Adventures of a Bolas Heathen

Yesterday we got very close to Manchester City Centre whilst out caching and I mentioned to Isaac that we must go for a wander round sometime soon as I’ve not been for ages. He suggested as Sunday was his last day of the school holidays, we should get the train into Manchester to do some caches and have a look around with perhaps a bit of shopping if we had any time left.

What a great idea as I’ve not been on the train for years and I don’t think Isaac ever has, despite him having been on the New York Subway, San Francisco’s BART and the Severn Valley steam railway nearer home! We booked our tickets online later on Saturday evening.

On Sunday we got the train to Manchester Piccadilly and absolutely loved it. The train was new, looked very clean and was really quiet yet fast. What a nice way to travel – we’ll have to do this more often. Very relaxing :-).

On arrival in Manchester our first cache just had to be the Sidetracked one just outside Piccadilly station. The GPSr’s lead us a merry dance for a while here due to all the tall buildings but eventually settled down and we went in for a quick find.

During the morning we’d planned to work on a multi cache based around some alien’s that were done at various points around town using small mosaic tiles. A really neat idea for a multi and great fun to do. I won’t say much more about it here as I don’t want to spoil it for others, but I will say it’s a fab cache and the final is in a surprisingly nice place where the cache is very unlikely to get muggled.

We did all the other city centre caches as we passed them, including a couple by Manchester University. At the cache in St John’s Gardens, I pointed out the back of the houses at Granada Studios made famous on TV in Coronation Street. You could just about make them out over the walls of the studios.

The next cache was in Albert Square by the Town Hall. The highlight of this one for both us was a beautiful Rolls Royce Phantom parked outside the Town Hall and obviously involved in a wedding. We both had a good look round it – what a great car.

Just a few more to do now as we’ve nearly run out of caches to do. The next one was by a bar that is in what used to be some grotty underground toilet’s when I was a teenager. I’m not sure I’d want to go drinking down there even though it looked very nice from what we could see down the stairs.

The last cache was down past the BBC building on Oxford Road and a nice quick one. From here we caught a bus to Piccadilly Gardens to go and have a look for some old fashioned record shops (Isaac’s request, not mine, but really good fun nonetheless).

We had a walk around a few more places and something to eat before it was time for our train home. On the way home the train went right past the Jodrell Bank telescope and we clocked 102mph on our Oregon!

An absolutely fabulous day out which we both loved. I really liked re-living all the places I used to go to in my teens and Isaac liked being taken to see them, plus he loved having a look around the “old fashioned” record shop he’d looked up on the internet the night before!

Only 9 finds for the day, but the day wasn’t really about caching :-).