Caching Tales

Having had to cancel so many short breaks and holidays this year, and experiencing the pain of wrangling with travel and accommodation providers to get refunds over many weeks, I have been a little reluctant to consider making any further holiday plans.  But it’s always good to get away and recharge the batteries, so when Covid seemed to be in retreat in the summer, I made the brave decision to book a fortnight away in Cornwall.   As the day arrived to depart for the South West coast, I was quite relieved that so many business and leisure facilities were open again and life had, in some way, returned to a semi-normal state.     On the six hour road journey down…which inevitably turned into nearly 8 hours due to heavy Friday traffic…we stopped off for a late lunch at Gordano Services on the M5. All pre-planned of course, as I’d spotted an unfound cache there.    As the other half adorned his mask and prepared to join a long takeaway food queue that ende...

I love a good murder mystery and the joy of trying to find out ‘whodunit?’. Over the years I have enjoyed reading famous sleuthing books by authors like Agatha Christie and PD James; watching TV ‘whodunit?’ dramas; going to murder mystery dinners; and playing games of Cluedo with friends whenever the opportunity arises.     Trying to unravel a series of breadcrumb clues, wean out the red herrings and decipher who committed murder, is great fun and more often than not, I get it completely wrong.   With the recent advent of virtual murder mystery games around town centres, it gave me an idea for a set of lab caches. And when I found out I had been awarded an adventure lab credit to build a series of adventure labs, I was overjoyed and began thinking my idea through a little more.   There were however two stumbling blocks that I had to overcome. The first was I could only have five locations with a strict word count on each location page. It seemed there was barely enou...