Another Lull, A Special Offer and a New Website

Another Lull

Last time I posted I promised some photographs of the old airfield that we were going to go caching to. We arrived and parked up the campervan just as it went dark. Then we found out that the leisure battery hadn't charged properly so we had no lights and no pump for the water. Lights we could have done without as we had torches, but the thought of going overnight without a cuppa was too much, so sadly we headed home.

Since then there has been a lull in our caching adventures due to work committments, so sadly not much to report at the moment. So a bit of a blank page this time as far as photos are concerned. So far we don't have much work on this week, so we should hopefully get out and about and get some of the newer caches that have been published.

A Special Offer

My birthday is fast approaching, 13th March, so I have decided to give my blog readers a special present from me. Up until my birthday I can offer the UK Map coin at a cost of £8.00 + p&p
This is a saving of £2 off the Ebay listing price. If you want one, contact me directly daryl@jacaru.co.uk and I can sort it out for you. Payment will have to be by PayPal.

UK Coin A Special Offer for Blog Readers

This coin is proving to be popular amongst my regular customers and has also sold well in Australia and the US.

Whilst I am talking about coins I have finally made up my mind about what the next coin is going to be. It is going to be the old favourite the Border Collie coin. The same design but new colours for this year. For those of you who don't know, the original was blue and yellow, which represented the collie on a beach with the sky at the top. That came out in 2009 and sold out within a matter of months. The 2010 version had the same colour, but the background colours were blue and green, again to represent the sky and this time the collie was running on grass. I am not exactly sure of the colours for this year yet, but I have had so many requests for a new version that I don't want to let people down.

Other ideas that I had had for my next coin were an anniversary coin representing 80 years of the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout, more information here http://kindertrespass.com/ which directly helped to open up access for people throughout the country. I had thought about this coin for two reasons, firstly because of the fact mentioned above, but also because I was born in Hayfield where the trespass began and spent a lot of time on Kinder Scout in my earlier years. However, I have decided not to go with this as I am not sure how popular it would be. Having said that, I would welcome your comments on what you think.
Another design that I had in mind was a simple coin showing the Olympic rings. Seeing that we are hosting the Olympics next year I had given this one serious thought, however I am pretty sure that other manufacturers will be thinking along the same lines.
My last idea had been to have a 100th anniversary coin of the sinking of the Titanic. The Titanic holds a special interest for me, I have always been fascinated by the story and from being four years old I have always said that I was on the ship. I used to describe to my parents how I was a 34 year old man, wearing a uniform and that I had a beard, I was in a lifeboat but then drowned. Weird I know, but it has been something that I have said since being that age. Maybe I should have some regresssion hypnosis.
All these would have been annivesary coins for next year but aren't now on the cards from me.

In other news, my GAGB coin that is travelling around caches with me has so far done 1248 miles. My Knockout Ferrari has done 5378 miles and is currently in this cache http://coord.info/GC142VN in California. To keep following this knockout race have a look at http://travelbugknockout.blogspot.com/

A New Website

A new website popped up last week which I think is going to prove very popular with geocachers in this country and is well worth a look. It is called geocache tourist and can be found at http://www.geocachetourist.com/ It is hoping to get a comprehensive view of areas of the country where some decent caches can be found. The information will be written by local people for tourists visiting the area. Maybe you can contribute.

The weekend seems like a while off at the moment but now the leisure battery is fixed and we have a free weekend, we should be off in the van, I was going to say weather permitting, but that hasn't stopped us before.

Not sure what you think of this, but I am all for it, the government are looking at the possibility of  British summertime going forward by two hours. This would mean darker mornings for us, but think of all that extra light in an evening when we can cache for longer! Go for it I say.

Have a good week, hope you get some caching done and that the weather warms up for us all.

Chirps, Caches, Seeker and London Again



 Hello again and welcome to the latest update on the blog.

Chirps

The week started with a notification that a chirp cache had been published. We had only just updated our GPS in order that we could locate Chirps so were more than happy to go and search for this local one http://coord.info/GC2N16D As you have gathered this is the first of this type of cache that we have found. Not sure how the much they are going to take off as they are only compatible with Garmin devices at the moment, but we'll see.

I already have a Chirp here on my desk which will be going out within the next few weeks, once I have found a suitable location for it.

Caches

So what have we found cache wise this week. Well as I have said it has been a quiet week for us with just 5 caches found. The previously mentioned Chirp cache was the first, followed by Call of Duty 4 http://coord.info/GC1ZRF6 here in Nottingham, Metal Monster http://coord.info/GC235ZF over in Flint, North Wales and then Warrington Parks 1: Queens Gardens http://coord.info/GC1GR1P and Golden Gates http://coord.info/GC29GPX both in Warrington.

