In Geocaching terms a Mega event is one that gets more than 500 attendees, and this used to be a rare and occasional thing, but now as people are willing to travel further and meet up with friends that they made at previous Megas the events with more than 500 attendees become more and more common, so Groundspeak invented a new category of event, the Giga event – one that has more than 3000 people – of which there have been 6 in the world so far (one in the USA, 1 in the Czech Republic and 4 in Germany)
Another Giga was announced last Autumn, at Hamburg in Germany, so Jen and I decided we would go.

We decided (foolishly) that we would make an adventure of it and drive all the way, going through the Channel Tunnel – something I’d not done before, and stopping in Belgium overnight each way (well it is 850 miles each way plus the train under the channel.

2nd May 2019 – Take a break!! GC55HC2 – cache #4681
I set off at 6:00am to get to Jen’s, picked her up at about 9:15 and went on our way. We had seemingly plenty of time, but as we had to be at Folkestone for the tunnel at 3:00pm we couldn’t risk getting stuck in traffic so we set off in plenty of time.
A quick drinks break on our way down the M40 brought us to the Warwick Services where there was a cache. Jen found the cache very quickly (while I was looking in the shrubbery at the other side of the road)

2nd May 2019 – Bospolder GC7EYMF – cache #4682
We stayed overnight on the outskirts of Antwerp (the traffic round Antwerp is terrible – one to avoid in future) We were staying at the Ibis hotel just down the road from this cache.
We found it in the dark without much trouble

3rd May 2019 – Freitag Lab Cache Landungsbrucken – cache #4683
Next day we drove on to Hamburg, booked into our accomodation and headed in to the City to meet the others from Yorkshire.
One thing that the Giga had done was set up a set of Lab Caches round the city for Friday visitors, this one was where we met the others, at The Landungsbrucken, the main ferry terminus in Hamburg

3rd May 2019 – Frietag Lab Cache Alter Elbtunnel – cache #4684
The Elbe Tunnel, a Victorian tunnel to get your horse and carriage over to the other side without having to go on the ferry – excellent

3rd May 2019 – Der alte Elbtunnel GC3WYGY – cache #4685
A cache in the road tunnel under the Elbe ?
A truly astounding location, we all loved it (and gave it a favourite point)

3rd May 2019 – Der Geist vom alten Elbtunnel GC7B7V6 – cache #4686
A virtual cache also at the tunnel, we walked down the steps at the North end, walked through to the South, used the car lift to get to the top, went round to the waterfront to take the skyline photo, then went back down and walked through the other tunnel to get back to where we started.

3rd May 2019 – Hamburg Panorama -reloaded- GC5Q28V – cache #4687
Once through the tunnel and on the South side of the river there were a couple of caches to collect, this was the first…

3rd May 2019 – Blohm+Voss Viewing Point GC349AE – cache #4688
… and this was the second

3rd May 2019 – Was zum Angeln an der P+R-Anlage GC7Q4WE – cache #4689
A cache up a tree in a car park… fortunately the car park was right opposite where the Friday night pre-Giga event was taking place, so there was a man with a long pole in attendance – I needed this cache for my D/T grid , it being a 1.5/4.5 cache

3rd May 2019 – Moin Hamburg GC77770 – cache #4690
The Friday evening event before the Giga brought probably 2000 attendees
This must be the first time any event has just been a 2 hour queue to get the entry passes for the following days event.
We wouldn’t have minded the queue if it hadn’t been that some people decided not to join the back of the queue but to make their own queue at the other side and push to the front first – which meant there was now no way for people who had got their packs to move away from the tent.
There was nearly violence as frustrated people met with inconsiderate people pushing in.

With a little more organisation and a few more volunteers this could all have been done smoothly and visitors moved through quicker.