The Cache Hoppers

Got our copy of Geocaching for Dummies from Amazon for about £6.99 just before Christmas - big saving on the RRP. Just checked now though and it says £8.39 but there are some used/new ones available for £6.19. They also have a special deal where you can get a discount if you buy this one together with The Geocaching Handbook. Free UK delivery on orders over £19. For more details you will have to check it out www.amazon.co.uk (not a commission link! LOL). And did you know there's an Idiot's Guide to Geocaching circulating as a hitchhiker on a travel bug?!

How about when setting up caches adding a bright sticker to the box somewhere asking cachers to trade fair and also adding a note to the cache list in a similar vein. Perhaps we should ask Jeremy to build an option into his newly designed site where you can select a "Please Trade Fair" feature when putting up a new listing.

Being a team of six of varying ages (2 boys, 2 girls, mum and dad) we probably have someone in each of the possible categories as far as this goes. Mum and Dad do it for the fresh air and exercise, Lauren aged 14 likes to find trades for her baby sister Megan, Luke aged 13 doesn't often come along but likes to find different packs of cards, Josh aged 3 is happy as Larry if he finds a toy car. When we set up caches, we like to put in items we think we would like to find and try to put at least one thing in for each of adult male, adult female, boy child and girl child, etc. We enjoy setting up caches as much as finding them. We tend to work on putting in stuff up to about a fiver in value when setting up cache (not including the container!) and have great fun looking for bargains in the supermarkets etc. Just yesterday we were killing an hour whilst Luke was in detention - we found half a dozen Mutant Turtle pencil cases for 20p each and some nice denim address books for 49p. It's always nice to find a well stocked cache and disappointing to find tat but if that happens we TN but try to put in something a bit decent. The adults in our team don't mind just TNLNSL but if we found tat everytime the kiddies might not be so keen to come caching! Our team believes in trading fair or trading up although we have noticed that some people don't practice this. At the end of the day, there's a mixed bag of caches about and it usually pans out okay. There's only been one day when we have been out and discovered rubbish in every cache - items such as popped party poppers, faded rubbery pencil toppers, a decaying packet of seeds, etc.

Congratulations to Daisy&Me (Berkshire) on reaching their 600th cache (one of ours - Mosshall Wood!!) on 27 Feb 2005

Just echoing the comments on this - preferred it the old way. Sorry. Nice new look apart from that, haven't really tried out all the new features yet to fully appreciate them.

Google have set up a link on their home page www.google.com which links directly to news and updates sites PLUS, more importantly, sites where you can donate to some of the charities which are acting in this. It's quick and easy - we donated via Oxfam and you can make your giving tax efficient through gift aid. A huge amount of money is needed; shocked to hear this evening that the death toll now exceeds 120,000. The Bangladesh cyclone in 1991 had a death toll of 138,000. This Tsunami disaster looks set to exceed that.