Logging in June 2010, having found the cache as a TerraCache on 7th December 2008. In view of the recent DNF, this log should not be taken to show that the cache remains in its place. However, it's quite possible it is still there, because it was remarkably well hidden.

In 1980 I maintained the BA flight booking computers. My boss had restored an old wooden narrowboat ice-breaker, but regretfully I wasn't interested in boats then, and I never went to see it.

Today, just as I reached the cache, I heard loud cracking and screeching noises approaching from the other direction. It was a narrowboat ice-breaker. OK, not a real ice-breaker, just an ordinary narrowboat struggling through 1/2 inch thick ice on the canal!

But I'm ahead of myself - first I should deal with how I got here. I had it easy - so easy that I feel I had an almost unfair advantage. All I did was reach up to my bookshelf for the appropriate Nicholson Guide to the Waterways and turn to page 26. OK, I fell into Roderick's little trap (I'm sure he would have been disappointed if I hadn't  ) but I quickly climbed out of it and verified the location.

So on this cold but sunny morning I parked my motor-bike and set off along the deserted canal. The footpath was frozen, and so was the water. Nothing moved. Until the narrowboat ice-breaker appeared just as I got to the cache location. Bother. I walked on past the cache, and chatted to the boaters as they slowly and noisily passed. Then I turned round to go back to the cache and - oh no - they were just preparing to wind in the winding hole, right opposite the cache!

And to be a bit blunt, they didn't make the best job of it. As they turned into the winding hole, the ice lay continuously on their port beam. When they were going forwards their bows cut through it, but sideways on the ice wasn’t moving. They shuffled to and fro with much revving of the engine, but because they couldn't get the stern to move to port, they couldn't get the bows to move to starboard. What they REALLY needed was a bow thruster .

By this time I was back with them, and suggested they pass me the bow warp; it would have taken only a few moments to pull the bow round. But for some reason they were reluctant to do this and for 15 more minutes, as they faffed about going nowhere, I was unable to look for the cache.

When eventually they departed the way they had come, I started looking. And looked, and looked, and looked. It was hard. But I did find it, at the expense of both hands deeply scratched and bleeding.

And to top it all, afterwards I rode a few miles up the Grand Union Canal to do some more caches, and just as I reached the first one, who should appear? Yes, you guessed.

Many thanks for the cache,

Rgds, Andy