Dan1980

Just a gentle reminder that tonight is the last night of online sales for our 2012 calendar. Don't miss out - order now: http://bit.ly/mega2012shop

There is just one week left to place orders for our 2012 calendars online - sales will close on Sunday 4th December. Don't miss out, buy online now: http://bit.ly/mega2012shop Priced at just £5, the official 2012 UK Mega Event calendar features some of the best views that the North West of England has to offer. Each photograph has been taken by a member of the UK geocaching community and was selected following the competition which we ran on the forums earlier in the year. The calendars are A4 in size with each month having its own full page. The photographs occupy half of the page, with the rest of the page being taken up by the days of the month. Important dates and bank holidays are already marked on the calendar, but there is still plenty of space to add your own special dates and appointments. The front cover features an additional three photos, whilst the inside cover includes a large map of the North West with the photograph locations marked, along with a list of the locations and nearest geocaches to where each photo was taken. Features: • Full colour • Page per month • Wire bound with hanging loop • Printed on quality matt finish card • Clear plastic front cover and card back Dimensions: Height: 297mm (approx 11¾") Width: 210mm (approx 8¼") Monthly photo preview. Click to enlarge. All proceeds from the sale of these items go directly towards funding "North West England 2012 - The 5th Annual UK Mega Event", which will be held in Cartmel, Cumbria. We are a not for profit organisation. http://bit.ly/mega2012shop

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our latest geocoin: Lancashire Full sets are still available at a discounted rate. This is how the coins look together so far: Visit us at events around North West England (and a few a little further afield) to get yours or order on-line at http://bit.ly/mega2012shop

Just to be clear Paul, this is the first post in this thread from anyone with any connection to the North West Mega, so I really don't know where you got that idea from... I've stated before that there is a clear three weeks and several hundred miles between the two events, so I don't really see them as clashing. I wish you the best of luck with your event and I would hope that you would offer the same courtesy to us rather than dreaming up conspiracy theories.

I've booked today. I'm staying in the H.Top Olympic - cheap and (hopefully) cheerful.

There's one thread advertising the geocoins and one thread announcing that the listing has been published and that registration is open. Two is hardly a multitude.

The UK Mega Event Committee invite you to the UK's Fifth Annual Mega Event, to be held in Cartmel, South Cumbria, on Saturday 11th August 2012. Visit the cache listing What is a Mega Event? As the name suggests, a Mega Event is a very large social event, set up to attract at least 500 attendees from around the globe. The first UK Mega Event in Harrogate, 2008, attracted over 900 people, and each successive year has increased that number significantly. Geocaching in the UK has now grown so much that one other recurring event in England reached Mega status in 2011, the tremendous Piratemania, and 2012 sees another event in England aiming to also hit Mega status in it's first year. This is why Mega Events placed under The UK Mega Event Committee Account will now be referred to as the Annual UK Mega. Anyway, enough semantics. Each Annual Mega has been organised with the aim of providing a range of side events leading up to the big day, including a linked Camping Event, giving a chance for attendees to make an affordable weeks holiday out of the fun, and ours will be no different. Well, that's not strictly true.... Our whole aim, since we started the planning of this event back in 2009, is to “do something different”. Cartmel is set just half a mile south of the Lake District National Park, giving plenty of scope for interesting and varied events; of which we have already confirmed a night Bat Walk, and a Balsam Bashing CITO Event with South Cumbria Rivers Trust; and we have so many more in the pipeline. The day after the event, the week's program will be brought to a close by an organised walk across Morecambe Bay, with the Queen's Guide, Cedric Robinson MBE (tides permitting). The big day itself will be at Carmel Racecourse. Even though Cartmel is a small village, they are used to thousands of visitors descending on them for the races, and we've already found their hospitality to be second to none. We are styling the event on a “Country Fair”; marquees, show ring, demonstrations and stands galore. The event is being organised with the full cooperation of the Holker Hall Estate, so there is much scope for a variety of new cache walks in the area. Should the good old British weather play up, there are indoor facilities too. We appreciate that many of you have families and partners who are not quite as “enthusiastic” about Geocaching. This was one of the things we kept in consideration when choosing our location. Cartmel has so much to offer to visitors, including it's 12th Century priory, and world famous Sticky Toffee Pudding shop. We look forward to seeing you next year, at what is shaping up to be an event to remember. If you are planning on joining us then please log a "Will Attend" on the cache listing (link near the top of this post) and also register your details with us on our website.

