News and Views

1049

It's been a few weeks and as you can see there hasn't been a great amount of caching going on in that time!


Work has taken over a little. A couple of remaps, sadly local haven't lead to any great caching adventures. We have done a little bit of reposession work, collecting some industrial crushers from a waste recycling place down south and a couple of cars.

You never know what we will be reposessing next, Wemnog with a crusher

Whilst looking for a car down near Folkestone, not a repo this time but one to buy, we managed just one cache. I needed to find one big enough to drop some trackables in and so we headed to a canoe centre where we found Seapoint http://coord.info/GC24ZZ9 The place was full of interesting information. The canal (The Royal Military Canal) has links to the French Revolution. It would have been good to spend more time down there and learn more about the place.

Info board at the Royal Military Canal

With the repo work we often sit around for hours watching houses, workplaces etc and it does give us time to check the phones to see what caches are about. Sadly there isn't always a lot of time to go for them as we have to react fairly quickly if a vehicle (owner) comes out to get in their car.

However, it does mean some travelling on the motorway system. One cache that I can't quite believe that we have left to find for so long is the cache at Newport Pagnell services. This is an old cache, having been published in December 2005. It seems to have had a few changes of container since then but as I have said before it's always good to find a cache that has stood the test of time.

Local Caches

There has been a nice steady influx on new local caches placed lately. We have found a few but are leaving others for those days when we are at home with nothing much else to do. One of the best new ones that we have found lately has been stormjaks Plenty Of Room With A View http://coord.info/GC389K8 which is a tricky little cache.

Keith and I first went for this one when it was first published but after searching the area for quite a while along with another couple of locals, Plasmawave and Spire67 we had a fruitless search. A few weeks later and we were pleased to find it quite quickly, a sense of achievement when Keith finally shouted GOT IT. I would certainly recommend this cache for people to look for.

Another good couple of recommendations if you are in Nottingham are the two Pit Extreme caches http://coord.info/GC39AZR and http://coord.info/GC39AZ0 both worthy of favourite points. We actually did these two along with stormjak and skybluebazza so we had a fun afternoon out.

As I said, there are plenty of new local caches out and I know of a few more that are due out in the near future which should also prove fun.

Numbers

Now I know that people say that it's not about the numbers, whilst others will shout that it is. What I can't understand though is those cachers who fool themselves by claiming a find just by writing a couple of logs on the same cache. Surely they are only fooling themselves? For instance I have seen a few caches lately where the log has been written and then above that another log that says something along the lines of I forgot to drop a TB!

I credit cachers with having something about them, but why oh why fool themselves like this. There is one cacher who I know of who has logged quite a few caches in this way. Surely if you are in to collecting the numbers you would feel better in yourself for having original finds, or maybe that's just me. The Write A Note system is simple enough, or so I thought, to use.

New Souvenir

Groundspeak have announced that they are awarding a new souvenir to cachers who log a find on February 29th. There have only been a couple of times prior to this year when geocachers were able to log a find on this date and so they thought that it was was a good time to encourage people to get out on a once every four year opportunity. Apart from caches there are numerous events being held throughout the country on the date itself, from an event being held just after midnight, to breakfast events right through to the evening. In fact, up to the time of writing this, 32 events nationwide have been planned. So make sure you get out there on that day and grab yourself that souvenir.

Dogs Dogs Dogs

Finally today, a bit of news about the puppies and a new TB race. Three weeks old today they are certainly growing quickly and are now developing their own characters. With one already provisionally sold we are still trying to decide whether (and which) one we are going to keep.

Keith has his eye on one of the bitches, but there is a little dog who I think has something special about him. I guess we'll just have to see.

Whilst talking about dogs, I am organising a new TB race, this one is aimed specifically at dog owners and is going to be a race just in the UK to four caches that are dog related. There is going to be a prize again for the winner, just as there was for the Nottingham to Nottingham race.

TB Dog Race Winners Coin

That's all for now, hopefully more actual news about geocaching next time.

New Beginnings

1040

Back up in Warrington again at the end of last week so not much time for caching. We managed a grand total of 1! Sat at Costa's (coffee house of choice) and having a quick look at what was around, we noticed a cache that had a United States Navy geocoin in it. As both our Dad's were in the Royal Navy during the war we decided it would be a good coin to pick up. Having a couple of hours to spare before heading off for Whiston we finished the coffees and headed off.

The cache was near to the Foundation For Peace Centre which was set up in Warrington in memory of two youngsters, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, two youngsters who were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded in Warrington in 1993.

The cache itself was just a small container but nicely hidden Cromwell's Walk 7 http://coord.info/GC36MEQ is the final part of a series in the Sankey Valley which I am sure we will be completing at some point.

Peace Centre

After completing the cache we headed off to the hospital to do our afternoon visit. When we got back to Warrington though we were greeted to this sight.

We hadn't expected the pups to arrive for another week or so. Fen had had 7 pups, sadly one of them had died but the rest are doing well. The dilemma then was that we had to be back in Nottingham by Tuesday and we were undecided as to how well two day old pups would travel. Thankfully after a chat with a vet we were assured that there wouldn't be a problem. Needless to say mum and pups travelled well and are now well and truly settled back here in Nottingham.

The only dilemma now is which one are we going to keep!

So, as I said, still not much in the way of caching news. Hopefully out later today to do a few, we still have a few of stormjak's to complete as well as some a little further afield that look good, including the Erewash Valley Trail series http://coord.info/GC39YEC

Hopefully more caching news next week.

Puzzles and Christmas Caching

Firstly, happy new year. Only 3rd January and it seems that the celebrations were months ago!

Puzzles

My latest puzzle cache Sweethearts http://coord.info/GC3858A seems to be causing a few problems for people. It was published on 29th November and so far has only been found once. Now that I am only putting puzzles out I do find that it is much more fun getting a log occasionally than them coming in constantly. It shows that people have taken their time to work at them and makes me appreciate them more for having done so.

And so to our Christmas caching.....


The plan had been to have a quiet christmas and new year here in Nottingham, do a fair bit of caching and walking, but as the old saying goes, the best layed plans etc. Keiths Mum was taken in to hospital up in Warrington and it was touch or go for a while as to how things were going to go, so we have ended up spending quite a bit of time up there. We didn't have the GPS with us as we rushed up although we did have the phones. However, bad weather and lack of light meant no caching happened.


A couple of days before Christmas Mum was transferred over to the regional burns unit at Whiston hospital. Again this meant we spent more time visiting than anything else. However, we were determined to do a cache on Christmas Day and it just so happened that there was one not too far from the hospital car park.
Henley Park http://coord.info/GC2RNGQ was a great little hide and container. It just cemented the fact that people don't have to go to a lot of expense or trouble constructing intricate hides to plant something decent, and then beg for favourite points. A different container in a well used park, which even when the gardeners are in full flow they wouldn't locate is the kind of cache that deserved a favourite for its simplicity.

That was to be our last cache of 2011 bringing last years total finds to 428.


Yesterday saw us teaming up with stormjak to attempt a couple of new local caches that have appeared over the last few weeks. On our way to them we met up with skybluebazza who was in the area doing a few other caches. We invited him to tag along with us to bag these two new ones. They were a couple of fun caches, well worth doing if you get a chance, and both deserving of fave points as far as we were all concerned.

Checking coords




Wemnog Goes Down










I am sure that there will be some good caches from this guy over the next few months.

I have now transferred the caching interviews that I have done previously to a separate page on the blog and these will continue to be updated over the course of 2012.

That's it for this brief one.

All the very best for the coming caching year.