Mega day, we had been working towards this for just over 3 years, and it was here at last… The sun shone, the cachers came, we had two thousand attendees (well we had almost 2,000 log in, and we know some didn’t !)
and a good time was had by all.
We have given those committees who follow in our footsteps a hard act to follow. We didn’t really do anything novel, we just took all the best things about previous 10 Megas and did them all a little bit better.
One thing we did that was great was get a ‘community’ spirit about our Mega right from 2015, we got people involved and interested in the Mega right from the beginning and that was rewarded in the attendance at the event

4th August 2018 – 10th Anniversary UK Mega Event – Yorkshire 2018 GC7ABCC – cache 518
And it was to our minds at least a very successful and well received event.
Six sheep were needed for the log books (I’m on the face of #2)

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4519
Of course we had Lab caches, I would have liked some to be bigger and better, but time and budget had to be taken into consideration.
AnyRoad Up
I had made a signpost, which pointed to all the venues of previous UK Megas and to Groundspeak HQ in Seattle. The first LabCache was just to add up the mileage – codeword ‘6088’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4520
Emley Moor
A creation of Sam539 and Zoe98 – an 8ft tower with holes in the sides where you needed to work with others to move a football up and out of the top – codeword ‘cricket’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4521
Hammered !
Another of Sam and Zoe’s creations, a grid of nails hammered into a board, some of the nails were steel, but mostly they were copper, what you had to do was use the magnet to find the steel ones and put a string round the magnetic ones to draw out a letter – codeword ‘ale’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4522
Love a Duck !
Paddling pool, rubber ducks, fishing rod, you know the drill – codeword ‘Ey up mi’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4523
Meet The Committee
For this you had to go round the Committee members and take note of the trackable codes on their shirts, then sort out the correct characters for the – codeword ‘VBKINGW1NDZ’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4524
Pieces of Eight !
Towerclockman (Eric to his friends) has a 3D printer, and made up a set of stencils which when drawn on a piece of paper went together to form the – codeword ‘Mega 2018’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4525
Shine A Light
In order to direct people to go to the Aberdeen mega stand to show them what they can look forward to in 2019 we put a lab cache not on their stand but under it… they had people crawling under the table all day to shine a UV light at the poster to reveal the – codeword ‘forced rhubarb’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4526
Trawling the Shots !
One of the things they do at Newby Hall is shooting, so they have a lot of old shotgun cartridges lying around… and I mean a lot, we borrowed a thousand or so, wrote some letters on a few and you had to pick the letters out and make up the – codeword ‘Grouse’
(I was a little concerned that some of the foreign visitors would have different words for Grouse in their native tongue and not be able to work out the English name, but I watched some German cachers do it and they said ‘Ohhh like de Visky, Ja ?’ so I guess they all know the word !)

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4527
Sights and Sounds of Yorkshire
One of the things we did to raise money was produce a Calendar, with pictures of Yorkshire that we sourced by asking the Yorkshire cachers to send us their best pictures of the county… we had hundreds of pictures sent in, out of which we picked a dozen for the calendar and the rest were stuck on a USB stick… so we put a screen up on the stage and had a projector cycling through these pictures along with a soundtrack of Yorkshire Sounds, and then about every 15 minutes you would get Rich’s voice coming over the speakers saying – codeword ‘August 1st’

4th August 2018 – 2018 Mega Lab Cache – cache #4528
Yorkshire Unlocked
One of the most popular things put on by the Devon Mega was a ‘Lockpick Village’ where some cachers who are into thses things had brought along loads of locks and picks and you could have a go at unlocking them… We arranged for these cachers to come and do a similar thing at our Mega, and gave them a Lab cache to encourage people to go to their stand. Pick the lock and reveal the – codeword ‘parkin’

And then in the evening when the event was over we had a party !
Due to the Groundspeak event restrictions we couldn’t have this as a separate event, but it was always going to be a big bash, with lots of drinks, and a band, and dancing…

5th August 2018 – YM18 A Touch of Tartan GC7R9KJ – cache #4529
And then it was Sunday, and our turn as Mega Hosts was all but over, we had passed the baton over to our successors in Aberdeen and this event was a great way to introduce us to some of their strange Scottish ways

5th August 2018 – YM18 – Thank You Yorkshire! GC7TRC2 – cache #4530
A bit of a CITO – as Yorkshire is always spotlessly clean there was nowhere we could go to clear litter so we arranged with the Wildlife Trust to go and do some Balsam bashing and clear this pervasive weed from a nature reserve.
It was a bit hot to be pulling up plants, but many people got stuck in and cleared the patch of balsam

5th August 2018 – YM18 One Last Big One? GC7R6M0 – cache #4531
The last night and we didn’t really know what we were going to do, a lot of people had already gone home and we were beginning the clear up of the site, so we had arranged just a social night, a bit of a quiz, and an auction off of anything that wasn’t nailed down
Frankly we were totally amazed by the amount of money raised for charity by selling off our signs and the log sheep – and we can’t even blame the bar selling cheap alcohol because we’d already drunk all their stock before the event !

6th August 2018 – YM18 – Bun, Brew And Beggar Off! GC7J0JC – cache #4532
After such a spectacularly successful week it was sad to say goodbye to everybody – and then we had to clear up, which did involve going over the entire field with a metal detector to remove any errant tent pegs (fortunately you could see where the tents had been so you could direct your search in the likely places)