The text in the borders on the reverse is all in base metal (antique nickel), so it will stand out from all of the background colours. You can see how the yellow border actually looks in the photo of the Merseyside coin. It doesn't show very well on the artwork because of the colour used to denote base metal.

As you may be aware, the 5th Annual UK Mega Event will be held in North West England next year, specifically at Cartmel Racecourse, Cumbria, and we're hoping to make it a bit different to previous UK Megas, with an outdoors "country fair" feel to the event. As part of our fundraising activities, we are producing a series of Geocoins which will be released gradually over the coming year. The first five coins each represent one of the five counties that make up the region; Cumbria, Merseyside, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire. Each county coin features some of that county's most famous landmarks on the front and a list of settlements on the reverse along with an icon representing the county's emblem. The reverse of the coins also feature a poem which was specially commissioned for the set of coins. Each coin contains two lines and once the five coins are put together the poem can be read around the outside of the design: "Lakes and Mountains Seashore and Sky Coal and Cobbles Fields and Fells Cotton and Commerce Science and Industry Trains and Barges Salt and Sandstone Music and Laughter Welcome and Farewell" The tracking number has been engraved on the side of each coin so that it does not compromise the design of the coin. Each of the coins also has its own individual unique icon on Geocaching.com. Our first two coins, Cumbria and Merseyside, are now available: Cumbria Merseyside The coins will join together to form a unique large star shaped design, with the final Mega Event coin forming the centrepiece: Please note that this is the initial artwork received from our manufacturer, and as such contains a few mistakes which will be rectified before the coins go in to production! The coins are priced at £8 each, or you can buy all 6 now for just £45, receiving future coins as soon as they are released. By buying a full set now you are helping to support the financial planning of the event as well as receiving a discount on the full individual price of each coin. The final coin will be available to collect at the Mega, but we're keeping the design under wraps for now. If you are unable to attend the event the coin can be posted to you afterwards. The coins will be on sale at our Push the Button launch event in Warrington on Friday, and then at future events around the North West. Alternatively, you can also buy online from our shop where you can also find more details about the coins: http://bit.ly/mega2012shop

Just to keep everyone informed, we have now received the excellent news that Groundspeak have confirmed our Mega status for 2012! We will be organising an event in Cheshire in early August at which one lucky person will get to push the button which publishes the 2012 UK Mega Event. More details to follow shortly

We are pleased to announce the winning entries in our calendar competition. Congratulations to LollyBob, martlakes, Schnuz, jimmy-walton, Guanajuato and Pfaffabouters, who all had photographs selected and each win a copy of the calendar. The overall winner though was ferreter38, whose shot of Healey Dell wins her a geocoin as well as a copy of the calendar. It was a really difficult task narrowing all of the entries down to just 12 winners, so thanks to everyone who entered, congratulations to the winners and commiserations to those that didn't have their shots selected. Details of how you can get your hands on a calendar will be announced once they have been produced, but in the meantime you can check out the winning entries on the committee's Flickr account.

We are indeed planning a "Meet the NW committee" event, and are currently working with the Mega Wales committee to select a suitable venue and date before the event details are made public.

It depends on a number of factors. You have to remember that all of the UK reviewers are volunteers and as such have other commitments such as work and personal life. Then it depends on how many caches are in the queue, and of course if there are any problems with your cache. Our reviewers tend to be on the ball so, assuming that your cache is OK, I would say that under 24 hours is the average... but then that's just an average.

First of all, a big thank you to Deci for organising this vote - this was not the responsibility of the UK reviewers, but Dave still volunteered to set up the Ad Hoc committee on top of all of his other responsibilities. Once again you have given up your time for the UK Geocaching Community, so on behalf of everyone: "Cheers". Secondly, thanks to everyone on the previous Mega committees who voted to select our tender as the successor to Mega Wales. We are honoured to have been chosen, and will make sure that we repay the faith that has been shown in us by organising a fantastic Mega Event for you all to enjoy. Finally, my commiserations to the Geolympix committee, however I'm confident that you can organise a successful and well attended Mega without the "UK Mega Event Committee" account, and wish you the best of luck in your preparations for the event. Now we can all look forward to Mega Wales in a few months time. I hope to see you there.

