HuggableHamster

I got mine in an email.

Typical, most of the spring and summer we are out on our narrowboat exploring new places, for almost all of this challenge’s month we’re at home so some planning will be needed to avoid using up nearby traditionals as I’m also trying to fill in that calendar! Oh well that’s what the bus is for and this weekend I’m supervising some of my Rangers (older than Girl Guides) doing an expedition so hopefully I can sneak off to find a cache or two…

I had an event for my third caching anniversary (which was last October because I'm still new). It was my first time hosting an event and it felt like a good excuse to actually host one. We were on holiday so I just picked a nice looking cafe and dragged my friends along and was very pleased to meet some local cachers too!

We had a holiday recently to continental Europe, we had been hoping to go to a MEGA in The Netherlands but it was cancelled so instead we went to Belgium to do GC40, of course when in Belgium with a hire car it’s only a short hop over to Luxembourg for a day trip, and then my set of planned caches took us very close to the German border, and then of course we were going to be going to Luxembourg City so it was only a little detour to go to France and then we got a cache on the way back to our place in Belgium and anyway that’s how we rather unintentionally did 4 countries in a day!

I set out to do a night cache… all fine… except we were on holiday with friends so we’d been playing board games, so I actually set off about 2am, and this was before I’d got *everyone* else into caching so it was just me, on my own. I walked to the woods, found the first marker and started following them… so it turns out that deer’s eyes also reflect and if you try following them you end up in slightly the wrong place and then the deer started their booming mating calls… it was fine I worked out which reflectors were which and found the cache and was back to the holiday place before the whisky had all been drunk… but there was certainly a moment!

I wonder how the points will work if a cache you find goes from say 9 to 10 favourite points after you found it.

My friend smudgepuss took this photo of me at The Crazy 81 (Challenge) - The Hounds of Love - what I love is that the picture makes it look like I’ve doing some new age tree yoga in front of a dark stormy sky, whereas what I am actually doing was balancing on my tip toes on a post behind the tree sort of holding on for dear life with one hand while trying not to break anything while I returned the cache!

Me too, although because I’m saving my nearest trads for filling in my calendar rather than because they are particularly high T! My friend got chosen though so I’m going to go and help her (though we are skipping out the ones you need a particular type of boat for!

I find they often seem to pop up near MEGAs, that's how I did one abroad. We are very lucky there are one or two a year by the Water of Leith organised by HaggisHunter, not that they are ever when I can go... but they are there!

This reminds me of the time I accidentally skipped half a cryptography puzzle because I just felt like this was probably an f and that would probably be a 5 and if just give it a try and oooh green light! As a CO of some puzzles I quite enjoy seeing people's different approaches - especially to the knitting puzzle I have - there are 4 kinds of finders, those that can knit, those that can use Excel, those that bribe lover ones who can knit and those that got bribed into knitting the puzzle so might as well come out for a cache and paddle 🤣 (personally having done both I think knitting it's much easier...)

We did all the Vatican caches when we went to Rome (obviously events mess up the 100% occasionally). I was surprised that no one had put an offset letterbox there!

That's my feeling too. Although for me I only started caching in late 2019 so my longest slump came after 6 months caching with an enforced 3 month lockdown. I always worry if I start a streak I'd not enjoy caching once I stopped so for me my longest slump is a sort of positive that I will always aim to find at least one cache every 3 months.

Ah boo, that will be less helpful.

How exciting! I see on project-gc it says they also use OSM so I presume they will be the same? County County in Project-GC refers to the largest administrative divisions of a state/province/region of a country. Geocaching.com does not show counties, Project-GC uses Administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap via OSM-Boundaries and for some countries official government data to determine the county of a cache.

You missed stage 3.5 get distracted! (That might just be me…) One of my goals for 2023 is to actually write up the cache pages and set at least some of the caches I have ideas for (there’s only half a dozen or so at the moment but I think of them more quickly than I set them…)

Honestly I have, I believe, done two physical multicaches, and that was a way a way one on the Isle of Man the other in Rome - so I would have to say very unpopular on a placing them front! I did enjoy finding them both. At a guess they are not very popular with hiders because I bet people who don’t read the description try to log a find on the physical stage, if you are in an area with a high density of caches an extra physical way point could be hard to find space for (certainly I wouldn’t think about setting one with physical waypoints as in many places it would feel like taking up space that could be used for another cache) also depending on what your physical stage is it could involve a lot more maintenance. I think also a lot of people near me certainly often use multi caches as a way to take you to a place that is important but hard to place a cache at hence the read the plaque, do the maths, find the cache, off-set multis.

Oooh those are great! I am very pleased to qualify for the 50years (helped in part by a very difficult letterbox on Guernsey - we were second to find after 6 or 7 years… it was very tricky!: For me (and I know many will disagree) what I like about being able to sign challenges before you complete them is how intentional it makes it. That said most of the challenges I completed before I signed them were things I knew were or could be challenges so was consciously working towards, a notable exception being https://coord.info/GC7KPY1 which is just delightfully silly. On a similar note, one challenge I know is grandfathered is https://coord.info/GC34MFG which was a really good challenge, inspired us to do a bit of a car based power-trail (I don’t own a car so this was different to my usual adventures) and gave me an extra push to get out on those dreich January days and fill in the calendar gaps! I find the challenge cache guidelines hard to work out so I’m not sure it would even be allowed now, but one of my favourite challenges was https://coord.info/GC4R8ZT which required just the right amount of planning to achieve, I was up to about step 6 before I found it which made it feel very achievable, and the actual requirements were hard but realistic.

Hello! I started caching in late 2019 so it’s been an odd few years, I’m still excited we can have events again (I managed to get to 2 in the before times). I think I vaguely knew there was a forum, but only recently looked, I tend to check Facebook more often… I live in Edinburgh except when I live on a narrowboat and have discovered a love (if not really much skill) of tree climbing since I started caching (odd what we’ll do for a smiley!).

There are a couple of EarthCache challenges near me, one is right near the Geological Society the other is in some geologically very nice hills. I have enjoyed some challenge caches where the placement complemented the theme - both were to do with the scenic view attribute. I have also very much enjoyed an ironic challenge, which was about park and grabs where the physical cache was a fair way up a hill with stunning views!

Well that’s certainly something to aim for! We are hoping to go to the USA in 2028 to finish our JASMER grids…

Oooh 2023 goals… I fear mine are not very S.M.A.R.T. but they are mine… - I want to finish my D/T grid, just one gap currently staring me down, but I’m not sure winter is really the ideal time to grab a 2.5/4.5, so I think that’ll be one goal for next year. - Think of a (or some) good cache(s) to do for my 3,000th and do the other 700 in between! - Team frolics! AKA smudgepuss and I dragging my husband and various other friends on slightly bizarre trips (hoping to stay more sensible than the 36hrs on the Isle of Man we accidentally had) - I am hoping to make more progress on various challenge caches - particularly caches in London, caching in different areas of Scotland and doing more puzzles (and looking forward to seeing what new challenges are launched on the Greenwich Peninsula to work towards) - Mystery day! We have identified some caches round Bexley and hope to do 40+ not-in-a-series-mystery-caches in a day. - I want to do more caching in my inflatable, eyeing up the ones on the Medway and Basingstoke Canal - I want to finish setting at least half of the caches I have in my head!

There is a setting on the “Profile Stats” page called “Use official ignore list for travelling geocaches” which lets you choose whether these sort of caches register on your stats or not. The official list is http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?code=BMAFMJR and includes R E F L E C T I O N S https://coord.info/GC2PPNP which is not quite antipodean but similar.