figures

I thought I was the slow one, Colin? As I remember, you were out in front a lot of the way. As others have said, an excellent day with excellent company. Melray have put a lot of work into this. The hides, due to the nature of this series, were easy, but still a lot of effort had gone into the hides themselves. Highly recommended. Warning: you may suffer the following day (I currently don't think I can get down the stairs!)

Maybe it was what was causing the GC slowdown as GC site seems faster today

Some people use GPS enabled PDA systems they've bought off ebay. I'm probably not the best person to ask on those as I don't use one but others should be able to give you advice Then there are dedicated handheld GPS devices, of which the market leaders are Garmin and to a lesser extent Magellan (and some others). With the Garmin's you need to have a Colorado, Oregon, Dakota or Montana to have proper paperless facilities. New those cost a lot more than £100 and I'm not sure if you could get one second hand for £100. There are tricks you can do with more basic models to get hints in cache titles but they are cludges and involve extra steps. I think Magellan and other makers are similar in terms of pricing. My advice is that if you're enjoying caching, save up and buy the best unit you can get. Also check out your local cache meets as there might be someone selling an old unit / willing to go out caching with you.

This is something I just don't get. I have friends who don't like puzzles, I have friends who hate series, or certain types of caches (Off Your Trolley, Sidetracked, etc.) And what they do is ignore those, only do the ones they want. How is this any different? And before you say "there's no cache in a challenge cache", there's no cache in an earthcache, or an old virtual, yet I see those actively supported being listed on GC.com. I don't see people deleting their old virtual and locationless logs because those aren't 'proper' caches. Surely variety is the spice of life. Challenges take nothing away and are the opportunity to open something new. If you don't like them, don't do them. The only conclusion I can come to about the furore is that it's about numbers. It's that worry that somehow someone will armchair log, 'find' more than you and it mean 'something'. Now don't get me wrong, I am a numbers cacher, but really... number of finds means nothing more than a bit of banter down the pub. It gives things a competitive edge and motivates me to go out and do them. I'm proud of the finds I've got but if someone armchair logged more, I don't see how it takes away from my accomplishment. I'd be slightly annoyed to be pushed down the league table but that kinda happens now with people who cache in ways I don't feel that are in the spirit of the game. But I don't sit there and moan, I use that time to go out there and play the game my way and find more caches. It's all about having a bit of fun, isn't it (and heaven knows, these days we all need a bit of fun in our lives). It's not like geocaching actually means anything more than a fun hobby / sport. I agree that Geocaching Challenges was poorly launched, but that's happened now. The important thing is to set challenges you feel are worthy. If you think the "take a photo with X" isn't challenging enough... put one out there you feel is worthy. Get creative and let's see what sort of fun and mayhem (in a positive way) we can create.

So are you saying that ideally challenges should NOT be challenging? Maybe they should have called them something else? Rgds, Andy Well, challenging is unquantifiable. What's challenging to one, isn't to another. I honestly think that with challenges they were trying to go for a cross between virtuals and the likes of FB places / 4square / gowalla. With those you just "check in" (although some have game mechanisms). I've tried them and found them a little dull for my liking but millions of people play it. So for those people, going to a place and having to take a picture or actually DO something is a bit more of a challenge.

Is someone going to get into 'trouble' climbing on the lion though? Maybe put ther head in its mouth instead? The way I think (and other opinions exist, this is just my view) a challenge would work best is like this: I go to town X for the day for some non-geocaching related purpose. I find I have 5 minutes spare, load up the app on my phone and see there's a challenge just round the corner. I should be able to go there, see something cool / iconic / informative, and complete the challenge with minimum of fuss. Trouble is that if it's simple, people will cheat. If it's too hard people won't do it. It should be fun and possibly a little silly, bring a smile to their day. I like Doresetgal's challenges in London but I see how many people are cheating. I err on the side of, "if people cheat, they cheat themselves". That said, I think there's more cheating going on in the capital as those cheaters are less likely to type places like "Amersham" into the search. Hopefully once the majority of cheaters get their fill, things will calm down.

26 currently with their location as "sitting in front of my computer..." Amateur! If I was armchair logging, I'd be well over 70 by now!

I'm gonna say for the sake of anyone that logs after you... yes, you have to be clothed ;-)

Archived before I could see it, but I can hazard a guess. *rolls eyes in disbelief* The level of cheating (and by cheating, I mean really cheating) amuses me no end (in a 'I can't believe they did that' kinda way). I've just seen one called Hug a Bear which refers to some physical statue somewhere, only for a cacher to complete it by posting a picture of Bear Grylls. Then there is the 'Meet A Lackey' challenge where someone has photoshopped (badly) themselves next to Jeremy. I must admit that when people get all "cache police" or "Daily Mail" about things, I tend to get annoyed. I don't worry how other people cache, what they do or don't do different to my perception of what's acceptable or not. I just concentrate on caching my 'legitimate' way (and sometimes do things to deliberately annoy those trying to be judge and jury). But this is so blatant, it's almost hysterical (in a bad way).