I believe that the Mega Wales calendars sold out, so I'm not sure if there will be any photos of it (or the Mega Scotland one) online. The calendars are wall calendars, with each page being A4 sized. The page is split approximately in half, with the photo taking up the top half and the actual calendar month underneath. The photo sizes are approximately 7.5" (19cm) x 5.4" (13.7cm). Hope this helps!

It may only be March, but we're already looking for photographs for the 2012 North West Mega Event calendar. The format of the calendar will be the same as the Mega Scotland and Mega Wales calendars. All proceeds from the calendar will go directly towards the 2012 North West Mega Event. There is no charge to enter the competition, and each person that has one or more photographs selected will win a free copy of the calendar. In addition to this, the photo chosen as the committee's favourite will also be awarded one of our new geocoins, which will be available later in the year. To enter simply email your high-res photos to committee+calendar@mega2012.org.uk. Entries should have an outdoors and/or geocaching theme, and should have been taken in the North West of England (i.e. Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside or Cheshire). Since they are for a calendar, we ideally need photographs of all four seasons, so we're looking for crisp frosty mornings just as much as glorious sunny days. If possible, please could you include in your email the location where the photographs were taken and/or a description of the subject. The competition will be running until the end of next month, so why not take some photographs for the calendar next time you go caching? Photographs don't need to have been taken within the last year however - photos taken in previous years are just as welcome. So get snapping! Terms and Conditions 1) By entering the competition you agree to allow your photo(s) to be used for the 2012 North West Mega Event calendar, which will raise money for the event. 2) As part of the selection process, low resolution copies of your photo(s) may be uploaded to the committee's Flickr account. Copyright will be acknowledged on Flickr and the author identified where requested. 3) Your photo(s) will not be used for any other purpose without your express permission. 4) The prize will consist of 1x calendar for each person who has one or more entries selected, plus 1x unregistered geocoin (coin design to be announced) for the overall winner. 5) If deemed necessary the committee reserves the right to substitute the prize for one of equal or higher value and/or offer further prizes for runners-up. Any changes to the prize(s) and/or prize structure will be announced on this forum. 6) Photos should be a minimum of 2300 pixels in width and 1725 in height (i.e. 4 megapixels). Photos should be in the landscape format, or be able to be cropped to a landscape format. 7) Entries should be emailed to committee+calendar@mega2012.org.uk 8) There is no limit to the number of entries per person, however please try to select your best photos. 9) The closing date for entries is 30th April 2011. This is to allow for selection and printing deadlines. Any entries received after this date may not be entered in to the competition. 10) Winners will be announced by 31st May 2011 and prize(s) will be dispatched when available in the summer. 11) The committee's decision in all matters shall be final.

There will be a Mega Camping event. We're still looking at venues for the camping at the moment and the camping event itself can't be published until February 2012 because of the listing guidelines, but as soon as we have a venue booked we will announce it on our website, Facebook and the national forums.

That's an interesting compromise.

I was going to avoid this thread when it decended in to bickering (why does that always seem to happen here? ), but since the Mega Wales committee have asked for opinions here I'll add mine. I've already replied to the thread on the South Wales forum, but I'll try to expand on that with a bit more reasoning: I personally think that the Golden Ammo Can should only visit UK Mega Events and related side events (i.e. those in the week around the mega, arranged to coincide with it) as this makes it a bit more "special". After all the goal of this TB is "To travel from one UK Mega Event to the next collecting a mega coin from each one.....", it does not "want" to go to any event that the committee happen to be attending. I totally understand what the Mega Wales committee are saying about not many people discovering it, but here's an idea - why not take all of the coins out of it temporarily (IIRC they are not attached in any way, just in a folder) and then put the ammo box on display for the duration of the Mega Event (and any side events)? You would probably need to leave it somewhere where committee members are in close proximity just in case someone decides to do a runner with it, but even if they did at least the coins would not be lost. I also suspect that the reason that more people have not discovered it is because they were not aware that it is trackable, so maybe make that fact clear on the Mega Event listing or with a sign in the event itself and I'm sure you would encourage more people to log it. It's also worth remembering that a large proportion of cachers simply don't bother discovering TBs. As I said, these are just my own personal views on the matter. I don't wish to get involved in any sort of argument, at the end of the day it's just a Travel Bug (albeit a special one) and not worth falling out with people over.

