Cachez

I don’t do swaps in caches. The vast majority I’ve come across have been worthless tat and in a lot of cases, just actual rubbish. I remove the worst of it if I can (sticks, gum, leaves, business cards, religious literature). I’ve put decent trinkets in my own caches when I’ve placed them but most people seem to just take and not replace so I don’t bother now.

I am having this problem too. Both today and when I tried to do it last week. Same error message. EDIT: Just updated Garmin Express on my laptop and it seems to have solved it. I hadn't realised it wasn't the latest version.

Here too. Can't get onto it at all.

OK, horses for course, I suppose. Because of the location and terrain which are unusual in central London, we thought that was the best course of action for that particular cache at the time.

We thought we were in the right place, we weren't sure and as GZ is covered by water a couple of times a day, we wanted to flag up that we'd been there and checked but it might be missing.

Yes, I agree. There doesn't seem to be quite the antipathy towards power trails in the UK, though there aren't that many. One of the larger trails, the Essex Way, which covered 80-odd miles, was archived a couple of years back but it seemed most people who did the whole thing made a point of doing it in a week or so and camping along the way.

I log a DNF if I've been to GZ, searched for an appropriate length of time dictated by whether it's urban or rural that and not found anything. If I've been unable to search for any reason I either log nothing or a write note. Another cacher and I recently tried to find a D3.5/T4.5 on the shore of the Thames in London while the tide was out which involved climbing under and up part of the structure of a wharf. We couldn't find it and we were fairly sure we were in the right place so we did a write note until we could confirm with the CO.

I can post on the UK geocaching Facebook page if needed. I don't think a lot of UK cachers use the forum.

I wasn't selected and as I hadn't even thought that I might be, I'm fine with it. What is disappointing though is seeing the sniping and moaning about it. I genuinely do not give a toss how people were chosen and it's a big shame that there's such ill-feeling towards some of the people who have been.

Possibly my worst was losing my car keys while on a rural trail about 45 mins from home in December. I'd finished the trail and was heading back along an unlit country road to get my car (lone woman) when I suddenly realised my keys were no longer in my pocket. It was nearly dark so there was no point in retracing my steps. So I went to the pub in the village where my car was and tried to get a taxi back to where I thought I might have lost them. No hope - it was the week before Christmas in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the pub was only open because it was doing a Christmas party for some local farmers. The landlord very kindly took me back in his car to look for the keys but no luck. It was too far to walk home, no public transport and my husband was at an event and not contactable. The only person I could think to call was my neighbour and I felt terrible about it as she had recently been in remission with cancer, and it was a Saturday night. Fortunately, she was lovely about it and didn't hesitate to come and pick me up. Meanwhile, the pub gave me a drink on the house and made sure I had transport home. The next day, my husband and I drove up to pick up the car and decided to have a quick look for the keys. Found them in about two minutes flat. I always zip my keys in my bag or a pocket now. However, I did end up setting a trail of caches in the area.

Oh yes, and in this case I had looked at the logs. Although there were a couple of DNFs here and there, I didn't see any reason to suspect that quite so many of them had disappeared. Though on some trails in rural areas, caches can go for quite a while between finds. I did post NMs on all the ones where there was a problem which I assume was what alerted the CO to the issue. Ah well, onwards and upwards!

What has irked me this weekend is doing a six mile trail of 15 caches and finding five of them were either missing or in need of attention. I got to a point where I could do the last two and risk them being DNFs too or give up. I gave up. Posted all my logs and very shortly after, the CO disabled the lot saying they would be reworked. I'm possibly being slightly unreasonable about this but I was irked that they appeared to have let maintenance slide, but been jogged into action by my logs. It feels like I wasted the better part of a day looking for a bunch of caches which weren't there. I realise that part of my irkedness is related to my own expectations - I have had a difficult time at work recently and was looking forward to a satisfying and isolated caching walk to clear my mind a bit.

I liked the encouragement to get people to drop those TBs they might have been holding onto for the last year...

I hid my first cache about three months after starting caching. I don't remember how many I had found by then but my first hiding place turned out to be a poor choice as it was overlooked by houses. The cache went missing after a couple of finders reported a resident making a point of watching them as they looked for it. It was a learning experience for me and two years later, I have 53 hides. TBH, the quiz isn't all that helpful as I think you need a combination of common sense and experience. I still wouldn't want to see a restriction on newbie cachers hiding though as how else do people learn?

I found a TB in a cache in Monterey which wasn't logged into the cache but was still in someone's ownership. Oddly, that person hadn't even logged the cache, but had logged others since so god knows how the TB got there. I grabbed it off them, 'dropped' it in the cache, then retrieved it. I messaged the person who had the TB in their inventory but never got any reply.

I've found a couple like this where the ammo box has been stolen and the contents left behind. I've logged a find and an NM.

Over here, a cache & dash just means you can park right by where the cache is, or it's very easily accessible. Good for people doing certain challenges, or those who want to grab a cache while out on a trip but don't have time to hike 10 miles.

I don't think it's a smartphone thing. I think it's a people being thoughtless thing.

We cached in France and Spain and most of the caches we looked at were in those languages. I'd translate them and paste into a note on my phone before we went out so I had it handy if we did some caching while we were out. We did do a few which I hadn't translated and we managed to pick up at least the hint with just a rudimentary grasp of both languages. In Norway and Iceland, all the caches were in English or had English translations. More touristy areas tend to include English descriptions too. I did find that data on my phone in some rural areas was non-existent, so don't rely on a phone.

It irks me that all the London tube and train stations have been removed from the GC map.

If I'm being honest too, I wouldn't be that happy with a cache right outside my house. In the case I mentioned, the garden had a high fence with a gate backing onto woodland and a footpath right next to it. People in the house wouldn't even see cachers unless they were looking out of the gate and there would be a lot of people walking past anyway, especially in the summer. I generally try and avoid putting caches in overlooked residential areas but in Greater London it's not always avoidable, especially if you're placing a cache somewhere for a reason (as opposed to just sticking one there for the sake of it). Oddly though, I've found some in very rural areas that somehow manage to be placed within direct view of the only house for miles.

Depends where I am and who's asking. We were caught finding a cache in a bit of woodland behind someone's house. The owner was working in the garden and came out because he thought we had lost something and was going to help. I explained geocaching and he was really excited, saying he'd introduce it to his kids. On another occasion, I was asked by someone who clearly thought I was up to no good, so I just told her I'd dropped a contact lens as I suspected she would sabotage the cache if she saw me find it.

I always read the descriptions. I find it odd that people don't. I do also always read the hint, particularly for urban caches.

Nice idea, but I can't get it to work. Unknown server issue. Odd. It works for me. Maybe a temporary glitch.

You could try Project GC's TB Rescue: http://project-gc.com/Tools/TBRescue