jazzmonster

It's our 20th Wedding Anniversary soon. We've been looking for somewhere a little different for a holiday - of course one of the items on the wishlist is that there must be caches (at least one, we're not greedy!) We discovered the adorable little island of Porto Santo, north of Madeira which fits the bill perfectly! Where can I get TOPO maps for Porto Santo? Would love to hear from you if you've been to Porto Santo and have any tips. Finally, we quite like the idea of creating an "event" - a meet up for a drink somewhere in Vila Baleira. If there are other cachers on the island at the same time, it would be nice to have a drink and a chat. Any tips / do's and don'ts would be gratefully received. If you want to see the island, search for Madeira on the Hide/Seek a Cache page, then scroll north and zoom in. Porto Santo is described as a 9km stretch of white/golden sand with bright blue sea and a small island attached. There's not much to do except for relax and chill or cache. The east side is pretty flat, the west side has hills & mountains. Some of the 10 hotels hire bikes, you can also hire quad bikes or do a jeep safari. There's some very pretty scenery. I can't wait! :-D x

We've been talking for a while about walking part of the Camino in Spain but haven't got round to it. There are quite long distances between sections and we've been practicing walking the distances but we're not quite there yet - and that doesn't take the heat into account. I guess the main reason we keep putting it off is the lack of geocaches on the route we were considering. Plus it's quite a lot of work planning the trip whereas we've done city breaks instead (Budapest being our favourite) which are much easier to plan and mean you can spend more time caching. (I've also just discovered via the Geocaching map, part of the Camino route from Almeria). Happily, I recently came across the Spanish Greenways website (while I was browsing for geocaches in mainland Spain). These are old disused railway lines where the tracks have been removed and the area has been tidied up and signposted for use by walkers and cyclists (and in many areas, wheelchair users too). The Greenways go from about 1.5 miles to over 150 miles, much of it tarmaced. Some have areas with guesthouses, cafes, even bike rental. There are coastal, urban and rural greenways with bridges, tunnels and amazing scenery from vulture spotting and lagoons to pretty picnic areas. The one that we're looking at (which is the one that I found from the Geocaching maps page) is the Maigmo Greenway from Alicante (loads of caches along a 22km stretch). I'd love to know if you've done the Maigmo Greenway or any of the other routes and have any hints and tips? http://www.viasverdes.com/en/principal.asp

I find that the more clean and tidy my caches are with nice swag, the more nice swag gets left (along with the trash!) If I'm out caching I always have my swag bag with me and will generally add swag if the cache is large enough and is dry. My swag bag contains items that are fun for kids or useful for adults like a puncture repair kit or something. It doesn't generally cost much but it's all new and all in little resealable bags to keep it clean and dry. I would leave swag more often than I do - my pet hate is finding a tiny cache somewhere that a bigger cache would easily fit. I love to leave something fun or useful, especially for an interesting hide but often the cache is too small. I think smaller caches encourage trash - they're often the ones with nothing in other than a couple of stones. If you find a good sized clean cache, somehow it makes me think it's more deserving of better swag although that's not necessarily the case. I like the Favourite points for favourite caches and I'd love to see up a "Thumbs Up" system for cachers who leave great feedback, who help out with cache maintenance such as leaving spare paper where a log is full (perhaps the CO has a option to mark the cache as PLEASE LEAVE CACHE AS FOUND or CACHE MAINTENANCE WELCOME) or for those cachers who leave good swag or drop a handful of TBs. I love to receive favourite points for my caches and in return, I like to keep them in good condition to encourage more favourite points. Perhaps a "Thumbs Up" system would encourage more responsible caching?