I've noticed this before with Google Maps. Usually if the "map" tab shows your cache on the wrong side of a river/canal, if you click the "satellite" tab you will notice that it is now in the correct place as the "satellite" images are more accurately mapped. Don't worry about it - I don't think that many people would go out and hunt a cache based on Google Maps alone (although I did do my first few caches using the satellite view whilst I was waiting for my Garmin to arrive! )

Exactly. If you've never had a custom coin produced, it is very easy to get confused about how the charges work, oversimplify things and come to the conclusion that it is a cheap process... it isn't! To give you an idea of the costs involved in even "cheap" geocoins such as these, here is a list of the charges that we have had to pay: Manufacturing: Basic tag fee Die fee Cut out fee Laser etching Groundspeak tracking numbers ($1.50 per tag) Groundspeak custom icon fee Import: Shipping costs (considerable for such a valuable package to be posted from the USA) Import duty V.A.T. Handling fee I'm intrigued by the idea of the taxman deciding not to bother charging the hundreds of pounds of taxes due; I just wish that the same taxman looked at my pay slips. Hopefully you'll be able to see that when all of these individual charges are added up the total comes to considerably more than £2. There's also PayPal fees to consider once the items are sold. As has already been stated, there needs to be a decent mark-up as the whole point of selling these items is to raise money for the event, hence the £5 price tag. I personally think that this is still very reasonable - a quick search shows that the usual retail price of cachekinz tags in the UK is between £5.25 and £6.99. A fiver is cheap then... Even in the US (where they don't have all of the import charges to worry about), the sale price seems to be $4.50 to $5.50 rather than $3. If anyone is selling them for as little as $3 then I suspect that they are selling them at a loss (perhaps to clear) as this is quite a lot less than the basic cost price, even before import.

Welcome Dalesman!

I had intended to reply to some of the points raised across the three threads over the last couple of days, but as a couple of posters (naming no names) seem intent on stirring up an argument (something that I have absolutely no interest in getting involved with) and have now resorted to making childish comments, then I think that it is best for all involved if we end the discussion here. If anyone would like to contact me via PM to discuss any points, or indeed raise any concerns, then you are most welcome, however this will be my last public post on this particular matter as I do not want to enter a counter-productive slanging match with the Olympic Mega. The North West will continue to organise a summer 2012 Mega Event and will now resume the low profile that we had hoped to maintain until Mega Wales.

Rival event? Can events not co-exist? Of course they can, but as the proposed dates of the Olympic mega event that I've seen (22nd July and 19th August) are both within a very short space of time of the likely date of the North West mega event, 28th July (although not confirmed), then I'm afraid that yes, they would be in direct competition with each other (as discussed above), and could only be considered rivals.

I've not got time to answer all of the points raised by Simply Paul at present as the weather is far too nice at the moment to be stuck in the house typing up responses to all of those posts, however I will endeavour to do so in due course. In the meantime you might like to look at this post: Mega Event in the North West?, Open meeting on 18th October, originally posted in September 2009 (at which point there had been no mention of an Olympic related Mega Event for several weeks, and the idea appeared to have died a death) which advertises an open meeting regarding the possibility of holding a mega event in the North West. It is then updated on 23rd October with an announcement that the North West have formed a committee and intend to host a mega event in the summer of 2012. At no point during that open meeting or on the forum thread was any objection raised. Since then a Facebook group has been set up, and despite being "soft launched" (i.e. not advertised on ANY forum) so as to avoid overshadowing the Welsh Mega it quickly attracted over 100 fans. To me that constitutes community consensus. I'm extremely confident that with more promotion, support for the event will increase exponentially, however we had been hoping to keep a low profile until Mega Wales 2011 (our stall at this year's mega is not even advertised as a mega event stall to that end). Unfortunately in this instance we have been forced to raise our profile due to the rumours of a rival event being organised.