Along with many other cachers, I'm sure, I maintain a "to do" list. This cache has been longer on the list than any other cache. But not any more :-)

At 66, I'm far too old for the "spiderman" technique, leaving me with the option of cadging a lift or bringing my own boat here. It's been 15 years since I've brought Amberel so far upstream, and it was good to have an excuse to do so againThis was a seven day trip from Chertsey to Lechlade and back, taking in five T5 caches, one T3 cache and one Church Micro "en route". I arrived here late afternoon on the third day.

I wasn't entirely sure the present Amberel would go under Osney Bridge, but she did, with the canopy lowered and an inch to spare. And not far after the bridge, I turned to starboard, into the cut. Not a lot of headroom under the railway bridge either, and then I was at GZ.

In accordance with the D1 rating, the cache was easily spotted. Amberel's cockpit is rather lower than the roof of a narrow boat, so I had brought along a metre long "grabber". Well, I could reach the cache with the grabber, but I couldn't grip it sufficiently tightly to release the powerful magnet! I had to carefully position the boat and stand on the cockpit side, if I then lifted myself up with one hand grasping the bridge I-beam I could just reach to grab the cache with the other hand. This was a fairly precarious position - the cockpit side is less than 3 inches wide, the current was steady but the wind was strong and gusty, so it was hard to predict the movement of the boat, and I could ill afford to come down on the outside of the cockpit when I released my hold on the bridge!

Log signed. I was unable to see any second magnet, but the grip of just the one attached to the cache was far more than enough to hold it. As I flopped back down into the boat after a second precarious maneuver to replace the cache, a narrow boat approached from the other direction. I can't imagine what he thought I was doing, or even what he thought a wide beam boat was doing in the cutIt's rather narrow here, but luckily my 2 engines give me considerable maneuverability and I was able to tuck myself out of his way :-)

Lovely to tick this one off,

Thanks for the cache,

Rgds, Andy