Last weekend there were two events within an hour and a half drive from home. On Saturday I could have participated in GC2N78Y Vår tid i Hedemora and on Sunday in GC2P9H1 In i Medeltiden in Leksand. Both are situated in the picturesque county of Dalarna but of completely different character.
However, the best laid plans don’t always work out as expected. On Saturday my priorities shifted from geocaching to getting my summer car on the road. Normally, I do this at the beginning of May and sometimes at the beginning of April. It will be June on Wednesday so I had to do something about the situation. A quick internet search showed me that I could take the car in for its MOT (a UK term) or in Sweden Bilprovning. In other words a test of roadworthiness. So off I went to Sandviken for a 10:30 appointment. The journey there and back was done at lower than legal speeds despite my itchy right foot. All was fine so I am now able to use my nearly thirty year old summer car.
Not to be confused with the geomobile
The only problem is that it is pretty useless for geocaching in Sweden as the caches that I enjoy finding are often in the forests and the roads are gravel at best and rough rutted tracks if I am lucky. My next car is going to be 4WD with good ground clearance.
On Sunday I realized that it was mothers day and that had precedence over geocaching. It was great to see children and grandchildren gathered together. One thing happened on Saturday, however, that guaranteed that my Monday would be fun. More than one hundred and twenty caches were released in the Hedemora area including a continuation of the Dalälven Power trail that I wrote about in my blog Power Trail.
The weather at the weekend was mixed. One minute the skies were blue and cloudless and the next they were grey and it poured with horizontal rain, so I didn’t actually feel too bad that I missed the events. As is usual for a Monday the sun shone and the temperature climbed five degrees to a pleasant 20C. After work I jumped in the car and headed west to Hofors and then south through Långshyttan to Dalälven where a further fifty plus caches have been added to the existing series. In just over an hour of hunting I managed to find twenty five of them. I could have continued for another hour and a half and found the remaining 35 but I decided to save them for another day. I can’t say that I am really into the 200m transport stretch-grab a micro-200m transport stretch and so on.
I realised when I got home that I was only three caches away from a milestone so a couple of days later I drove the few kilometers west of my office on Sandviken to a small place called Storvik. Storvik was famous at one time for having the longest railway platform in northern Europe. To mark this a cache is now situated near the station. Of the other five caches in the village two are mine so I ignored them and went for the others. The cache Klockan på berget was destined to be my find 2400. The clocktower was impressive as unlike it’s insignificant surroundings. It is located in a patch of forest in the village surrounded by streets and houses. However, it is not visible from the road so it’s quite a surprise to walk up a track and find it appearing through the trees.
Storvik clock tower hidden in the forest
As my GPS pointed me some way from the tower but the hint said inside the square and magnetic I trusted the hint and spent a good thirty minutes looking for the cache. The tower was wooden and the metal sheathing on parts of it was copper. The only magnetic parts seemed to be some bolts. I was just about ready to give up when I found a little nook in the construction and there was the cache. Phew! A really great milestone!
Logging find #2400
Soon it will be midsummer and vacation. I wonder if I can reach the 2500 milestone? Let’s see.
Geocaching with DS8300 
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