I had been roped into taking my son into Birmingham for seven o’clock on Wednesday morning. Actually, it was worse than that, I had to take him through the city centre and out to Edgbaston.
I was out of the house by 06:15, stopping to pick up a can of Monster (sugar free) and had my offspring in the car by half past.
Luckily, the traffic wasn’t too bad at that hour and we got him to his appointment on time. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too long (two to four hours) so I decided that I could grab a few AdLabs (or even old skool physical geocaches) whilst I was waiting.
First call, was not too far away in Harbourne or more precisely, Warley Woods.
I parked the car on a quiet side street and made my way into the park and made my way to find my first AdLab of the day.
The first two locations were reached and the questions answered correctly before a downhill walk to number three.
The description said that I was looking for a tree with a small sign next to it. Guess what? No sign. I reported to the owner that I couldn’t see any sign and made my way to the next one.
As I was walking back up hill, I was blessed with the sight of the sun rising so just had to stop for a photo.
Number four was found and answered but the last one, as was number three, did not feature the required item. I needed to count the number of planks in a bridge crossing a small ditch. The ditch was there but no bridge. Just before emailing the owner, I made an educated guess (or three) and came up with the correct answer.
Fuelled with success, I applied the same logic to the one I couldn’t find earlier and again got lucky. Five more caches in the bag.
Back on the Adventure Lab app. my next clutch of AdLabs was about four miles away in Halesowen.
My first target was at St. John the Baptist church so that location went into the SatNav. Approaching the site, I spotted a number of parking bays in which I could park for forty five minutes – more than enough time to find five AdLabs.
After answering the church question it was off to another place of worship, namely the old Methodist chapel.
With number two in the bag, I backtracked before peeling off, down a steep hill to a lovely old black and white building dating to the sixteenth century.
Climbing back out of the gravity well, it was into the shopping centre for the final two caches.
Whilst walking back from the final AdLab, I noticed some workmen emptying window boxes into a large builders’ sack.
“I don’t want them”, I said, “but are you throwing those away?”
“Yeh”, came the reply, “Do you want ’em?”
I’d started the conversation by stating that I didn’t want them but remained civil and retorted with, “No thanks, just asking”.
Back home later, recalling this encounter with Sue, she said, “I’d have had them!” Like I was going to haul a builders’ sack through Halesowen.
I moved on back towards Birmingham picking up a few drive-by AdLabs before a final, physical cache by the canal back in Edgbaston.
With my geocaching total improved by nineteen, I hung around a bit for my son before he informed me that he would be a few hours more, so I returned home only to drive back in the rush hour to retrieve him later.
Checking my STrava, I was happy to note that I’d clocked up a little over two miles – bonus.