There's part of me that thinks there should be some sort of competition to see how many people can log 'legitimately' (as in meeting the cache owner's requirements but not necessarily Groundspeak's) without leaving your property ;-)

Whilst doing a funny walk? Just so I can plan for these things

That happened to me with my Book Challenge 'cache' at King's Cross. Reckon it's a bug

With the way some cachers are logging challenges you probably don't even need a dog, or to be bitten. I honest-to-god just saw a sensible one where you had to go to a location in Europe and cuddle up to some statue. Someone had completed it by hugging their dog instead.

Or "Hand out leaflet about God" Or "Get Bitten by Dog" And so the Solly Challenge Cache Series was born! []

They've specifically mentioned pubs in the blog article, so I guess they're saying that challenge caches don't have the same rules applied to them... any rules in fact. And I have to agree with others that the challenges I've seen go live so far have left me slightly unimpressed. I'll probably be a hypocrite and do them, but just mark them as thumbs down

I agree. These sort of challenges worry me. However if it's more a case of "Take a picture of yourself at Stonehenge" (as an example, I know there's already a virtual) where it would not be possible to place a physical cache, I see it as no worse than a good virtual. I'd personally like to see trigpoints as challenge photo caches, especially as I refuse to log ye old survey monuments more than once (just a personal preference). My other worry is that with no proximity guidelines, we'll see some locations get multiple challenges (i.e. take a picture of you running / smiling / eating a burger / etc.) There may be a case for a location having more than one challenge but it should be the exception. I tried Waymarking a while back and whilst I thought some categories were good a lot were like you say. I think the key is that just as a cache needs a reason to be placed, I think challenge caches need a reason as well, either to discover something or do something pretty unique you'd not do otherwise. That's why I think rather than just ignoring them, those who have concerns should try and set the bar. However, like any caches... one man's bad cache is another man's favourite.

No offense, Andy (you know me in person so you know this isn't a flame at you) but I hear this time and time again. I'll admit, I do really, really enjoy the numbers aspect of the 'sport'. It's what motivates me to cache. I don't expect that to hold true for everyone - we all play the game our own way. But everything gets blamed at 'numbers cachers' as if we're sat at home armchair logging, not caring about cache quality. Trust me, after a weekend I've just had where I found 174 physical caches all on my own, quality does matter (it would get pretty boring pretty quickly otherwise). Challenges will open caching to areas that have previously been closed (such as some historical buildings / monuments). From a commercial aspect it'll also allow Groundspeak to move in to territory where games such as 4square and Gowalla have made massive inroads. I too have worries about this though. One of the reasons I don't do other 'brands' of caching is because I think some of their locationless caches I've seen are a bit... well naff. And I worry that we'll see silly meaningless challenges, and as much as I want to increase my find count, it'll take some of the enjoyment out of the game. I think the answer is to create some really fun and quality challenges, both photo and action. Set the bar high for others to emulate, make them both fun and meaningful. I have an idea for a photo series which I plan to implement and I hope others will contribute challenges as well.

As I understand it from just listening to the podcast, I don't think it's exclusive to smartphones. In fact they said you can create them via their website (like you would a normal cache listing). I think they are just pushing the apps given that it's unlikely that traditional GPS will fully support challenges at launch. (They've even said you'll be unable to pocket query them at launch) UPDATE: Found this on the Groundspeak blog: "We’re also releasing a whole new set of mobile applications for Challenges, on the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7. We expect that this new activity will be primarily accessed through these free applications, though we’ll continue to support GPS devices."

Congratulations to Alibags on reaching 6000

Congratulations to Asfastasfcuk AKA Lord of the Cachers on getting his 6000th find. Only 9000 behind Solly now!

That's nothing. A couple of us doing some caches set for an event managed to find a micro in an ivy covered tree in a wood that was over 250ft out. The cache setter is a friend, so I can't be too rude http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...5f-207654e642bb Moral of the story: Never set a cache with an iPhone. I'm an apple fanboi and love my iPhone, but it's no good for accurate co-ords, and rubbish under tree cover.

Travellodge do some good deals from time to time. I was going to admonish you for wanting to go to Reading but then I've picked up a Travelodge deal for £19 to go caching in Chorley early next year, so I'm hardly in a position to criticise

Wrong end of the county ;-) but I'll try and make it

I do think that if Dr Solly ever stops caching the company that makes those LED torch keyrings is gonna go out of business

I had a virtual in London that I visited and took my picture at. But it wasn't until I got home to log it I saw it had an additional logging requirement of a question you had to email. Darn! So a combination of google streetview and flickr allowed me to find the plaque I'd ignored the night before and find out what it said.