davester

If you're lucky you may be able to grab a Mio 168 from Somerfield for £129.

I think that was the point... Cynical.........

If you're a member or user of GeoHikes you may have noticed that some sad little low life decided to take it upon themselves to hack the site. I only noticed this evening and 10 minutes later it's back up and running. I just hope the hacker wasn't a cacher.

If you can make the 10 minute drive to Harrogate from the A1 there are more caches than you can shake a soiled stick at!

I was going to post this in the previous bargains thread but couldn't find it. Ho Hum. Anyway, you can pick yourself a nice PDA/Satnav combo at Medion Shop for the piffling sum of £129. It's the one on the front page. Refurbished but I have owned the previous model for over a year and it's in fine fettle. It's not much use outside a car as the GPS receiver is wired and needs DC power from a cigarette lighter socket, but it's great for storing cache info, maps and getting you to the parking spot. Enjoy!

Is it me or do most new caches in the UK seem to be offset caches that are masquarading as multi-caches? To me, a multi-cache is a series of caches such as the fabled Alchemy Quest. To the majority of places, it seems that an offset cache is now a multi-cache. It does not make a crap cache good if you have to spend 30 minutes looking for inane clues first. Equally if a cache is of good enough quality you shouldn't ruin it with a mundane and pointless "quest" first! The main reason I find this so dadgum frustrating is that, as many of you know, I do the majority of my caching while walking. Often I sit down on a Friday night to sort out the weekends route on Memory Map and curse with frustration that a cache I liked the look of is one of these "multi's". That means the cache is impossible to incorporate in a walk as the final location is needed. I know it's a moan, but how about including the final location in your spoiler!

Life is a mixed pot of busy-ness at the moment. I shall get it sorted this weekend.

Good to see we have an Aussie team. As there are more than 11 UK entrants, what shall we do? First come first served, or drawn out of a hat? Hopefully the aussies can drum up an A team to play our 2nd XI anyway! Now to find those bails I was going to burn!!!

The bowling and batsmen of each team will start on other ends of the world, so they shouldn't have a chance to meet on home soil. Anyway, I envisage that the race will finish when 4 of 6 batsmen make it home and 4 of 5 bowlers get all the way. If a bug sees no activity for 3 months they will be retired hurt. Batsmen finish scoring once reaching home soil. Wickets can only be taken in neutral countries.

I'm thinking that the race will be limited to at most 22 (2 teams) or 11 (1 team). Let's see how many Aussies want to sign up.

Good to see a good response, both here and in Oz. I was wondering about tweaking the rules to mimic (as best we can) a real Cricket Match. This will also avoid problems about starting the race. The new idea is as follows:- Each side has 11 players (or bugs) and each will accumulate runs as they travel from England to Australia or vice versa. 6 bugs on each team are batsmen, 5 are bowlers. Batsmen will start on away soil. Runs are then scored as follows:- 2 runs per cache. 4 runs per cacher. 6 runs per country. Bowlers start on home soil. Wickets (which for the purpose of our game just reduce the batting total) are taken by:- Being within 100 miles of a batsman - minus 2 runs Being within 50 miles of a batsman - minus 4 runs Being within 20 miles of a batsman - minus 6 runs Being with 5 miles of a batsman - minus 10 runs Being in the same cache as a batsman - batsman loses ALL their runs What does everyone think?

A version of this (see below) has been cross-posted on the www.geocaching.com.au General Chit-Chat forum. These Aussies? They don't like it up 'em. Captain Vaughan and the barmy army have shown that. Now, while we're on a winner I thought we should press home the advantage and try and beat them at every sport we can (although we MAY let them keep swimming) In short, I have laid down the challenge for an Australian team to take on our best travel bugs in a daggers-drawn five test series. I need bugs with tenacity and strength, good strong all-rounders. Let's take the 1st geocaching Ashes for England! o maintain some parity with the real Ashes, I would suggest the following rules. First, we decide on Five Tests. That is, we get five people who are willing to release a travel bug from both England and Australia. These are then randomly drawn into five travel bug vs. travel bug matches. The opponents then post the bugs to each other and place them on an agreed day. The first bug to get home wins that Test Match. To make sure that each bug bats twice it MUST get 20 wickets (or pass through the hands of at least 20 cachers in countries other than England or Australia. I can make up more rules before we start. I shall stand as captain of fair England unless someone comes up with a convincing argument otherwise. The challenge has been laid. Can you spare the bug? ------Version posted to www.geocaching.com.au forum follows------- Hello Australia. Who fancies a nice friendly travel bug race? No?! Then how about all out bloody war! Face it, we're slaughtering you at cricket so we might as well give you the small chance to beat us at something. Seriously, are there any takers for an inaurgural Ashes Travel Bug battle? If you can spare a tag then you can take part. To maintain some parity with the real Ashes, I would suggest the following rules. First, we decide on Five Tests. That is, we get five people who are willing to release a travel bug from both England and Australia. These are then randomly drawn into five travel bug vs. travel bug matches. The opponents then post the bugs to each other and place them on an agreed day. The first bug to get home wins that Test Match. To make sure that each bug bats twice it MUST get 20 wickets (or pass through the hands of at least 20 cachers in countries other than England or Australia. I can make up more rules before we start. Do you accept the challenge? Discuss it among yourselves and see if one of you has the balls to be a captain!

