Firth of Forth

Plenty of cycle hire shops in and around Oxford, this link should be a good starting point for your search. Brilliant. Thanks.

thanks for all the suggestions.first week of June. They have plenty of time to spruce up the city just for me edit: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...f6-220986cea3a9 ooh yes - looks tasty. I presume river is not toxic? The water here is like clear black tea and drinking quality - I see you guys like yours with milk The rivers where i grew up in Sydney though were labelled unsafe for swimming Jack Aubrey and I may well be in Oxford May 30th to June 1st too, as I have a reunion to go to. The canal walk (or can we hire bikes?) looked ideal and around 20 caches to collect too! In fact, there is a multi that starts at tthe pub where our reunion is going to take place - how handy is that?

Thanks FF - didn't know about that. I hope you don't mind - I've started a new thread there (see here ) to try and get an answer from GC.com, without everyone waffling on about how non-PM members can log them! Lets see if everyone sticks to the point this time!!! No Bother. I hope you get some kind of answer this time. I have to admit I gave up as the discussion seemed to be going around in circles.

I requested this a long time ago on the relevant forum. It got a mixed response. See here No response from g.com either.

We no longer have counties in Scotland. We now have 32 'unitary authorities' which can be found: here However, since these boundaries may be subject to the whim of any future Scottish government, it may be safest to use the old counties list, even though the counties were 'abolished' in 1975. here

My son had a TB that appeared in a cache in Perth, Australia just a few weeks before we were due to go there. I asked for it to remain in the cache until we got there, but someone picked it up just before we visited and took the TB to South Africa to place it in a cache....which was promptly muggled and the TB gone forever.

And Hi from Edinburgh (at home), and from Fife when I'm at work tomorrow! You might also want to check out the Scottish/Irish geocaching forums a bit closer to home. They can be found in this list

Night caching is a lot of fun. It adds another dimension to the experience. The ECG (Edinburgh Cache Gang - Haggis Hunter, roolku, Jack Aubrey and myself) try to organise one once a year. We start at the first cache about 7pm, cache through the night and return home at dawn to sleep after watching the sunrise. Luckily around May there are only 4 or 5 hours of darkness up here. A good head torch is an essential bit of equipment.

Haggis Hunter, roolku and myself were on a night caching spree in Perth a couple of years ago. We had been searching for a micro near a statue on the North Inch, and I guess a curtain twitcher thought we looked suspicious and phoned the police. As we were walking back from another cache on the Inch, a police van pulled alongside us and we were asked what we were up to. A simple explanation that we were geocaching and the response was "Oh we've heard of that" and they went off.

My vista has done this quite a lot as it has aged. Good idea to try bending the contacts out a wee bit. Won't help mine unfortunately, as it has developed a much worse problem.

There's lots of good common sense in the replies to your post, Moote. If you feel awkward around a children's play park as a single male cacher, then don't do those caches. There are many situations in which it is sensible not to pursue a cache. An example springs to mind when HH, roolku and I were out on a night caching spree and abandoned one because we didn't want to start the dogs barking at a nearby farm and thus cause alarm to the residents. It's not sensible either, however, to place a ban on or discourage caches in certain locations just because some cachers in some circumstances may arouse suspicion. We may as well all give up the hobby. We have to let cachers judge themselves what it is appropriate. And inevitably, we sometimes will have to explain ourselves to the police (as HH roolku and I had to do on another night in a park area in Perth). Mind you, the headtorches made us look highly suspicious!

Just wondering if there is a particular reason for archiving so many caches in one go?

There are some really wonderful photos on this thread and on the other thread that Ninjapete linked to, which I had missed. There was mention on that other thread of some way of setting up a photo gallery. Does anyone have the skills/ knowhow to do something like that so that cachers could submit photos - a bit like the BBC Scotland readers photos ?

OH! I could post endlessly on this thread Autumn at The Carse of Gowrie Firth of Forth sunset - courtesy of Jack Aubrey Forth rail bridge Scottish Highlands Patagonia - courtesy of Jack Aubrey But the best of all - courtesy of Yob Kulcha: Forth Bridges

Mrs B... I thnk this is the best thing that has been posted on here in ages... PLEASE can we let the dust settle? Amen to that - except perhaps the quiet period might last till 2nd January? Or, even better, until after the Committee have met

From the little experience I have of seeing others organise events, this same problem occurs frequently. A huge, and sometimes argumentative, debate is had about which date would be best. This can become so disheartening that those doing the organising end up wondering why they bothered to volunteer. The fact is that you CANNOT please everyone, no matter how hard you try. The best thing is just to let the committee get on with organising the event, let them decide on a date, and give them as much support as possible. My advice for any future event organisers is just to set a date and then announce it! PS I will come whenever it is! Edited to add: Snap G Force!

I and my partner, Jack Aubrey, will do our best to attend depending on the date.

It's not an uncommon experience as I know several cachers whose TBs have turned up a long time after going MIA. One of mine was 'kidnapped' from a cache on Vancouver Island so I certainly never expected to see it again, but it turned up in a cache many months later and is still going strong now.

This doesn't seem to be working for me lately. Does anyone else have the same problem? Has g.com done yet another upgrade to mess it up?

Can you do caches along a route that aren't along a road?? That would be very useful for planning long distance walks, but I thought it was only along roads.

I wouldn't poke around in Dublin without a stick...the level of drug use there is obvious when caching. And the same applied in Australia...for different reasons

Doh!!!! Hey Nick, you're not the only one. I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore!

No, it's St Andrew's Day. Time to get the tartan out.

That's different as you said you archived it rather than temporarily disabling it. I assume you contacted the reviewers to unarchive it later. What were talking about is the temporary disabling of caches, not archiving them and re-animating them later. Anyway, there's nothing heavy handed about giving a few weeks for maintenance and then making enquiries. There are caches that may need disabling for a while longer, but not as many as all that. If there were no rules then there'd be chaos. Actually that was a misuse of the word. I didn't archive it, but I did temporarily disable it, and rightly so. If I had archived it I risked losing the cache spot (in fact another cache did appear nearby while it was disabled) and a lot of work that had gone into producing a multicache.

Months??? They’re not very good reasons on the whole, which is why the reviewers drop in their reminders. Agreed, if they’re at the top of a mountain (the caches, not the reviewers) then it takes time, but we’re not really talking about that in general. If someone’s got time to hunt, they’ve got time to maintain. It may be worth citing the guidelines: “As the cache owner, you are also responsible for physically checking your cache periodically, and especially when someone reports a problem with the cache (missing, damaged, wet, etc.). You may temporarily disable your cache to let others know not to hunt for it until you have a chance to fix the problem. This feature is to allow you a reasonable time – normally a few weeks – in which to arrange a visit to your cache. In the event that a cache is not being properly maintained, or has been temporarily disabled for an extended period of time, we may archive or transfer the listing. It may be difficult to fulfill your maintenance obligations if you place a cache while traveling on vacation or otherwise outside of your normal caching area. These caches may not be published unless you are able to demonstrate an acceptable maintenance plan. It is not uncommon for caches to go missing, areas to be cleared, trails to be blocked or closed, objects used for multi-cache or puzzles to be moved or removed, etc. Your maintenance plan must allow for a quick response to reported problems.” Yes, I am familiar with the guidelines - which are guidelines - and active cachers do their best, on the whole, to maintain their caches. And there still are some very good reasons why it may take longer than a few weeks. One of my caches had to be archived for several months as it was impossible to get access to it while a construction site opened up in front of it. I think that if you get too heavy handed about cache maintenance then caching will cease to be a pleasant activity for those who join.