Thank you

A few months ago I wanted to plan a short city break but couldn't decide where to go (wanting do some caching) so I posted a topic on here. You were very lovely and came up with some great suggestions one of which was Budapest. I hadn't thought about that so I've looked into it and booked it for next month. Thank you, I can't wait! It's our wedding anniversary in September and we always take a couple of weeks off work so I'm thinking about where to go. Apart from a day trip on the train with school aged 9 to Edinburgh, I've never been to Scotland. I've just got a new car (new to me!) which is just lovely for cruising along in, I love it. So I'm thinking that a road trip to Scotland, taking in lots of scenery for hubby to photograph, pretty little towns and villages, and caches for us to find would be lovely. Neither of us are into camping so we'd stay at hotels or B&Bs. It would be nice to include a mix of drive-bys and trails of up to about five miles. The only place I'd quite like to stop by is Tignabruich. It's the name of my parents house (named before they moved in) so it would be nice to take some photos for them. But not essential! We could actually take my parents with us - they are not into geocaching at all but if we had a route with pretty towns for them to meander in while we went off caching that would be good. I don't know Scotland at all but I would really love to go! Please could you recommend routes and / or places to visit? Many thanks in advance :-)

After much head-scratching and date changing we have booked a 4 night break to Budapest! Got flights with Jet2, a bit pricey and couldn't do our usual 3 nights, had to be 2 or 4 but the hotel prices are much cheaper than elsewhere so we booked 4 nights. The map looks amazing! Check out the PUZZLE mystery caches. I love the stats so I'm hoping we can break some records e.g. more than 32 caches in one day, more than 3 consecutive days, more different types of caches in a day (currently showing as a traditional and earthcache). I can see trad, premium, earth, virtual, multi, puzzles so that would be cool. We are staying very close to the Danube so I think the 32 cache Danube prom circular will be one of the first on the list. I cannot wait - just got the three months to go! Copenhagen, Lisbon, Faro are all on the to do list as well. Thank you everyone for helping - you've come up with a cracker because we hadn't considered Budapest!

This is great thank you! I definitely want to get Budapest on my to-do list - trouble is flights are a bit pricey at the mo so I'll keep my eyes on that. It seems to fit our wish list perfectly. We loved Amsterdam - I was very tempted with the paddleboat one but it was raining (and a bit chilly, no-one else on them either) when we were there. I am only just over 5ft so little shorty + slippery boat would probably have ended with a little soggy cacher so I wimped out of that one! I loved the secret door one, it was so cool! We went to Dordrecht - there was only one cache on our way to and from the station (to Noah's Ark) and I think we are the only cachers to DNF it! LOL Edinburgh is also on our to-do list. Hubby has never been, I've been a couple of times but in pre-caching days so would like to go. Everytime I've priced up Edinburgh or London it's always been cheaper to go abroad and the warmer climate wins every time. Still on the to-do list tho. Thank you, the replies so far have been really interesting.

Some fantastic food for thought there, thank you everyone - it's much appreciated!

I was looking at Faro as your reply landed! It looks lovely and the thought of some warm sunshine is very appealing!

Hubby and I love short city breaks. Our first one was Prague. We had no plans to cache (newbies back then) but took the GPSs with us just in case. On the second day, we couldn't decide what to do next - it was a cold, damp, murky day so we decided to take the GPSs out, head for the castle and see if there were any caches along the way. We never got to the castle! We found some really cool places that we wouldn't have found otherwise and a great little place for lunch. And how good is it having a GPS?! You can't get lost (as long as you remember to set the hotel as a waypoint!) We always cache now on city breaks and I'm trying to decide where to go next (hence the thread!) We prefer traditional caches over mystery and multi-caches. So far we've done Barcelona, Prague, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, and Amsterdam. We're considering Copenhagen (and the train to Sweden, for another country!) or perhaps Lisbon as we're looking at March and Lisbon will be warmer! What are your favourite European Cities for a geocaching city break?

