davester

http://www.cccoutdoors.com/products.asp?category=Gaiters Free shipping. Gaiters from £9!

And I have another two for you! 15% off the entire Paramo waterproof range. These are by far the best breathable waterproofs available. I've had a Cascada jacket for over 10 years and it's as good as the day I bought it. Higher performance than Goretex and much more comfortable. http://w01-0504.web.dircon.net/acatalog/Paramo_Clothing.html And if you need a decent quality walking boot for geocaching through the winter mud, there is an excellent deal on at Millets online. £35 buys you a Sympatex (like Goretex) lined suede boot with a Vibram sole. http://www.millets.co.uk/cgi-bin/Millets.f...ducts/081785251

I thought it might be useful if this forum had a thread highlighting good offers that would be of interest to the geocaching community. After all, there's nothing like a good bargain. I can start off with a quite excellent price for a Garmin Etrex, £66.95 from Expansys.com http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=90265421 Only 8 left in stock, but a great Christmas gift for someone who might like to dabble in the art of Geocaching!

A little bit of IP address detective work should see who the perp was.......

You missed Garmin giving all posters in this forum a free GPSr. I believe they requested that thread to be deleted too!

Given today's caching, a new hip flask and plenty to fill it with would do!

Each person's caching methods mean that each person rates a cache differently. My caching tends to be on long walks where I simply can't afford to spend more than 10 minutes or so looking for a cache once at the cache location. That means I can be quite intolerant of caches that have been placed in places that offer poor signals or poor hiding places when both would be better nearby. I have made comments on caches that I have regretted because when you set out to do a walk with 7 caches and miss one it really cuts to the bone. Of course, the people who really deserve criticism are those who give no clue, a useless clue (under a rock when there are 1000 nearby) or a photo clue only. IMHO the clue should be a last resort spoiler which reveals the location of the cache. People do make special journey's to visit caches and may not ever have the opportunity or inclination to go back, so you should give them the find if they need it.

It's posts like this that show why GAGB is a good idea. My permission from Staffs Wildlife Trust had to, in some way, be due to the work that others had done in the past. We'll reach a point where an avalanche occurs and major land owners will not be able to say no or ignore requests.

I am currently planning another cache for Cannock Chase - but this will be no 'park and ride namby pamby cache'. This will be hardcore The only problem is that in a fit of madness my wife and I decided we wanted to do 100 caches before the new year, so time is at a premium until January 1st. Martin In that case you need this walk, a good alarm clock, strong legs, a good torch and maybe a bottle of your favorite strong spirit.

For those with kids, I think the Churnet Valley would be a pretty good place for a meet., especially with the Churnet Valley railway linking much of the route. There are also plenty of very nice pubs and a lot of Forrestry Commission and Staffs County Council land (for easier permissions). If it were moved to late Spring, then I have no doubts that the nearby draw of Alton Towers might help attract a few further afield cachers too.

Certainly a worthwhile idea combining the two. I'll have to start having a think about suitable places. I guess I should really go and seek out a walk on Cannock Chase, as that is nice and central. My Churnet Valley walk would also lend itself very well to this, but is far too muddy in the winter/spring time.

A GeoHike is a walk with caches on it. The phrase was coined by me for my website. The link you want is GeoHikes.

Actually although I posted above saying I'd be interested in a normal meet, I was also thinking about a GeoHikes meet sometime in the spring in this area. Who would be interested in that? Probably would look at a 8-10 mile walk with a possible extension for the more hardcore people. I normally restrict myself to a circular walk but have some good linear walks with many a cache enroute with public transport links. Of course, if enough people are envolved a large taxi/minibus at the start or end of the day would be economical. Thoughts please.

Be rude not to really. Weekends only though.

Thanks for the hard work and unselfish approach to these sites I have been in touch with Helen Gee and she is sending me some info on Bateswood. The timing for this couldn't have been better as I have just been refused permission elsewhere. Any news on this location? I'm going off to survey some of the others this weekend hopefully with the intention of finding a site or two.

Speaking of which I would think Downs Banks is crying out for a cache. There used to be one there, but I didn't get chance to do it before it went missing. No reply from my letter to the National Trust re: The Downs Banks. It was going to be the final site for a Stone Quest multi-cache.

At present, I believe that to be the case. I'm not sure if this list in exclusive of others and the best person who could help you will be Helen Gee. I'm certain that once they have real experience of geocaching they will be more open to allowing all the sites to be considered.

Black Brook Black Hole, which I assume is the cache you're refering to, is actually just over 2 miles away from the Black Brook reserve, which is marked on maps as Gib Torr Rocks. It's a popular venue for boulder climbing and I thought it would be an incredible place for a cache or two, so that was actually the reserve I contacted the trust about initially. The reserves they want to test caching on are those that they actively promote visits to, hence the four suggested.

Thanks, a list would be very useful as the ones I have found don't include this datum.

I've been asking about this in one of the other forums but it occuered that some one might have used the same map as I have when they've visited. I have an AA Island Map of Gran Canaria but when I've tried to reference the co-ordinates of caches they are quite far out. I realised that this was a datum problem and lo and behold, it is. The datum of the maps is REGCAN95, which is unsupported by all GPS units (including my Geko 201). It would have been nice to rely on a GPS/Map combo if we get lost while touring the island so anyone able to suugest GPS settings which give a reasonable map location using the REGCAN95 datum?

Thanks for your thoughts Rakusan. I've been trying to find out more and have noticed by accident that although the D° M.M co-ords for the caches I plan to visit are hopelessly inaccurate with respect to the latitude, both the northings and eastings on the UTM scale seem to be spot on, using the the WGS84 datum. Anyone any thoughts why this should be?

Cheers. About to take a look at that. There is some information on the map, "The mapping has been done using REGCAN 95 geodetic reference system for the Canary archipelago i.e. origin geocentre, fundamental point Maspalomas on Gran Canary, coordinates ITRS94 epoch 94.9, associate ellipsoid GRS80. " Anyone know of a way to input the datum info into the Geko 201 user datum?

There's always one......!

I'm off on holiday to Gran Canaria next week and have just sat down to print off the details of the caches with the intention of marking them on the map as I go along. However, I soon realised that the co-ordinates were somewhat askew, and upon checking the datum my fears were realised. The map datum is a Canary Island exclusive one, named REGCAN 95 and is not supported (surprise!) by my Geko 201. Is there an easy way to convert to be able to plot my caches on the map. Or am I going to have to use some guesswork based on the best Mapquest maps?

I think that private companies are always going to be the worst when it comes to obtaining permission. I've been trying to obtain permission for a site near me, Trentham Gardens which has just opened up some woodland walks. It's a major new leisure venture and access to the walks is completely free but would attract people to their paid for activities. However, 4 separate emails, 6 unanswered answering machine messages (no one answers the phone) and a unanswered letter I'm stuck as where to go next. Perhaps someone else fancies a go, take a look at their website if you want to help!