It took a long time to decode the instuctions for this one, and then we had a couple of false starts when planned trips had to be postponed for various reasons. But today it all came together, and an appropriately cosmopolitan trio set off in the early hours of the morning to search for der Fahrer - one British, one German and one who is half of each .

I had some preconceived ideas of what we might find at the first stage, but I had it quite wrong, and we found ourselves somewhat over-dressed and over-prepared here. Not to worry, better than the opposite, and it wasn't too long before we were on our way again.

But at the next stage we ground to a halt. After a fruitless hour or more, with no real idea of what we were supposed to be doing, we sent a coded message to the c/o. The reply was brief, but contained some crucial information. When decoding our instructions, one of us (British) was reading and one (German) was writing - and one important word was mistranslated. The incorrect word sounded VERY similar, and it made sense in the context of the message - but it meant something very different, and we had been searching in the wrong place!

Even with the correct information, this stage was a tricky one, but eventually we were ready to proceed. After a relatively easy step, we once again found ourselves seemingly at a standstill, but this time we kept at it and finally managed to sort this one out for ourselves .

Plain sailing again then, until we reached a location from which I was uncertain I would be able to extract myself without external assistance, so advised that one of us stayed on guard duty. Indeed, while Sandvika was able to extract himself unaided, my fears were well founded, and I just could not escape under my own devices. I have to thank my co-conspirators here, for bodily hauling me to safety, filthy dirty and somewhat battered and bruised but at least still on the case .

Night was now fast approaching, and we had no real idea how much of our task still remained ahead of us - had we been only halfway we would have returned to finish it another day. A quick call the the c/o revealed it was worth persevering - and so it was .

What an epic - nearly 11.5 hours from start to finish, but that did include at least an hour lost to our miscommunication, and another 30 minutes or more due to a road block later in the day.

Thanks for a serious challenge, though I'm not sure for how much longer I'm going to be able to keep this sort of thing up . A TOP CACHE, of course, would anyone expect anything different .

Rgds, Andy