The cachers down London way had had a bit of a complaint that the UK Mega event had never been in their neck of the woods, it had been in Harrogate, Weston Super-Mare, Perth, Swansea, Cumbria, Oxfordshire and next was going to Ayr – so nowhere near the South East. This prompted the cachers in Kent to set up their own Mega event at Hop Farm near Maidstone for May 2014 and of course UKCacheMag had to be there to promote the magazine and so I went along as usual to help him sell it… this time we took Angel78 along with us. I drove down to her house, then onto UKCachemag’s in Coventry and he drove us from there on (as he has the bigger car – and it was stuffed full with all the gear). It’s a long way to Kent from here… 140 miles to Coventry for a start and then almost as far again down to Kent

3rd May 2014 – Rest a While GC4HYWH – cache #3183
The South Mimms Motorway Services at the A1 / M25 junction was our first stop – and our first cache of the weekend… (as you will see from the pictures we let Angel78 do most of the log signing !)

3rd May 2014 – Motorway Mayhem M2 Medway Services GC2VKGA – cache #3184
Next stop was another Motorway services for another cache…
We did wonder if one of the ways you could tell a geocacher was that they park as near to the cache as possible rather than as near to the services as possible

3rd May 2014 – Church Micro 4300…Whitstable GC4Q9W5 – cache #3185
UKCacheMag had an errand to do in Whitstable so we headed there first for a late Fish and Chip lunch eaten on the sea wall… and a walk around the town getting the local caches. A lovely sunny Bank Holiday Saturday meant the town was heaving with people, but we managed to find this cache in a quiet corner of the churchyard

3rd May 2014 – 7 Just Another Bridge (or “the Garden next to it”) GC2Q4CQ – cache #3186
We hadn’t looked at the description (which describes exactly where the cache is and even has a phtotgraph with an arrow pointing to the cache on it) so we had to find the right side of the road and then the right side of the bridge before getting to the cache

3rd May 2014 – Stream Walk GC4A5BG – cache #3187
First we had to work out how to get to this spot from the previous cache – which took us down some dead ends and back alleys !
Then we found the GZ and had to spend a few minutes searching before UKCacheMag turned up the cache

3rd May 2014 – SideTracked – Whitstable GC4A5BZ – cache #3188
The hint led me straight to it

3rd May 2014 – Church Micro 3594…Whitstable GC4A5CV – cache #3189
A short multicache that involved going into the graveyard to find some numbers for the co-ordinates of the cache – We were amused to find that we had walked right past the cache on our way to get to the church, though I don’t know exactly where it was hidden as UKCacheMag did the finding and rehiding part of the operation

3rd May 2014 – the KM cache of fame Lab Cache – cache #3190
The evening saw us at the event venue at an event which was a night walk rather than just a get together in a pub – even though for many it was just a get together in the pub… While I was there I did the Lab Cache situated right outside the pub door.
Lab caches are a new idea put out by Groundspeak that they haven’t really got sorted yet… in essence they seem to be looking for a “cache” type that you can ‘log’ by using just a phone and a code (yes… Munzee comes to everyone’s mind when you say that) but they are letting them be used as short term caches for Mega events which don’t have to be the set distance apart.
At the Kent Mega there was a series of 10 Lab Caches that involved various activities to find the cache (for instance there was a ball pool with one of the balls having the code for that cache on, and another where there was a shelf of DVD’s for which you had to find the right one to get the code) I only did the one Lab Cache – just so I could say I had the Lab Cache icon on my stats.
The one I did involved looking for a particular name on a board covered with the names of all the people who had pre-registered for the event. My name was on there, stuck next to MissJenn – who is the Groundspeak ‘Lackey’ sent over from Seattle for the Mega.

3rd May 2014 – KM – Night Walk GC4XB55 – cache #3191
UKCacheMag decided that he would be one of the people who just stayed in the pub, so it was just Angel78 and me who went to take part in the event. As a cacher from ‘up north’ with a cacher from the Midlands we didn’t know that many people milling about for the walk, so we waited for Hublander who at least knew more people cos he comes from London (Essex side) and his caching mate davemcwish who I met at the Halloween Mega, and went round with them…

3rd May 2014 – 1 RUOK4A Mega GC4M5T2 – cache #3192
We found this puzzle cache on the Night Walk… it took me a while to work out which of the letterbox puzzle series the cache we signed was as we did nothing more than had it handed to us as we were walking past in the dark !

3rd May 2014 – TKM 7 (The Wombles) GC4KX3Z – cache #3193
Another one that we passed while on the night walk… seems that the cache had migrated since earlier in the day as Hublander and davemcwish had done it in the daylight and it wasn’t in the place that they had found (and left) it in the afternoon

3rd May 2014 – An evening stroll GC51EVE – cache #3194
The cache at the end of the night walk was on the far side of a footbridge over a strem, with about 200 people queueing to sign the log and get the answer for the bonus cache… As Hublander and davemcwish had done the local caches that afternoon their knowledge of the geography allowed us to sneak around the back and jump the queue !

3rd May 2014 – Night Safari GC51EX0 – cache #3195
The co-ordinates for this were worked out from model animals in the previous cache, though as there were so many people going from one cache to the other we could have just ignored the puzzle and followed the herd !