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.