Golden Gates ~ Warrington

Golden Gates got a favourite vote from me, basically because it is one of those where if you look at the cache page for long enough, you will find the final location of the cache. Enough said, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

On my personal cache front, there are a few new ones to tell you about. My Flash Mob which I think I mentioned before is called Winter's End Flash Mob http://coord.info/GC2MWZC which takes place on March 6th. Hope everyone who attends that is going to be in good voice.

The other new caches of mine are a tradional (multi). I had to call it a multi for the reviewer, even though the final is hardly any distance at all from the first part. That one is called Leslie Phillips http://coord.info/GC2MWHV This hasn't had that many visitors as of yet, but I am pleased to say that most people who have found it have enjoyed it and it has already got 4 favourite votes on it.

I have also put out three puzzle caches in the last few weeks, the first being Top Of The Pops http://coord.info/GC2MKKA, the second which I have to admit is a difficult one is Values http://coord.info/GC2MT9X, this one is staying low on the radar at the moment, people either aren't attempting to solve it, or are attempting it but not getting very far and failing to contact me for extra help. The final puzzle cache that I have put out is called Moor's Knot http://coord.info/GC2N8KH in order for people to find this cache they need a paperback version of the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

Things must be improving for cachers, both weather wise and time wise as both my CW and CCP series have been well visited over the last weekend.

Seeker

For those people who aren't members of the Geocaching Association of Great Britain (GAGB) I thought I would tell you that we now have a new bi monthly newsletter. Called SEEKER it is full of up to date information, not only of what is happening in the GAGB, but also news, interviews and reviews. Well worth a read, the first edition has an interview with Collin French who runs the UK Geocaching podcast. Again, if you haven't listened to that it is also worth a listen to. You can find the GAGB at http://www.gagb.org.uk/ and the podcast at http://www.ukgcpodcast.com/

Other good news for members of the GAGB this month is that we have managed to secure a 15% discount from the outdoor shop Blacks. To apply for the discount card all you have to do is become a member and even better news, membership is free.

Whilst on with GAGB news, the 2011 mileage challenge is doing well, with over 40 people now participating, as I type this, my own coin has now covered 1088 miles.

My own GAGB mileage coin

I am currently planning on how to follow this on next year and have some ideas which I still need to put forward, however, I do know the coin that I will be using and it is this one.

My Jeep 2012 Mileage Coin



Why this coin, two reasons, I like Jeeps, and I drive a couple of blue ones as well.

Wemog's 2012 Landy Coin

Keith (Wemnog) doesn't know it yet, but he will be using this coin, for similar reasons, he likes Land Rovers, although he doesn't drive one, he used to. This is going to be one of his Christmas presents this year! Talk about planning ahead. 

London Again

Just a couple of things that I forgot to mention about London in last weeks blog.
Firstly, our 550t performed really well, even with all the tall buildings around, it didn't seem to confuse it at all. We even used it for finding all sorts of other things, such as museums, where the nearest tube station was and even where the nearest Tesco's was. This leads me on to the second point. If you are thinking of having a cheap day out in the capital, you really can. Don't drive all the way in to the centre of the city. Do as we usually do, drive to Watford, park up there and then get the tube in. It is a lot cheaper than parking in the centre, and you will miss out on paying the congestion charge as well. Secondly, you can eat really cheaply while you are there, all we did was find a Tesco Metro, buy a couple of warm pasties and ate them on the hoof, no need at all to pay extortianate cafe prices. You can even get a cuppa from most of the Tesco shops down there.

My Geocoin Collection

Over the last couple of years I have collected a fair few geocoins, they haven't been activated and are still in mint condition. I have decided that I am going to sell them on Ebay shortly. Why? Because they just sit here in a box, not really doing anything and by selling them I can raise funds to have the next coin made. There are some nice ones in the collection, some of which have long since sold out, so if you are interested, keep an eye on the Ebay page over the next few weeks.

Finally

We are going away this weekend in the van. Not far, just going to park up overnight and do some caching in the day. We know where we are going and we are looking forward to it, fingers crossed for decent weather. We plan to go caching around an old WW2 aerodrome and forest. From reading some stuff about our destination, it has been used in the past for filming Dr. Who and Torchwood. There should be some good photos to be had. I'll be telling you about it next week and posting some photos I am sure.

So have a good week, hope you get some caching done.

Priscilla, Parakeets and a A Quick Flash

Priscilla

As I said in the last blog we were going to be in London over the weekend. Prior to that we didn't do any caching in the days leading up to it.
We actually went to London to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Have to say, that I couldn't get in to the film at all, so wasn't sure that I was going to enjoy the show, but I did. I would recommend it for anyone to go and see, lots of great music and very funny.

