Harry Potter & the Cacher’s Stone

The popularity of Harry Potter more than 20 year’s on never ceases to amaze me. On a visit to the big smoke this week, I saw first hand how the craze of the little orphan wizard and his magical world of Hogwarts and such like, still has fans across the world firmly in its grasp. 

Whilst waiting for my rather delayed train home at Kings Cross Railway Station I noticed a large crowd gathered in the corner of the concourse, near platform 9 and wandered over to take a better look.  What was once a fairly innocuous sign on a brick wall, saying “Platform 9 3/4”, as a little homage to the magical platform in the books/films, has now become one of London’s most popular tourist spots! 

I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes. A long queue of Harry Potter fans from all over the world, were eagerly awaiting their moment in front of the sign where they could be snapped wearing or grasping a variety of Harry Potter styled props! I had to chuckle, I’ve lost count of the many times I’ve walked past the spot over the years and barely even registered it was there. Now there’s a shop stocked full of various Harry Potter themed gifts and even a chap in costume, dedicated to managing the crowds! 

Not to be one to miss out, I made sure I took my own selfie in front of the sign, but purely to log a cache...yes there’s even a virtual cache there now ;-)

Moving swiftly on from the madness of Harry Potter and Kings Cross Railway Station, and onto this week’s other caching highlights, which included a lovely afternoon out to the forest at Santon Downham.  

The free parking, pretty river and huge, relatively deserted woodland, make it an attractive alternative to the overly commercialised High Lodge  across the road, where the Forestry Commission thinks it’s acceptable to charge visitors £12.50 for a four hour stay, just because there’s a few swings and a cafe! Santon picnic area is also more attractive to us cachers as its brimming with potential finds, unlike the now cacheless High Lodge, which lost its one and only cache over a year ago!

So Sunday afternoon, with some much needed cloud cover to cool us a little, we headed to Santon to tackle CaptSlogg’s two great new geocaching trails - Santon Slogg and Santon Stroll. And they didn’t disappoint.

We started with Santon Stroll which I’d made a start on during my visit to the recent Mardle event. It was a great trail with a mixture of traditional‘s and multis and a variety of cache sizes including an ammo can stocked full of goodies for little ones. 

The caches and hides were inventive, which must have required a huge amount of work. They included ‘the hedgehog’ a clever camo made of chicken wire and pine cones; a nano buried in a false fence post, and the clever sign post attachment that unhooked to reveal the cache. The only thing to give it away was that the green paint on the cache holder was fresher than than that on the rest of the sign, but  it would easily fool a muggle. There was also a cache on a very long stick, in fact one of the longest I’ve ever seen, I used the other half’s strength to extract and replace it.  

Upon arriving back at the main picnic area I had to giggle at the many visitors all packed in alongside the riverbank, treating it rather like a trip to the coast. There were bikini clad woman, kids splashing about, dogs swimming and even the odd older gent bathing in his underpants...clearly they hadn’t come as prepared as others!

After weaving our way through the throng, we finally arrived at the first waypoint on Santon Slogg cache number one, and soon spotted the little bronze disc with the co-ordinate numbers cleverly pressed into it. Disc two was soon located in a quieter spot and the final cache was another brilliant post attachment with a bright lime green screw which contained the cache! Very clever.

As we continued the second circuit we discovered more clever homemade caches and some beautiful scenery alongside the railway line, river and horse paddocks. Hides included another ammo can, a tiny stick and a hinged wooden log that opened to reveal a film pot. But the best of them all was the fairy house, complete with gravel garden, pretty door and a glittery Tupperware box. It was our favourite find of the day.  

I wrapped up our caching week with a couple of solo trips out after work grabbing caches at Wickenbrooke, Stradishall and Hargrave. I also attempted some finds on Shakkabomb’s 2014 trail at Cock & End, but after battling to find ill marked footpaths, and failing to find the first two caches, I decided to admit defeat and quit the trail. 

As a result of our adventures this week we’re now just 22 caches away from getting the Turtle souvenir and completing the Hidden Creatures challenge. A good push this forthcoming weekend and we’ll be there.

I’ll finish with a quick update on the black beast I spotted in Brandon a few weeks ago. Interestingly whilst walking in Santon Downham we spotted a poster for a lost black Labrador. It apparently went missing in Brandon back in March...could this have been what I saw? 

The ‘beast’ was a similar size to a black Lab, but I’d dismissed it as being a dog as no owner appeared, and they’re not usually far behind. My dilemma now is whether to contact the poor people desperately trying to find their dog, to report a potential sighting, bearing in mind it was four weeks ago and I just can’t be certain if it was a dog. It might be unfair to get their hopes up, especially as it may have now moved on and may not have been their pet at all. But if it was me, I think i’d want know. Quite the head v heart dilemma!