CANDS37

I think most of what I would say has been said. But I will add just the following points: - The safety barrier is there to prevent a vehicle from one carriageway entering the opposite carriageway. This is a metal safety fence and it will perform its function by deflecting under the impact, potentially quite a long way and perhaps almost to the other side of the median. Therefore, a cacher standing behind the barrier is not protected from a vehicle hitting the barrier and will almost certainly be severly injured. - I think it likely that the footpath will have had some form of risk assessment to determine whether it is OK to remain crossing the road in this way. Part of the input to such a risk assessment would have been how frequently people cross the road and what is the time of exposure to danger (probably based on people having to wait a short time for a gap in the traffic). The presence of a geocache will likely increase the number of people crossing the road and the time that they are exposed to danger (perhaps significantly in both cases). Therefore, the geocache may possibly significantly increase the overall risks associated with the footpath crossing the road. So, to say that there is no difference to the risks before the cache was placed is not correct in my opinion.

MTH - you are not the only cacher who has concerns here. We also have a bird-box cache and got a couple of comments similar to yours back in September, so you are not alone. I will say that we had no critical comments for the first two years and 100-odd cachers who found it. Then a reasonably experienced cacher made a comment like MTH's and then the cachers immediately afterwards agreed. However, since then, no more concerned comments. Maybe that is just evidence that most cachers do not wish to be seen to criticise. I must admit to having a long think when we saw the comments. I can understand the concerns and if you have to get close to a bird-box to work out whether it is real or fake, then you have already disturbed it if it is real. On balance, I felt that our bird-box was sufficiently obviously fake (too low, not fixed to the tree, has our caching name on the outside, hole obviously blocked) that I managed to convince myself that it was OK. I do think that any real bird-box will be mounted where it is very difficult for humans to access. If we were looking for a cache and saw a bird-box high up in a tree, we would leave it alone, even if we thought it might be fake (unless the cache page made it obvious that it was the cache).

We just received the Cree 120 Lumens version of that B&Q torch (costs about £20). We were out late last night and tested it, making a direct comparison between it and our newish headtorches which we also had on us. Light-wise, it was almost as good as the 3W Cree headtorches, which are Robert Dyas own brand for only £10. It is also a bit heavier as it is made from aluminium, but easier to hold. So I still think that the Robert Dyas ones are great value for money, although as head torches they are a bit bulkier and less robust as they are made from mostly plastic.

Hi We've done a few night caches in a group and we've generally had crap torches, while the others in the group have had good ones. One of the group uses a 3W CREE LED headtorch which is excellent. It's so good that we have now bought a couple for ourselves. It is the Robert Dyas own brand version for only £10.

Hi DrSolly (Actually my first post here, but I've been lurking for a while). We live close to Section 17 of the London Loop and have a few caches along it already. We made a bookmark of the caches close to or on the route here: LL17 Bookmark When we started, we saw that there were quite a few caches already along various sections of the route (obvious really as it's a mostly nice walking route and that's where caches have a tendency to be). However, there is no "controlling mind" as such. Lots more info here on the TFL site: TFL London Loop site