Saturday 30 November 2013

Stert Street Stream

I was pointed to this cache by the cache owner recently, after a good week of no finders i decided to venture out to it. I had told the cache owner that there was a tunnel somewhere that went under Abingdon as a now retired work colleague told me about his adventures up it as a kid. Soon as the cache owner sent me a picture showing the entrance, I couldnt wait to try it out. So off to Abingdon today, parked in the pay and display by the river that was free today because of some christmas shopping thing going on in town (footloose&frodo decided to go to this instead). Got the kayak up and ready and off to my usual launch spot along here. After battling choppy waters I was soon in the back stretch by the old gaol which still has its look of an old prison. On arriving at the entrance I set about getting my headtorch on and started going up the rather low tunnel, this soon became a bit higher and soon i could go no further. Knowing it couldnt get deeper i decided to leave the wellies and just wear my caching boots which seemed to do the trick apart from my trousers that got soaked when they unrolled. After tying up the boat (luckily I had some paracord in the car which did the trick) i started the walk up the tunnel, finding the old entrance to the old gaol. Completly forgetting about the cache I went on a walk and found various entrances from properties that have been sealed up, wooden beams that had completly rotted away and even the section where the church is above it. It was only a few inches deep along here and walked pass some workman lighting that had been set up here for some bizzare reason, but as soon as i got up to abivale vets the tunnel started to loose height and i decided it was for another day to explore the last section. It was up here that my walkie talkie fell off my backpack and hit the water, now i had no communication down here and no phone signal, but luckily enough after taking it apart once home and drying it out it now works fine. Now it was back to the cache. i had forgotton the hint but knew it was somewhere near pipe three and as I approached it from this way saw it immediatley, hoping that it was a clean log I carefully opened it to find i was in fact the first to find it. I hope the cache owner increases the rating as you will need some specialist equipment and as winter comes and the river gets higher there will be times that you will not be able to get into the entrance unless wearing diving gear, but there will be times of the year that it will practically be bone dry once pass the first pipe. Certainly brought back memories of doing hippos below another 5/5, favourite point out of my rare to give out favourite points given and wouldnt have a problem going back there again. Equipment needed is boat, wellies (or after a lot of rain waders), headtorch, spare torch, spare batteries. floatable device and possibly walkie talkies Thank you to Daniel Glover the cache owner for placing such a wonderful cache, maybe a bigger container could be placed here soon and slightly up rated to 5/5 to cover the specialist equipment and danger involved. ;)

2 comments:

  1. I think it's possible that the workmen's lights are there from Jan 2012. Apparently there was some crumbling of the section of tunnel under Stert Street and work had to be carried out.

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  2. Thank you for the info, do you know of anymore? Would like to do the west Helen's tunnel and the ones under Wantage market place

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