A family of four took the idea of the ‘road trip’ and turned a traditional drive into a fast-paced geocaching adventure. Delta68 is the husband and wife team of Mark and Donna. The couple was vacationing in Europe this September with their two teenage children Steven and Beth.
The family was all packed and set to return home to the United Kingdom when Mark made a realization. Their trip home from the Netherlands to England could yield caches in five, maybe even six, countries if they included Luxembourg. But the cache in Luxembourg was more than a hundred miles out of the way.
Mark admits that he had to do a little convincing. After some negotiating, the family launched on their treasure hunt at 7 a.m. They began logging caches in country after country. Their first cache in in the Netherlands was GC233ZX Echt-Susteren en zijn kernen (Roosteren). The family then navigated to caches in Germany and drove out of the way of their departure city in France. They turned south into Luxembourg and Belgium.
They stopped for lunch in Belgium—now more than two hundred miles from Calais, France and their way back to England.
Mark says, “I checked TomTom to see how long it would take to get to Calais … 5 Hours!! I asked Steven and Beth how I was going to break it to Donna. ‘Mum! We’re five hours from Calias!’ shouted Steven. That’s solved that dilemma. :-)”
The family then drove 205 miles to log a cache in France. The long-haul set the stage to find geocaches in six countries. They just needed to return to their home in England.
Delta68 and their two children traveled back to England before the day ended. One final cache in the U.K. sealed the geocaching achievement. They family logged caches in six countries in less than 24 hours.
They set another record for a family best. Mark says, “We decided to continue straight home stopping off at GC27YDV Welcome to Warwick! just before midnight to set a new personal ‘maximum distance in a day.’
Mark says the total distance traveled added up to 617 miles. He sums up the family’s geocaching feat as, “Certainly a memorable day.”
Read more about the family’s adventure and see all the caches that they discovered, on their blog, Delta68’s Geocaching Blog.
