Cachez

I am female and regularly go geocaching alone in rural areas and woods (though being in the UK, the chances of me being eaten by a wild animal are relatively slim). I've often met lone men hiking or dog walking and the only exchange has been a cheery 'good morning' apart from one lovely old gent whose dog took a shine to me and we had a chat about geocaching. My partner has no problem at all with me going out alone and has never tried to tell me that it's not safe. As with everything in life, there can be some risks, but if you never do anything - or worse, allow someone else to prevent you doing things - you will never enjoy life. In all honesty, I think his objection to geocaching is far-fetched. As others have said, there are far easier ways for predators to find victims! It sounds rather as is he's generally a bit paranoid or controlling. Happy caching.

Responding to the hand grenade of 'it's just a game' thrown into these forums. I consider geocaching an enjoyable pastime which has got me out of the house and finding stuff I wouldn't have seen otherwise. While I acknowledge and adhere to the spirit of it, I cannot bring myself to take it so seriously that I get too upset about how other people play it.

I met the FTFer of my first cache while I was checking on it. Also met another cacher last weekend doing a trail near where I live. Funnily enough, I've done a few walks where it was later clear from the log online that someone had either been just in front or just behind me but never bumped into them.

My partner visits Scotland every few weeks but we're in the UK so that's probably not that much help.

People leaving stupid s*** in caches. I've found screws, nails, bottle tops, random bits of paper like receipts, bits of glass (?) and bits of gravel. For god's sake, you don't NEED to leave anything, don't just empty your pockets into the cache.

I've recently had the same thing. I logged a cache as NM on 1 August because the container was missing with all the bits left on the ground and also emailed/messaged the owner. No response, and it looks as though they might be inactive so today I stuck an NA on it. I get irritated with COs where there are numerous DNFs and NMs which seem to go unnoticed. GC3Q8V5 for example has had nothing but DNFs since the beginning of May, yet nothing has been done.

Speaking as a newish cacher, FTF is not that important to me. I had my first recently which was nice, but it was mainly luck and good timing. I would not (and mostly could not) drop everything to go out and find a new cache. It's kind of a shame if some cachers do persist in being FTF on every cache local to them rather than give others a chance though.

Just as an update to this, the owner got in touch and asked me to either post it back to him, give it to someone going to the US or drop it in a cache. I've decided to post it to him. It will only cost a couple of quid to post and I prefer this than dropping what will essentially be a piece of litter into another cache. Thanks for your advice, guys.

I found offensive messages in the actual log of a cache I found. They appeared to refer to another cacher(s) but I didn't really have time to investigate it. I was tempted to remove the page as it just seemed randomly abusive but decided to leave it for the CO and wrote on a separate page.

It's definitely just a card and there's a picture of it on the TB page. I've told the owner that it's in poor condition. I guess I was just curious as to what I should do with it if they don't respond. It seems a bit rubbish to drop a nearly illegible card in another cache just as a way of getting rid of it but if that's what needs to be done then hey ho.

Over the weekend I found a cache which had been muggled. I gathered up all the logs and what I thought was a card for a travel bug, intending to let the owner know it had gone. The card turned out to be the travel bug itself so I logged it as retrieved to flag it back up to the owner, but I'm now not sure what to do with it. It's in really poor condition as it got wet and is barely legible so I think dropping it in another cache isn't a great idea. I've contacted the owner who's in the US but what should I do with it if he doesn't respond?

Going to stick my head above the parapet here and say that as a new cacher I did this recently, thinking it was a nice thing to do and in-keeping with the spirit. However, having read this and done a bit more research into the non-responsive CO (most of whose other caches have been disabled due to non-contact with the reviewer), I won't do it again. Every day's a school day. I should add that I posted an NM and emailed the CO but got no reply.