I’m not saying Lincolnshire is a dull place with little of interest to see, but the daytime events were either in the city itself or 60 odd miles away at the seaside… firstly we had a day at Cleethorpes, primarily to have a Cache in Trash out clean up… I wasn’t there at the very start, but Matthew arrived at a similar time, so we went out to clean the beach up together – not that there was much to clean, and as we were late others had got to most of the litter there first

In a change to previous years where Piratemania has been held away from the mega, in most cases a different county (or like last time, 2019, a different country even !) this time the locations were all of about 6 miles apart.
I had booked the nearest Bed and Breakfast place there was to the site, but unfortunately it was really too far to walk to and from the site (especially as there was the local Covid testing and vaccination site in between)

The UK Mega usually runs from Monday to Monday, but this year with the organisation being greatly messed up by Covid lockdowns it was agreed by the two committees that the Mega wouldn’t start until the Tuesday and Piratemania would carry on for an extra day

The Sunday after Piratemania in Lincoln was a day for walking around the city centre finding as many caches as we could. First of all there was the normal Flash-Mob where those of a piratical bent dressed up as Pirates and filled the main square by the Castle gates. Dressing up isn’t really my scene so I stood on the edge pretending I wasn’t with the rabble until I saw people that I knew and could go and join them.

Maybe 13 is an unlucky number after all… Piratemania 13 should have been held in 2020, but like all other events it got cancelled, and that wasn’t all the bad luck… Instead of seeing people for Piratemania in 2020, I saw them at Steve ‘Madyokel’ Bolam’s funeral, Steve had been the chief organiser of Piratemania for many years, and was going to be sorely missed.

By the middle of may we were in the last phase of lockdown, and things were getting back to normal – You could even go for a drink in the pub with your mates !
However I had got stuck in a rut I guess and I had got out of the habit of going out at all, let alone going out geocaching – I mean I had found 62 caches in the previous 12 months and 46 of them had been Lab Caches – not exactly a lot of tupperware finds !