27 Feb 2012

Coffee, Caching Calendar and More

1089


Coffee

So here I am up to 1089 caches. It has slowed down considerably from that mad rush to get to 1000. The birth of the puppies and subsequent looking after them has slowed things down significantly. However, things should be on the up again now as five of the puppies are now sold and will be going to their new homes over the next few days and we are keeping one of them.

At the weekend we held a very busy event at Costa Coffee in the city. It gave locals and visitors to the area the chance to get to know one another as well as cache in the city. There was also a new TB hotel cache published to coincide with the event.


City Centre Caching & Coffee

It was good to see some of the regular faces, as well as some new local cachers as well as some who had travelled from further afield. Nottingham is certainly getting a decent influx of new cachers at the moment which is good, and we are getting some new cache placements from them as well, which is great for the area.

Caching Calendar

It's strange how some things that have never bothered you in the past suddenly come to the forefront and become an important part of your caching career!
Over the last couple of weeks I have become slightly obsessed with completing my caching calendar. Making sure that I have done at least one cache on each date of the year. This has probably been brought on by the fact that the leap day events are coming up. I missed out on filling in February 2nd this year, but I am determined to fill in all the spaces now and so (hopefully) will have the thing completed by this time next year. I have 134 days to still fill in.

There are loads of leap year events going on, including my own breakfast event Breakfast 29 http://coord.info/GC3ARBV

If you haven't seen the souvenir that Groundspeak have made for the occasion there is a picture of it below.



Interview With A Cacher

I have just added a new interview on the pages. This time the interview is with seasoned geocacher Mollyjak. She is based in Wales and had a lot to do with the organisation of Mega 2011 as well as organising her own events to coincide with the main event. You can often meet up with her at events, and people attending Piratemania V will no doubt bump in to her and her husband, along with their very popular parrot, well you have to have one at a pirate event don't you?


Mollyjak


Caches

Over the last few weeks we have found a decent amount of caches, both locally and further afield. The one that stood out for me though since I last blogged was one that I found along with Wemnog and MFB Tracker.The Miners Lamp, a cache placed by Nedwobs Navigators http://coord.info/GC21ZMW to us to a miners memorial dedicated to all the men, women and children who worked at the local mine.

Each brick in the memorial wall has the name of one of those people carved on to it. The miners lamp is continually lit and is one of the best memorials that I have seen for a long time. If you are in that area, it is well worth a visit. Just stand and read the names and contemplate for a while as to what those people went through in order to bring coal to the surface.



Latest Trackable

I am almost ready (this weekend) to order the next version of the Border Collie trackable. This time it will be slightly different and isn't being produced by Oakcoins. I have found a different manufacturer who have recently formed and they are producing some excellent new designs. More of them at a later date. This time the trackable will be numbered from 1/100 to 100/100 to make it a little more collectable. However, it will be the same picture, but this time in photographic form and it will have the same icon.

Border Collie Trackble Version 3 ready soon
Until next time, I hope that you manage to make it to a leap day event, or at least to grab a cache on the day so that you can get the souvenir. The weather is brightening up now and the clocks will change soon, so all in all, it's good times for all us cachers. Have fun.                                                                                                                                                                                    

9 Feb 2012

Good Times, Socials and Sad News

1062

So since I last blogged we have had some good times with a few decent cache finds. Of course, since then we have had some snow, so obviously there had to be a bit of snow caching in the mix.

One nice little series of three that we did here in Nottingham was The Undiscovered Trio http://coord.info/GC3A7EF only a short walk but with a nice sized container at the end of it. It was a bit misty on the day we went but on a good day there should be some decent views.


Misty cache walk

Two caches found only yesterday are worthy of a mention, Hedgerow Hunt http://coord.info/GC1GYAW as it is another cache that gives you good views and is a decent size, followed by Great Northern Cache No.1 - Awsworth Junction. http://coord.info/GCNEK8 this is another nice old cache that has stood the test of time.

One very near FTF was Can't-Do-It http://coord.info/GC3BY5A ~ well when I say near FTF quite a few had beaten us to it, but we were all within half an hour or so of each other.



Near Awsworth Junction cache

Events and Socials

A nicely attended social took place the other night between the Notts Geocacher group and the Geocaching Midlands GeM Facebook group. As well as some regular faces it was nice to meet up with some new ones including mono78v, CelineM, skybluesbazza, Spire67, Keith1947 and not forgetting stormjak and MFB Tracker. A new cache was published for the occasion and it was quite funny to see everyone sat very politely, trying not to rush out to get FTF on it. When they rushed out en masse they were almost beaten to it by another cacher who then popped in for a pint.

Northking had generously donated some containers which were shared out at the event as well.

I have planned two actual events as well. One to enable people who can't cache or attend events later in the day is set for February 29th. Breakfast 29 http://coord.info/GC3ARBV is an early meet. For those that don't know, anyone caching, or attending an event on that date will get an official souvenir to add to their profiles.

The other event has been organised to get people to cache in the city centre here in Nottingham. There are some decent caches to be had within the city. City Centre Caching & Coffee http://coord.info/GC3BX3Z is being held upstairs at the main Costa's coffee shop in the city. People can meet up and do the regular event type things before going off to grab the local caches.

Sad News

Well I guess it's not that sad for anyone else but us, but it is only another couple of weeks before the puppies will be ready to leave us. Their characters are really coming out now and it would be nice to keep them all. However, they have to go.

So if anyone is interested in a Border Collie pup, and has the time and committment to spend on a dog that needs a lot of walking (ideal caching companion) as well as plenty of attention to give then contact me by leaving a message on this blog.




Some Stats


I decided to start looking at the favourite points that I had awarded the other day and a little more about them. Looking back through them it brought back some memories. I just have to now decide out of all of them if I do really have one top favourite - so far.

1062 distinct caches

So far I have awarded 72 favourite points

60 for traditional caches
6 for puzzles/unknown caches

1 for a virtual
2 for multis and
3 for Earthcaches

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Regionally


38 to caches in the East Midlands

12 to the North West

9 to North Wales
6 to South Wales
2 to London
2 to Southern England
1 to the South East

1 to the South West and
1 to the West Midlands



Until next time~
Carry on caching.