On Thursday 16th August we headed across to The Netherlands with Yorkie63, Geotrowel, Doggywalker, HollynCharlie, MummaD, Riskt4ker and bonustown for a long weekend in Amsterdam. Although it was mainly meant to be a general, fun weekend away with our friends, as we were all Geocachers it would have been rude not to do some caching as well!
Our Dutch friends carsim97 kindly held an event for us in the hotel that we were staying the first night in in Rotterdam so that we could have a Mega Essex Roadshow event there. It was a fantastic success and we got to meet many local cachers.
The following day we headed into Amsterdam and nipped around the city grabbing caches. Our first stop off was at Sporen van vroeger #1 (Amsterdam) where we found that the best way to look unsuspicious was to crowd round in a big group so nobody could see what we were up to. ;)
Our first cache in Amsterdam
After that we headed to Secret Door which has over 1400 favourite points! Unfortunately it’s a bit over rated and although it’s good, it’s not THAT good! Still a nice cache to grab whilst there though.
UKME crew at the Secret Door
Secret door hiding place
De Montelbaanstoren was hidden at a lovely location, on a Bridge across the canal with views of The Montelbaanstoren tower in the distance.
The Montelbaanstoren views
Our next stop was The Netherlands earthcache and 2C (5) – POINT as these were both in the same building. At this spot was the official Amsterdam Ordnance Datum-marker marking exact zero sea level. It wasn’t the most exciting earthcache/virtual that we’ve done but it was a nice “buy one get one free” opportunity! ;)
Finding the information
At the bronze nipple
Our final stop for the day was Amsterdam Love Bridge at a location that inspired Monet’s Zuiderkerk (southern church) painting. The idea is that you declare your love by securing a padlock and tossing the key in the canal. It was a really pretty location.
Yorkie63 climbs to the top to declare his love for MummaD who is too busy chatting to bonustown to notice!
Lots of love!
The following day we headed back into Amsterdam for a bit of an adventure! Our mission on this day was Amsterdam Urban 2 – Under the bridge. This cache was hidden under one of the bridges along the canal and required a boat for retrieval! So we hired pedalos and slowly made our way up the river. It was great fun! In our one (The cool crew) me and bonustown did the hard work while our shipmates relaxed in the back! ;)
The Cool Crew!
A smooth ride along the river
Once at GZ it was quite clear where the cache would be so riskt4ker on our pedalo did the honours and retrieved it for us. I’m pleased he did, as I would probably have fallen in! Lol!
Got the cache (Yep, it’s covered in bird crap!)
Our shipmates in one of the other pedalos did the honours of replacing the cache once we had found and signed it and our adventure was complete.
On the way back to the bridge
We did some fantastic caches in Amsterdam and it was brilliant to be able to hire the pedalos and find the one under the bridge, which was my absolute favourite of the whole trip. Regardless of the caches, we had a lot of laughs and fun in Amsterdam, but I will leave the rest of that to your imagination… Teeheehee ;)
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