rohlic.
The cache was in a Telecommunications box and had the key underneath it. Once the box opened you actually think hmm maybe this isn't the cache as you are presented with a board of wiring... Thankfully there was a Geocaching card there so we knew it was safe and the right place.
The wiring board was just another door and behind that was the cache and place for trackables etc.
You have to remember this is an urban cache and it is really mind blowing.
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| Brnensky Rohlic |
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| Brnensky Rohlic |
We already have all the icons available to us in the Czech Republic so didn't need any new ones but still took in a few and enjoyed doing a Wherigo where at the final you had to stand on a wall to get the cache out the top of a street sign... It was good for a giggle with muggles walking past.
We started to head back to the inner city again now visiting the rest of the Lab caches and seeing some fab locations.
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| Konecneho square |
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| This was near to a few of the lab caches |
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| Morovy Sloup - Lab |
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| A great place to people watch and admire the buildings. |
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| Old Town Hall |
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| Inside walkway of Old Town Hall |
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| Kasna Parnas - Lab |
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| More great statues |
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| Another statue outside the Cathedral |
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| The Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul (Petrov) - Lab |
Slevarna Vankovka
Another really good cache just before heading back to the hotel. We are tired after a longish walk today but this cache really made us smile.
The cache was part of a door bell where the bottom section slides down.
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| Slevarna Vankovka |
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| Slevarna Vankovka |
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| Approaching our Brno home - The Grand hotel |
We have had a fantastic day exploring Brno and very much looking forward to Mega day tomorrow.
Monday 29th February
So here it is, Leap day has finally arrived and at breakfast we learned that rain was forecast for most of the day. So we best get our skates on then.We worked it out before we came here that we could get a 12 icon Leap day haul by driving out for a webcam and attending Cito and then picking up a YOSM once back in UK... However we decided that we were going to enjoy the city and we think we made the right decision.
We grabbed a few Trads and then picked up Mysteries, a Multi and a nice Wherigo before heading up the hill to do an Earthcache on the way to an event.
The event was held outside Spilberk Castle and was a great opportunity for the Czech cachers to swap their personalised wooden coins with others. Unfortunately by this time it was now raining but we didn't let that spoil our fun.
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| Looking down at rainy city from Event. |
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| Logbook |
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| Nice logbook |
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| The last lab cache. |
We also grabbed the info for the last lab cache before heading back down to the City to grab a Letterbox.
As the rain was quite relentless by now we decided to buy all day Tram tickets and take a look round and get short cuts to caches. An all day pass costs less than £3.
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| A tram ticket |
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| Czech Crown notes. |
After zipping round on the trams and grabbing a few more caches it was time for the main reason we came here, the Mega.
Leap Day 2016 - Brno
The Mega was located near to the Cathedral, we got there before the scheduled 4pm start as we had some trackables to pick up and wanted to say hello to the man who made this Mega possible.
He thanked us for coming as we thanked him for being main reason to bringing us to this lovely city.
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| Early at the Mega |
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| 4th entry into Mega logbook. |
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| Nice logbook |
We then mixed a little and logged the Lab caches before grabbing a couple more caches and then headed back to pick up our bags which our hotel had stored for us.
We had a quick bite to eat and a coffee before getting the bus back to the airport to end our adventure....... Well not quite we did pick up a cache while taking a break on way home from Stansted.
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| A selection of caches found....No Nano's :) |
We had a fantastic weekend and will definitely be going back soon as it is so easy to get back to Vienna and Bratislava from.
Roll on our next trip in 5 weeks....
