Mole’s SOS – Look Harder Mystery Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Another in Mole’s Series of Series (SOS)
I have put together a series of caches and the theme of these are ‘Series’ – each cache is, in their own right, part of a group of caches around the country following a theme linked to a landmark or object, such as churches, ponds and in this case The ‘Look’ puzzle series.
Each ‘series’ was devised by an individual cacher who either retained the series and developed it on their own such as the ponds, dewponds and lakes series by martletsman or encouraged other cachers to add to the series with the request to advise the originator of a new addition in order to keep tabs of the increasing number and save duplication – such as the church micro series, which is managed by sadexploration. There are some series of caches which do not get referred to by a rolling number allocated by the originator (like church micro #176), instead these others are referred to by their location – such as the motorway mayhem series where the motorway and the junction distinguish it from any other. My little series will draw on many of these – each being part of the series referred to but part of this series – Mole’s SOS (Series Of Series)
This cache is inspired by an excellent series of puzzles by Footsore and Weary that has also been expanded by Tjapukai, Ian Too and the Purple Pineapples......It has been further expanded and those will eventually form part of a puzzle circuit collectively created by Coldrum, Dondesole and Geocotch.
The given co-ordinates are for an area along the Medway River where the first canoe/freshwater fish pass was built in this country – an extract from a web site says the following - “Building on lessons learnt from the former East Germany, we have built a fish pass on the River Medway Navigation in Kent that combines safe passage for fish and canoeists alike.
This is the first pass of this type in a British river and from start to finish the project took just five months and cost 94,000 GBP funded by Environment Agency Waterways and Recreation departments. It involved the use of an 80 tonne crane to lift an 8 tonne excavator onto the lock island.
The combined pass consists of a 1.5 metre wide steel trough 70cm deep, 17 metres in length with a gradient of approximately 1 in 12 (8%). The key element to the successful operation of the channel is the installation of artificial plastic reeds referred to as “fish brushes”. These fish brushes slow the water flow down and create eddies and back currents to enable fish to swim up the pass.
Secondly, the softness and flexibility of the individual brush strands allow canoeists to safely pass without injury to themselves or damage to their canoes.
Porters Lock on the River Medway was the chosen site for this pilot project as an existing concrete channel with a fixed crest weir had suitable dimensions to suit the pass criteria.”
A second such pass is near completion (at the time when this cache was published) at Eldridges lock a mile up the river from Porters.
(The above information may or may not be helpful in solving the puzzle)
And so to this puzzle – Look Harder I was interested in the ‘Look’ series by Coldrum, Dondesole and Geocotch and it was obvious there were various levels of difficulty, some were easy, others much harder and I would suggest that in relation to those other caches on a hardness scale from 1 to 10 this puzzle would probably be a 9. The cache location is within ½ mile of this body of water – and the co-ordinates can be found by conversion using the numbers below. N51 x E000 y Where x = 215.104 and y = 350.802
**Congrats to Rockunder for being FTF - also to Gavmills for being First to find having solved the puzzle**
**20/06/10 - few finds, so additional hint added**
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
1) - 3 xrl jbeqf va gur grkg jvyy uryc aneebj qbja lbhe frnepuvat naq hygvzngryl gur zrnaf gb uryc qrpbqr gur chmmyr
2) N fpber zvahf 10% bs gur xrl gura fhogenpg 52/1000guf tvirf n ahzore gung svtherf
Oruvaq, urnq urvtug, pbeare, vil