Thank you :-)

Thank you :-)

I've added photos before of other geocacher's TB's that I've found but now I can't find any "upload photos" links on the TB page. Has the feature been disabled or moved? Is it possible to upload photos to a TB page still and how do I do it? (I know not to include the trackable code in the photo). Many thanks for your help x

I would be very grateful if someone could help! I have two Venture HCs that I keep as spares in case we have newbie cachers wanting to join us for a caching trip. We have 15 newbies tomorrow and five GPSs (plus some have iphones) to go around. Two are Venture HCs - one I have used before and the other is brand new out of the box. I deleted the caches on the used Venture so they don't get confused, they should only see the 12 we are going to find. I have downloaded the caches (12) onto both units. I ran a pocket query and was just going to stick the gpx files directly into the K: Garmin drive. However, the K: Garmin drive will not appear - either on my desktop or laptop (both of which have Mapsource with the latest version on). I downloaded the caches one by one - both units were found and each cache said it was successfully transferred. It's the same whether I use the desktop or the laptop. I can't find the caches on the units. I've tried looking under Find Nearest, Find by name etc but nothing - they are both seemingly empty. The caches are located about 10 miles from my current location. I wondered if it was that they had already been found - on the Dakota and Oregon models, I just went into the Show Found option and set them as "unattempted" so they all show up the Find Geocache list. I don't want to let all these newbie cachers down - please could you help? (I've used one of the Venture's before - it is a couple of months ago but I remember it being really easy, so I don't know why it doesn't seem to be working now!)

I had the same dilemma when I started. I don't know if I will enjoy geocaching and I have an iPhone - what should I do? After lots of reading, I decided that the little bit of caching (one cache!) that I'd done with my iPhone, geocaching was something I wanted to do more of - really fun, great exercise, curing my asthma etc and that if I was going to stick at it, I should get something at least half decent. I'd just got a Christmas bonus from work so put the extra together and bought a new Dakota 20, which I love. It wasn't long after that my family and friends were asking me about geocaching so I decided to bite the bullet and get a spare (so I didn't have to give up mine!) I bought an Etrex off ebay. I am so glad now, that I didn't buy it to begin with! Whlst it is a perfectly good unit, and the GPS is accurate, I didn't have a cable so entering all those co-ordinates manually is tedious (and painful!) Once you've got used to running a quick Pocket Query (and I've learnt to do this regularly, just before going out as caches get moved from time to time), you don't want to go back to entering co-ordinates. I could buy a cable but then I've got used to colour screens and more features! I have since bought two Venture HC's for anyone coming with us, a Colorado 300 for my hubby (which is more manly sized to my more lady sized Dakota 20) but which I secretly prefer to my Dakota 20, I use my iPhone sometimes when I'm getting stuck and want a photo clue and the Etrex, perfectly good as it is, is going on ebay!

MEMORY MAPS This is why I'm confused - http://www.memory-map.co.uk/gps.htm Memory-Map Recommends Walking / Hiking Memory-Map Adventurer 2800, Garmin eTrex, Garmin Oregon / Dakota / Colorado GARMIN MAPS These are the Garmin maps I was looking at: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/buymaps.do Thanks for your advice, it's much appreciated.

I use GSAK http://www.gsak.net/ You can see all the caches in your route or pocket query and filter them or delete some etc if you want to and then send them all to your GPS.

It's my birthday soon and I need maps! I've got a Dakota 20, Oregon 300 & Venture HCs. Which topo maps are best - the Garmin Maps or Memory Maps - or another version? I have no idea and can't decide which to choose? I have managed very well without maps so far but am starting to be a bit more adventurous now and sometimes it's tricky when public footpaths are not clearly marked. I want to be a responsible geocacher and not trespass on other people's property so I think the time has come to bite the bullet and invest in some GPS maps. I don't need road maps (got a TomTom & iPhone for that), it's just on the trail ones I need. Thank you!

I love looking at our tracks in Google Earth. I was wondering if anyone has gone to the trouble of designing a route where the track (if done correctly) will be the outline of a picture? We did a Wacky Races route yesterday and I can't help thinking that (with a bit of artistic interpretation!) the outline looks a bit like Dastardly - well, his hat at any rate! Has anyone ever planned a route like that?

Thanks for this thread - I was wondering what to do about a TB I released for my niece. It's part of a race and hers was doing rather well until the cache it was placed in got muggled. I don't think there is much chance of it ever re-appearing but I think I will do as you say and release another in it's place. Once a year has passed I will release the copy if there is still no sign of the original. Thanks for the advice.

