ryme-intrinseca

If this works, there should now be an image of our earlier 'meeting' showing! Team Sieni - I agree, that is definitely a compelling reason. Two of my favourite caches have been nanos that have been in full view of everyone. The most daring was a magnetic cache stuck at eye level, three inches to the side of a plaque that people stop to read! But it has never been muggled because it's made to look like one of the rivets that covered the item it was attached to. I love the fact that hundreds of muggles see it but don't realise what it is. PS. I'm never going to grow up, you're talking to a 29 year old who collects Enid Blyton books and loves Playmobil!

I've had such a lovely day today. Firstly, we found an interesting cache at Winspit, Dorset. Then we met Minxyy, Red Squirrel, Kaz, Dorsetgal and Geodog who were all caching in Swanage, and arrived at the same cache at the same time (photo will be uploaded shortly - lovely to meet you all!). After that, I found some Victorian books which had been hidden away in an attic, then I walked along the beach at Studland and found some money. (Bear with me, there is a point to this!) I can safely say I'm addicted to Geocaching. If I could drive, I would be out all day every day finding caches. As it is, I have to drag hubbie with me, as he's the one with the car. But why is it so addictive? It's not as if the 'treasure' we find is valuable. So this got me thinking - from the huge pile of old books I found, some of which are valuable first editions, the one that interested me most was an exercise book with school essays inside, written by kids 100 years ago, and probably not worth a penny. On the beach, mum and I found a old penny, a sixpence, a halfpenny from 1934, two shillings and about £1.50 in modern money. My favourite find was the halfpenny, although it is now worthless. We were on the beach for a couple of hours, but finding the coins was just as addictive as Geocaching. So what makes it so addictive? This is a genuine query - I really don't know. What do you all think?

I have to admit, before I had my camera, I just used to put the GPSr round my neck, shove a pen in my pocket and go! I still don't have a PDA, and our GPSr is just a basic yellow eTrex. I only use a bag now because I have a ridiculous amount of lenses, filters, etc. for my camera.

Sorry, it was really difficult to find a date that would suit everyone. We picked 14th July because it's not carnival week, hopefully the weather will be okay, and there didn't seem to be too much else going on. Never mind, if it's just me, Dorsetgal and Red Squirrel, maybe we'll get some kind of record for the smallest event ever!! I'm sure we'll still have fun anyway.

We will be in North Wales at that time. Are we allowed to attend as 'day visitors'?

Well done, and thank you for everything you've done for us!

Okay - I have made a shortened version of the document in MS Word, which will print at about credit card size. Please let me know if you would like it, I can't send attachments through the website so you'll have to give me your email address.

I haven't got one, but I can try and make one if you like? Do you want the whole thingy on one side of the paper?

That would be the 'Arty Railings' cache in Bournemouth, yes? We liked that one, in fact that gave us the idea for one of our micros. Okay, point taken, my railings are boring. But there is a nice view from them, it's not like they're in the middle of a car park or anything. (Uh-oh, I see another debate about the merits / problems with micros looming on the horizon if we're not careful )

Hehe, we'll have to book appointment slots, we're all fighting to catch a glimpse of you!

Doh, can't get the webcam to load

Really.... ? What could be better than a nice, interesting piece of railing to visit? Ha! How do you know? It could be the world's only railing made from pure diamond, or it could be adjacent to a recently discovered perfect fossil showing the missing link in human evolution! Actually it's not. It's, erm, just sort of next to some steps. There are daffodils though, and the railings are a nice pretty blue colour!

All the nuts and bolts and rivets were aluminium as well ?? thats really really unusual We were trying to put it on some railings. The only magnetic bit we could find were the bolts that secured them to the ground, and it would have stuck out like a sore thumb there (my thumb's sore actually, been trying to peel the glue off ). Had I thought of taping a magnet to it, that would have solved the problem. Never mind, I think we found a better place anyway.

Erm... great that you're going to look for them, but... Don't know if I'm too late, but problem no. 4 yesterday was that I realised I had entered some of the co-ord's wrongly - did you work it out?

Doh, good suggestion Team Phoebe - I didn't think of that! In one places we tried all sorts of things, including suspending it from fishing line, wedging it with rocks, etc., and we eventually gave up and put it somewhere else. So - I have lots of glue related incidents, overlook the blindingly obvious, and also I forgot to mention that I lost my camera lens cap this morning, only to find that I'd left it in one of my own caches when doing a maintenance check. Not having a good day common-sense wise. You wouldn't believe I'm a MENSA member, would you? My IQ today = 12.

... but would you believe how few magnetic things there are in Swanage? Armed with all these magnetic nanos, I walked miles, only to find that all the railings, signs, seats, etc. seem to be made from aluminium.

I've just spent most of the afternoon making lots of different little nano caches, trying new ideas, etc. Several of the caches involved magnets and very strong superglue. It was all going well until I got some glue on my finger. For some reason, I automatically then put it straight in my mouth. Obviously, my finger got well and truly stuck to my tongue and the only way I could remove it was to gargle very hot water. You'd think I would learn from my mistakes, but no - the next time I dripped glue on my hand, I wiped it on my sleeve. Guess what happened? Finally, I stood up to look for a little log book I'd made and lost. Nope, couldn't find it. Half an hour later, my mum asked what I had stuck to my trousers. Yep, you guessed, it was the log book. I've just come back from hiding some of the containers, hopefully people will like them and it will have been worth the effort and the clothing expense.

20,000??!! Did I read that right?

That's quite an achievement, Devon is one of the counties with the most caches, isn't it?

Have any cachers found all the caches in their own county, or in fact in any county? I think we've only found about 5% or maybe even less of the Dorset ones, so we've got a long way to go yet!

LOL @ drsolly - I have a 'sphericity' problem too! Good word, I like it!

Doh! I paid £59.99 for mine, from a camera shop. It's £20 cheaper on Amazon! Worth it though, it's really well designed.

I have a camera bag, called a Lowepro Slingshot, which is quite clever because you can swivel it round to your front and access everything from the side without having to take it off. I put my geoaching stuff in there too, it's got a strap that goes around your front to stop it slipping. Good for when clambering over rocks! Also, because it's a camera bag, it's got separate protective compartments, which is great for the GPSr. It wasn't cheap though.

Woo-hoo! Thank you.

Ooh, that sounds promising, thank you. I'm going to have to check this 0.1 mile thing though, as I've just remembered there's actually another cache the other side of it too . Can I ask another question - the cache that is closest is GCN2K1, however it is only the start point / clue for the multicache that is located there. The final cache is further away. Does that still mean that you cannot place a new cache within 0.1 miles of this start point? Does that make any sense? It's very late, and I'm very tired, so apologies if it doesn't.