The QCs

Congratulations to my 6 year old who found her 900th cache today. Not bad going seeing as we only started 13 months ago. Her 18 month old brother is over 2000 finds now, but then again, he gets pushed round daily in his buggy and rarely walks more than half a mile!

I'm back now from vacation in Kenya so can reply properly My GPS was empty of all caches when I loaded up the PQ (a total of 43 caches), it appeared in the GPX files and was shown to be copied over to the Garmin Turned on GPS to check...not one cache on there. Load same PQ to iphone....it works perfectly Individually upload the closest caches to our hotel in Kenya. Get to Kenya, give GPS time to warm up and allow the closest caches to show up...absolutely nothing besides the ones individually uploaded. Find a cache or two. Iphone happily working with the PQ Get home, PQ is still happily showing that it has been uploaded to GPS...except it never showed up. I'm going to ask Garmin as I have some more international trips coming up soon and dont really want to rely on the iphone to show the PQ.

Nope, GPS was cleared of all GPX files before I uploaded this one. I'm wondering if it is anything to do with a new country being loaded on, but then again, it shouldn't make a difference.

I tend to take bananas and a few cereal or breakfast bars when I'm out on my own. Little QC eats bananas in his buggy and Big QC (age 6) wont eat anything during a 5 mile walk. We take squash or water with us. If we have the kids with us on a long (5+ miles) then we'll pack a picnic and have that.

Last minute help here....please! I made a PQ last night of Kenya, uploaded it to the Dakota 20. I've just double checked the Dakota and the PQ isn't showing, ie no caches at all. The PQ ran at 43 caches so it's not like the system is overloaded. I've just tried to load the PQ back on, but still the garmin is showing nothing. Any ideas? Many thanks. Edit, I have the PQ in my iphone which means I havent done anything unusual! I have now loaded each nearby cache in individually, the PQ still wont transfer on to the GPS though.

Last month, I loaded up my Garmin Dakota 20 with 500 caches in Belgium. I live in the UK and run OS maps in the Dakota. I checked the Dakota before we left and all the caches were sitting on the unit. We arrive in Belgium, I fire up the Dakota and there isn't a single cache to be seen...or at least not by me. Thankfully I had a PQ backed up on the iphone so used that. Once we were back in the UK, the 500 caches were back on the Dakota. Any ideas as to why they were there on the unit in the UK, not there in Belgium, but back again once home in the UK. We're heading abroad again soon so I'm keen for this to not happen again. Many thanks.

How is the list created? I know of one person with 400+ this year that is missing. I'm quite surprised with our total of 311 finds this year, bar a few caches, I've found all mine with the baby in the buggy; I'm waiting for one of his first words to be 'cache' or 'found it'! Thanks for doing the lists, they are fun to look at.

I put a QR puzzle cache out yesterday, it got published this afternoon (thank you Graculus for the super fast processing), we've had 2 finders on it so far. I might have to down grade the difficulty of it though.

Condoms! Condoms left in caches- three caches now with them in. Thankfully the 5 year old has only asked about one lot, "no Big QC, you cannot swap a toy for the shiny red paper...and no, it cannot be used to make a collage." Used condoms at GZ...twice now in a few weeks. Today though was not good. Little QC and I were searching round a large memorial stone for a tricky cache. Little QC was wandering round with me, at 15 months of age, he is not 100% steady on his feet, especially over rough terrain. Today he face planted himself 4 inches away from a condom. I picked him up and left. Beautiful area and location for the cache though, just a shame it happens to be the locals 'happy' ground!

This weekend we are minus one child so thought we'd make the most of a much longer series of caches. We had an idea of cycling a nice route but since we don't know the Surrey/Hants area very well, we are at a loss as to where to look. Can anyone recommend a route that is fairly smooth as we will still have the baby in the child seat...if there is a pub or two on route, then even better! Many thanks.

Oh that is brilliant, thank you! Time to find some puzzles! Thanks again.

I received a Dakota 20 GPS last week. I have read the instruction, watched the videos and found over 100 traditional caches with it. However, there are a few puzzle (unknown) caches I would like to do. I have the solved co-ords which are obviously different to the published co-ords. How do I put the new solved co-ords in and then use the compass to get the the cache? I know this is something basic, I have tried using way points but everytime I try and use the compass feature, it defualts to the nearest traditional cache. Either that or I just use the maps and follow the line, but I like the compass feature! Many thanks!

The M4 was clear last night and today from Heathrow to Swindon area. Heathrow however, was not working well. 2 cancelled flights on consecutive days...bah! Home now for the weekend rather than being in Brussels.

I'm about to hit 100 days of continuous caching and quite fancy treating myself to a coin to celebrate. Does such a thing exist or do I need to wait until a bigger and better milestone? Many thanks.

Yesterday, my new Dakota 20 arrived. I tried it out today...all good though still getting used to it. We have a Chirp cache close by that I would like to find at some point, how do I do that with the Dakota? Do I need to download anything, or do I just turn up at the cache site and hope something goes 'chirp'?

I'm a newbie to this caching lark having only been caching for 8 months. But, I have found 1100+ caches in that time. However, I am limited in my 'hard' caches as I always have the baby with me...bit hard doing a 5/5 with him in tow, the buggy also doesn't cope well when the terrain rating is over 3.5! I'll class myself as an obsessed newbie!

Not a great photo as it is taken on the iphone by the 5 year old. It sums up how we generally cache...the baby in the sling, the 5 year old with some form of camera and us just being out and about. The cache is the Highclere Binary Cache GCJ55E

I found a couple of roll-ups in a cache this week. The 5 year old wanted to know why she couldn't swap a dinosaur for the shiny square packaging; yep, more condoms! The baby helped himself to some walnuts (in shell) yesterday.

I've just written a blog post on stiles. I cannot bear stiles. It is often just me and the baby out caching in the week. Stiles are just so hard to negotiate when you have a buggy. Micros in ivy are another pet hate, so much so we have done our own fun cache based on the theme! Not keen on caches that have been placed for the sake of placing one. We did one recently that was a leaky box, a few bits of an old Post-it pad and a broken pencil. Why? I'm not overly keen on deeply rutted byways, makes pushing the buggy along them very tricky.

We have a Marmite container out on one of our caches; the cache is called 'love it or hate it'. We've also got a hair wax tub out with the clue being 'use the style'!

The Etchilhampton loop near Devizes (by Stanthews) is also bikeable- 30 caches over about 5 miles of byway. I had both kids with me that day so we couldn't ride round. We liked this series as there wasn't a single stile to negotiate with the buggy. It was hilly but the paths were all fairly smooth. Fab views and a nice series.

I cycled round the Temple Bottom Loop (Wiltshire) yesterday, however, it practically killed me! It was 8 miles of byways and bridleways with a lot of hills and mud! It was a huge amount of fun though. In total, there were 39 caches on the loop. You need a good mountain bike for this one though. Fab series, I really enjoyed it.

Is there an easy way to find a list of countries and how many caches they each contain? I understand the numbers change daily but a rough idea would be good. Many thanks.

We've just come back from Wales and had no problems with trackables. I was going to do the J23a cache, but both kids had fallen asleep and I didn't want to wake them for 'just one more cache in Wales'!

We're off to Amstersdam in a few weeks. We are looking to do a few caches whilst we are there. Are there any really good caches specifically for kids? My 5 year olds likes the big caches with lots of swaps. My 5 year old also wants to know what the equivilants of TFTC (thanks for this cache) are so she can write it in the log book! I also have a few travel bugs to drop, are there many decent sized caches in which to place them? We don't really want to travel too far outside of the city. Many thanks.