You sound like a lovely geocacher to me, someone who would not leave dirt or trash in my cache or not put the lid back on properly. (Not that anyone has done that to me yet but I have seen other caches that are in not so nice a condition). As a cache owner, I try to check them regularly to make sure that the pencil is OK (sometimes people take the sharpener as swag!), that the swag is all ok (each in its own little baggie) and that the cache is clean and dry. Sometimes a cache might need maintenance and you can't get to it e.g. if you are away on business or holiday. Some cachers have a LOT of caches to maintain and are unable to check them regularly. I like to help if I can but not to interfere. If a visitor to my cache saw that it needed maintenance I would be very grateful to them for a little help. This is what I would do: 1. Caches that have had water/dirt inside can sometimes be very smelly. I usually have some wipes & baggies with me (tho I rarely have to use them, most caches are usually OK). I would tip out any water and wipe the cache, leaving it clean and dry so that it didn't smell. 2. I would put any soggy log into a baggie. I would leave fresh paper in another baggie. 3. I carry a pencil sharpener in my swag bag and I sharpen broken pencils. If the cache just needed a quick wipe or sharpened pencil, that would fix the cache without the owner needing to visit soon. Otherwise, I would always alert the cache owner if: 1. The cache was broken or damaged. 2. The log was full and/or soggy. 3. Travelbugs / coins listed as present were missing. I wouldn't attempt to fix a cache or remove anything, including soggy logs - I would alert the cache owner.

I'm working on a a circular series (one of my favourite types of caching trip - especially in unfamiliar areas) and was going to do this myself. However it occurred to me that if I used the number first, then it could end up as the equivalent of naming each cache with the same starting letter eg "A". You might have to scroll through a long list of numbers first. Perhaps a good way is this format: 1. Initials 2. Number e.g 1/9, 2/9, 3/9 and so on 3. Phrase I think this is a good example - a series I am looking forward to doing soon: "WR1 - Bouldermobile". It's based on the Wacky Races cartoons. The letters at the beginning are short and so doing a search will bring the series up together, you can clearly see which number you want. The longer description at the end "Bouldermobile" gives you a little more info but wouldn't matter if that was chopped off a little. If all you could read was "Bouldermo" you would still know which cache you were looking for. There are quite a few series that I've seen (and done) like this. However, some of them use a full-stop after each letter e.g. B.U.S or C.C.T. My (Dakota) GPS will only search for them if I include the full-stop - I couldn't just type in BUS, I'd have to type in B.U.S. The full-stop is not on the same screen as the alphabet, making searching very time consuming, as well as taking up valuable character space. In contrast, the owner could've called them "WACKY RACES SERIES BOULDERMOBILE 1". In this case, my GPS would display something like "WACKY RACES SERI" for each cache. Instead, by using a very good description "WR1 - Bouldermobile", it is much more user friendly and I appreciate it. Paperless geocaching is the way to go, so like yourself, I want to make any future caches that I do, as helpful as I can to those who would like to try to find them.

Again, my comments are not complaints, merely suggestions how to make life easier. Not just for myself but for others too. Newbies watching the little Geocaching video on the geocaching website homepage are told about Geocaching, all you do is "to go outside and locate hidden containers ..." and "all you need to do is to plug these co-ordinates into your GPS device and head outside to find the cache". Sounds easy, right? No mention of locating, downloading and learning how to use other software as well, although it's not absolute necessary but it makes life easier. A bit like two steps forward, one step back! For some people - older people who might not be very computer literate for example, this might be enough for them to think Geocaching is too difficult and give up before they start. I'm sure that most people going out geocaching go prepared and know which caches they are going to look for and where they are. But what about those times where you find yourself away from home, with perhaps half an hour or so to spare, you are in a new area and you would like to see if there are any caches about to go hunting for? You might have even created a route in advance for your trip but don't want to spend time doing lots of research on it as you might not get chance to do any caching at all. I am all for keeping the rules simple and often a little thought for others is all that is needed. It is likely that a large number of cachers going to a cache are not familiar with the area and they would prefer to spend time hunting for the cache, not hunting for the listing on their GPS.