Rum Coffee and A Flash

821

It's been a busy old week, with not a lot of geocaches found! Having said that there is a lot to get through.

Arrrarggghhhhhh

Rum

A pirates favourite drink! Wemnog and I attended our first Piratemania event over the weekend. Not having attended any previous ones we were unsure what to expect, apart from a lot of fun. http://coord.info/GC2NYZG Sadly we couldn't camp for the weekend so attended as day visitors on the Saturday. We arrived at the event to be greeted by some extremely friendly pirates, parrots and some cabin dogs. Although we didn't do much caching it was great to meet up with a load of fellow cachers, some familiar faces and to make lots of new friends. We missed out on a few as well though who were busy finding all the new caches that had been put out for the weekend.
There are loads of photos available and even some videos.

Warrington Cacher and Walkerclan flags

The campsite itself was an amazing sight, with flags flying everywhere, we saw Jolly Roger's, team flags, forum flags and personal tracking flags. Next year we will definately attend for the whole weekend. Congratulations must be given to the organisers who were very pleased to be able to announce that the event had had enough visitors to make it a MEGA event. All in all a brilliant weekend and the first MEGA that I have attended. I can't wait to see what the souvenir looks like.

On car and flag TB's alone we logged over 50 discovered's!

There was even a real pirates parrot attending!

Captain's Parrot

Flash

Although we couldn't stay overnight we did pop back over to the event again on the Sunday to drop some more TB's off for people to move on. We were also passing as we were on our way to Ashbourne to attend the final bit of Piratemania, a flash mob in the main square in Ashbourne.  Pointy Pirates FM http://coord.info/GC2ZQB6 consisted of a huge number of cachers meeting up and on the sound of the horn pointing skywards with a lot of suitable arrrrhaaarring! There were plenty of bemused muggles around wondering what the hell a load of people dressed as pirates and some dressed as landlubbers were pointing at. The flash mob video is above. 



Gathering For The Flash Mob





Coffee

After the flash mob ended it was time to head over to Sheffield to another event, Coffee & Caching http://coord.info/GC2Z8MN we arrived and couldn't find anyone in the designated spot. I did have the phone number of a fairly new geocacher Tank 0115 who had also decided to attend from Nottingham. I phoned him and we met up and had our coffee and a long chat about geocaching. Still no one turned up, very strange. Then just as Tank 0115 was about to leave another couple asked if we were geocachers so we had a chat with them. As we were about to leave the organiser of the event turned up, now 2 hours later than the planned start. Unfortunately we had to leave quite soon so after signing the logbook and swapping trackables we headed home.

On arriving home and logging the event we noticed that the organiser had posted a note at the last minute saying that he had altered the time from 1.30pm to 3.30pm, not very helpful when people had travelled some distance and didn't have any way of reading late notifications.

Caches

As I said, not many actual cache finds this week. We intend going back to do the Piratemania caches in the next couple of weeks, and there are plenty to do which we are really looking forward to.

Earlier in the week we did find Henry (The Iron Man) http://coord.info/GC1PPEC which was a great little cache not far from Sheffield City Centre. The statue isn't actually at GZ but was quite a sculpture to look at.

Henry (The Iron Man)

Another find was Lamins of Shearsby. A cache in a churchyard. You don't find many of those around these days. This was placed well before the rules regarding consecrated ground came in and was put out back in 2004 http://coord.info/GCKNZ6 The only other notable find of the week was on of old caching friends Fly2live2fly. Over in Bruntingthorpe Steve's Aviation Cache #1 Bruntingthope Vulcan http://coord.info/GC1KVBB was a quick find after dropping some cars off at the nearby airfield. I would have loved to take some photos of all the planes but sadly photography wasn't allowed.


Other News

I had planned to tell you a lot of other news this week but think you will be getting bored if I go on too much, so as promised last week,

Have you ever had one of your caches muggled? You know the feeling, frustration, anger etc. etc. A bunch of German cachers were having their placements muggled frequently. So much so that they decided to band together. What they discovered was that it was the same person doing the muggling. Rather than me going in to too much detail on the blog, have a look at this. http://sonntagsrudel.amshove.net/ There is a link on there to an English version for you to read.

Photographs

If you enjoy taking photographs when you are out caching and they end up just getting stored on your computer once you are home, why not think about sharing them online?

I have been using a site called Daily Booth for a while. This used to be just for my own photos. I have now shut that down and started again, using it just for geocaching photos. It would be great if we could get a bunch of cachers from around the world joining up to post their caching adventures online. If you don't have the time or inclination to write a blog it is a great way of showing others what you have been up to. You can find my booth at http://dailybooth.com/JacaruGeocaching/17584569 It may be called Daily Booth, but there isn't a stipulation that you have to put a photograph on there daily. You can follow people, just as with Facebook or Twitter. Let me know if you decide to join and I will start following you.

N2N

More entries have been arriving for the race, we now have 14 UK entries so far and 11 US entries with more promised. With just over a month to go I am really pleased with the way this has taken off. If you haven't entered but still wish to do so, don't forget to let me have your TB as soon as you can.

