Hoorn Mega NL
Friday 4th March 2016
We set out after tea and travelled through the night to get the best deal.
We purposely arrived early at the Tunnel to try to get an earlier train but at 10pm we were told we had to come back in a hour as we were just too early. That gave us 1 hour to kill so we decided to have a coffee from our flask and then do some drive by's close to the tunnel!
Armed with a torch we did There and Back Again , a small series of 8 caches.
We were due to leave after 2.50am but we were luckily enough to grab an earlier train at 12.15am so our adventures were to start earlier!
The train cost us £60 which we paid for with Tesco Clubcard Vouchers (as always).
Arriving in France at 2am we headed straight towards Hoorn, resting only when we reached a service area near Ghent in Belgium. We managed to grab a two hour sleep. Ben bless him sleeps anywhere and all snuggled up with his duvet and pillows slept from 1am till 9am!
We arrived in Hoorn a little before 9am so decided to complete some challenge caches before the Mega opened. The first being a little challenging being up a tall tree that was not reachable without ladders.
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| An easy Challenge cache. |
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| Ladders needed for this one. |
Fortunately for us Ian had forgotten to take the ladders out of the car, so this cache was soon in hand! We completed a few others then it was time to go to the Mega!
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| A lovely area, with sunshine. |
Hoorns Cache Event 2016
This was our second Mega in 5 days! It was located in a sports hall and appeared to be well organised with no queuing to get in. Our welcome pack quickly obtained and we were in! There were the usual stalls but our mission was to complete the 10 lab caches.
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| Inside the Mega |
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| We spotted Simon as soon as we walked inside the hall. |
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| Ben with Lackey, Michelle. |
The lab caches on this occasion were mainly placed in or around the sports hall with only a couple being a little further, so not too far to walk! We were pleasantly surprised on how quickly we were able to complete these, mainly due to the excellent translation in the program book. We enjoyed the lab caches as Ben was able to join in (and in some cases) solve. With the lab caches completed we had a wonder round and bumped into a few cachers who had attended our event in Amsterdam, Mega organisers who had held an event in Croatia, Fellow campers from the Mega in Luxembourg and the lovely Annie who we camped next to at Essex! This is what we love about Mega's!
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| Our friends and neighbours at Piratemania 2015. |
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| The final Lab cache. |
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| Ian with Team Jowi after completing last Lab cache. |
We were just about to head out when Simon [SouthernTrekker], a UK reviewer and friend said he would join us. The caches were on a newish built housing estate, however the first one was at a windmill - well it wouldn't be Holland otherwise! This neat little hide was soon found! Onwards we went and found a few more traditional caches.
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| Spot the Ben! |
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| On a little walk. |
We especially liked 'The Little Library' we like these in the UK too but it became apparent that in this community there were lots of 'Little Libraries' outside people's houses, all in the same designed little red house!
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| Little library. |
We enjoyed the multi and then went on to complete the letterbox which we struggled with at first. It was time to start heading back towards to Mega and we were discussing how much Simon hates mud.....queue a nice little dilemma! Do we walk around the ditch and get muddy or do we jump over it? Myself and Kate walked around however Simon took the leap and failed! We just happened to have the camera ready!
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| A leap of faith haha. |
We arrived back at the Mega and found the cache outside and the one in the hall, signed the log books and said our goodbyes. By this time we were all pretty exhausted and was ready to head to our hotel which was about 10 mins away.
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| Kate with Dutch friend and Signal the frog |
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| The Logbook. |
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| Our last photo at Mega. Maybe see you next March. |
We were staying at The Petit Nord and on first impressions we were pleased. Although classed as small it has 53 bedrooms and was situated on the High Street.
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| Our hotel and chatting with Dutch Reaper (kind of like a reviewer) |
After a rest and a shower we headed out to explore the town before finding a place to eat. We managed to find a couple of caches before the light began to fail. Unfortunately we didn't see that much of the town but what we did see we liked and will plan to return again.
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| Hoorn High street. |
Ready for a drink and some food we found a local bar that allowed Ben in and they let us order pizza in as they didn't do food, great relief for us as we didn't feel up to walking around trying to find somewhere suitable. After a few drinks with some other UK cachers it was time to head back to the hotel, a short walk back and time for one more beer then bed! An excellent fun filled day for the crew!
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| A beer with friends. |
Sunday 6th March 2016.
Up reasonably early and down to breakfast. The breakfast at The Petit Nord was a pretty average breakfast for 7 euros. With us all fed and watered it was time to head to the CITO, we arrived well before the 11am start and collected a bag and dropped it off at the start time.Now we had to start making our way back to the tunnel as it is a 4 hour drive. We made a quick stop off near Amsterdam, at a virtual.
Amateur Astronomical Observatory - Vesta this is run by volunteers of the community, so only opens on Friday evenings.
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| Kate at virtual. |
With a bit of time to kill we looked for some caches to do nearer the tunnel and decided to do a couple of short series
Middenweg A series of 15 done as drive by's and then a couple of miles further on to Langs het kanaal a series of 24 alongside the rather large canal nearby.
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| This passed us at last cache. |
That is it, just a couple of hours drive back to the tunnel and onwards to home.
Another great adventure.
Thanks to Kate for doing the write up for this blog x