I'm hoping it's not just me but does anyone else have the utter feeling of dread when you're going to an area and you just know you can't possibly get ALL the caches nearby in one visit. It usually comes with an overwhelming feeling of futility in even attempting one cache if you can't get them all. It manifested itself in a trip to Harrogate and surround (a Yorkshire caching delight if you will) on Saturday. Argggggghhhh!!!! Someone please sympathise, empathise or just shoot me!

Is it still down? I need a memory map download like urgent tonight.

Like I said, I got home tired and hungry and typed what I though. I have made similar comments about caches in the past and you are happy to go and seek them. To answer a couple of points.. The tree cover I refer to was on the main path. I strayed from the main path in the direction of the field. To gain a decent GPS signal for me to get a vague direction the cache was in would have required me to enter said wide open field. In doing so I would have been trespassing. Are you advocating that cachers trespass to find your cache? I have actually placed six caches of my very own, early in my geocaching experience. Some of these were in another cacher's name, the others have been adopted. I would reconsider the value of one or two of these cachers having nowed gained much more experience of caching.

That's what you get when you've walked 26 miles on a very hot day and ran out of drink with ten miles to go and then get held up in traffic on the way home. Still stand by what I say though and if the language seems harsh it only goes to drive the point home.

Crap caches. Mostly those placed under the only tree cover for miles where better places are so abundant they abound! Crap clues. Clues that don't give you any useful info at all. Or even worse, tell you to look on the spoiler pic which you (surprisingly) didn't print out.

Of course, when I posted earlier I failed to factor in that my walks are generally lengthened in time by the fact I have to navigate as well.

Hmmmm. Have you actually done this? I beg to differ that it is possible to walk 25 miles AND pick up 40 plus geocaches in 12 hours and that's from someone who spends most of their summer sundays walking 20 to 25 miles.

Nothing coming up on GeoTags website for me. You need to do a spyware scan.

As Lactordorum says, no if's and no buts. There are no excuses. As for your observation that matches or lighters are non-hazardous in a sealed box. Well, that may be the case, but it isn't unknown for a geocacher to accidently drop a swap item is it?

My two penneth..... First. If a cache does require wading through waist high nettles to reach, it's obviously in a crap location. Being quite severely allergic to nettles I would have been handsomely pee-ed off if I'd got to a cache and found it in that sort of location. If I was the finder I would have asked for the cache to be archived. Second. If I owned the cache, it wouldn't bother me if someone claimed a find if they hadn't even been out of their arm chair. After all, it's their choice how they play the game and it's not my fault if they want to have that sort of experience in their geocaching, is it?

Been thinking again about this one. Anyone interested in lending a hand?

A sandwich!!! Ewwww. Wouldn't have liked to have come to that cache if it hadn't been found for a while during a hot spell.

This has to be worth a thread because time and time again I have come across it. When I was out yesterday I visited this cache. One of the items inside the cache was a box of matches from a hotel. This isn't the first time that this has occured when I've been to a cache. Now this cache was located in a disused railway cutting whose sides were covered with tinder dry vegitation. The railway cutting runs through a large section of woodland. The consequences of the matches igniting doesn't bear thinking about. Therefore, I implore all UK cachers to:- 1. NEVER ever EVER place matches, lighters or other ignition sources inside geocaches. They are possibly the most unsuitable swap item imaginable. 2. If you do come across matches or a lighter, REMOVE them instantly, even if you have no swap to replace them with.