Anyway, on to the serious stuff ~ caching. We started off with an Earthcache, we are very lazy when it comes to doing these, we still have one local to us in Nottingham to do. Anyway this is the one that we did, just near Trafalgar Square http://coord.info/GC285PA You never think of statues having extra history attached to them, apart from who the statue is about.

Then on to do more caching in the area. As you can imagine being in the capital it is difficult to hide anything more than a nano or micro, but we certainly visited some different areas that we wouldn't normally see, thanks again to geocaching.

A couple of the memorable caches that we found were Reflections of Neal's Yard http://coord.info/GC2AYKM, a difficult area to grab the cache from. As we were writing the log a few flakes of snow actually fell as well.


Signing the log at Reflections

Then we went on and found  The Tin Pan Alley Band http://coord.info/GC2C1NN I like this kind of cache having found something similar in North Wales last year. It is another of those caches that is right in front of you, making it virtually invisible. I am still searching for the right area around Nottingham to put one out similar. This one got an immediate favourite vote from me.



Tin Pan alley, I signed up to play ukelele

We found our first ever virtual cache as well whilst in town http://coord.info/GC56E5 We have since been allowed the find after submitting the correct information.


As I said before it is difficult to hide larger caches, but even in one of the magnetic micro's we found a TB that had just arrived the same day from Portugal. That is now in the caching bag waiting to move on.
We couldn't have chosen a worse day to be in London really as far as police presence went. There was a planned demonstration regarding the student cuts and there were police everywhere. We found a cache called Where Are All The Apples http://coord.info/GC1JYMY As we retrieved the cache a police van parked up beside us and the occupants were watching us with interest. Then Wemnog dropped the container and it rolled under the police van! He had to tap on the window and ask them to move their van whilst we got it back. Needless to say we then had to explain what we were doing, much to the amusement of the occupants. I guess it didn't help that this particular cache was just around the corner from New Scotland Yard. We don't do things easily!

All in all we did 11 caches on Saturday, not as many as we hoped, but it was a cold day and Costa's kept calling us.

Parakeets

On Sunday we planned on visiting our colleagues at Red Dot Racing in Enfield before going on to Hampstead Heath. As we were going to be a little early in Enfield I loaded three caches on to the GPS to do there. All very easy finds, one Sidetracked and two on the River Lee. I managed to drop a new TB off in one of the river caches http://coord.info/GC24GKE The TB has been released by Pinfold and is being watched by some of his pupils, this one is a jellyfish called Jellybelly TB3M41Q, seeing that it is water related it seemed an appropriate place to drop it off.

River Lee ~ Ponders End

Once we had finished with Red Dot we carried on to Hampstead Heath. We didn't plan on doing much so ended up doing just two caches. The first one, Hampstead Heath - Ponds View http://coord.info/GC16PA1 I dropped Pinfold's second class TB off, again water related, this one is a crab, and again is being watched by his pupils, Crabbydactyl TB3M41D, hopefully these two TB's will travel far for the kids.

Pond's View

One of the main reasons that we visited the heath was that I had in my possession a TB belonging to our caching friend Angellica. This TB is in the NW/SE TB race and has to visit a number of checkpoint caches during it's travels. The TB had to visit Stinky Hollow http://coord.info/GCF011 This is a fairly old cache having been running since 2003.



Stinky Hollow, placing Angellica's TB


That was the final cache of the day for us. We actually had lunch sat at GZ and were quite amazed at the number of parkeet's that were flying around and calling. We knew that there were some on the heath, but it seemed that there were literally hundreds around.















On Monday we did a little bit of caching, only 3 on the way back home, one, Peering Over Lord Archer was good, partly because I actually enjoy reading his books, I especially enjoyed reading his prison diaries. http://coord.info/GC189FJ

Peering Over Lord Archer

All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend, one that we will be repeating later in the year no doubt. We weren't too sure about caching in London, but on reflection it is definately worth doing if you get the chance.

A Quick Flash

No, not something that happened to us in London! I have organised my first flash mob. Not having attended one before either I decided to bite the bullet and organise one for March here in Nottingham. The flash mob is called Winter's End and the cache page can be found here http://coord.info/GC2MWZC Basically, for anyone who doesn't know, a flash mob is a 15 minute event and they can take any shape or form. Winter's End will consist of people turning up, donning a christmas hat, singing Jingle Bell's and then disappearing. Hopefully it will be well attended and people will enjoy it. I already have some strange ideas for future ones if this first event goes well.

Finally

I have the campsite booked for the Summer's End event in September and it will hopefully, again, be as well attended as last years. It is being held in the Peak District again, from September 2nd - 4th. A different location this time, a little less basic, this time we have showers! There isn't a GC number yet as it can't be published until 6 months prior to the event. I will therefore have a GC number on March 2nd or 3rd.
Another week over, and another caching week to look forward to, so have a good time, and I hope you get some caching done too.