Next Week ~ Our Top 10 Caching Bag Essentials.

Happy caching.

Drought, The GAGB News, New In The Shop and New Caches

Drought

Somewhat of a caching drought again this week for Wemnog and myself. What started off as a good idea of trying to get one cache a day didn't quite work out and over the last few days we have only found two. The two found were local caches and both drive by's. You Cannot Be Serious, http://coord.info/GC2GCHK as you may imagine from the title this one was near a tennis court.

The second and final cache of the week was another Northking cache, this time, http://coord.info/GC2FPAK one of the nationwide A Road Anarchy series, as you can probably imagine though, this, being a Northking cache, was situated a little differently.

The reason for the drought this last few days has been purely ill health. Neither of us has felt on top of the world and it is only today that we are feeling 95% well. We are going to have to be well by Friday though as we are off down to London to see Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Naturally, there are already some London caches loaded on to the GPS for the Saturday. Last year when down there with work we did a few caches on Hampstead Heath, as we are staying for the weekend we plan on doing some more on the heath on the Sunday so some of those are loaded on as well. We have one particular target for a heath cache and that is this one Stinky Hollow http://coord.info/GCF011 The reason that we want to get to this one is that it is one of the checkpoint caches for the NW/SE Travelbug Race this year, you can see more here http://www.jeremy-r.com/geocaching/tbrace11/ Our caching friend Angellica has a TB in the race and she started its travels in our home cache The TARDIS http://www.jeremy-r.com/geocaching/tbrace11/ and seeing that we are going to be near a checkpoint, it only seemed right to drop it off.

Hopefully, by the time we get back after next weekend there will be lots of fresh caches to tell you about.

GAGB News
A new chatroom for members of the GAGB was set up recently and is becoming a popular place to frequent, you can find it here http://www.chatzy.com/369171531960 It is free to join in and if you have a few minutes to spare a great place to go and have a natter with fellow cachers from around the UK.
We have just taken delivery of a new GAGB banner which you will be seeing out and about at events over the next few months, it will definately be at the Welsh Mega http://www.megawales.co.uk/ Keep an eye out for it and see what is occuring on the GAGB stand. The banner is trackable as well, so will be another one to add to your collection.

The all new GAGB newsletter will be online for members as well in the next few weeks. It is just in the process of being proof read. I have been lucky enough to see the close to final draft and all I can say is that I think our members will be really pleased with it. If you aren't already a member of the GAGB have a look at us and see what you think http://www.gagb.org.uk/

New In The Shop

A while ago I did say that I would let blog readers know what was going to be in the Ebay shop before anyone else.  As I haven't had anything new for a while this really didn't work.
However, I can now tell you about some newish and new things that are going to be in, if they aren't already.
Firstly we have been producing self inking rubber stamps for a few years now. Up until recently we haven't had stamps that we considered small enough for geocachers to carry around with them. Now we do. Good for 10,000 impressions and small enough to keep in you caching bag, us two are already using them.
We also have personalised keyrings in, basically, you tell us what you want on the keyring and we will make them up for you. Ideal for dropping in caches that you are going to add a favourite point to or just to have you caching name on. I drop them in to caches with the blog address on.

Sadly, I only have one First To Find card game to put in the shop. I am hoping that some more will be in stock shortly. This is a fun game, I played it myself over Christmas and was quite impressed with it. The object of the game, which is for two to four people to play is to geocache through the seasons, whilst coming up against obstacles.

I am awaiting delivery of a small batch of Gladiator coins as well. These have been on order for a while and this week I had confirmation that they should be here within a few days. These are lovely coins and I am impressed with them, what do you think?

New Caches

There have been some new caches published over the last few days, one on the hit list that we are still working on. I know this name crops up a lot in the blog, but I'd just like to say thanks Northking for the additional headache given to us whilst feeling ill. We have spent a few hours staring at the screen to try and get this one http://coord.info/GC2MEQA Capital Search 2. Now we did CS 1 pretty quickly, but this one is frustrating us. As I said, as much as anything I blame being ill!

Puzzles do seem to be taking the lead around this area of the country at the moment, a few people are putting them out. Not being able to resist, I have put one out myself Top Of The Pops http://coord.info/GC2MKKA not as detailed as some of the puzzles out there, this just takes a bit of pop knowledge and a bit of googling.
I do have another puzzle raring to go, it has been approved by the reviewers, I'm not putting it out just now though as it will be in the same area as another fun cache that is in the final stages of preparation. Hopefully people will enjoy them both, more news on those once they are published. I am also considering sorting out a Flash Mob with a difference, after seeing one that is happening in London. I contacted the people organising that one and asked whether they would be happy for me to copy their idea. There were more than happy to agree, so that one is on the cards.

Finally

That's it for this week, I'm sorry that there aren't more photos for you to look at, next week, after London should be a lot more entertaining. Most of the caches that I have put on to the GPS for us to do contain a warning about the police, so I wonder whether we will get stopped at any point. Knowing us two, yes we will!

The blog will be slightly later next week as we aren't home until Monday evening. Have a good week, try not to catch the lurghi and happy caching.