Bambi&Thumper

Best laugh I've had in ages! B.

As owner of well over 100 coins, I have no problem with our coins ending up in remote caches. However, others may not see it that way, particularly if it is their only bug and they love it and cherish it and follow its every move. If in doubt email the owner or don't leave it. B.

B, IMO, forums like this are designed for people to discuss topics of interest. If someone posts an idea but doesn't explain the purpose, they can expect questions. If they aren't clear in their answers, they can expect further questions from the puzzled onlookers: sometimes this leads to the exploration of alternatives, which may not have been the original intention of the thread. I don't think that we should apologise for asking such questions, however. There's a convention on the UK forum that we don't discuss things too deeply, as Brits tend to be more sensitive than the average and get offended easily. But read through some of the main forum discussions and you'll see much more heavyweight debating on the most trivial of points! Back on topic (sorry), I think that Alan White has summarised it nicely, and it remains for someone to submit the "official" list of regions/counties for the UK. HH Sorry, had a very bad week. I agree with you mostly, but some of the "furiners" were obviously getting a bit fed up, particularly because they wanted their counties included and felt the "UK bickering" might put off TPTB. Also, as you say, we have a reputation for being more civilised than our US buddies, but I think that's a good thing and airing our dirty linen dents our good reputation. IMHO, this is where to discuss the counties (or not) and not where it bores everyone else to tears! As I said, I'm not certain that we would use this particular functionality, but it's possible that we might use it to set up our PQs, by area rather than date I suppose. Meanwhile, what about this official list? Do we really want counties or can we come up with a set of sensible boundaries that would split the country up nicely and call them regions? I'm thinking of rivers, mountain ranges, and maybe motoways as possible borders (I mean, anyone who's spent much time in parts of North Yorkshire will know what a scary border the A1 is... ). Seriously, what do you think? Other than that, do we really need to separate the UK out into its separate "countries"? I mean we are one land mass with the same parliament and currency and you don't need passports to cross the border - yet! I think separate countries would be more trouble than it's worth, but I'm happy to be corrected... B.

Someone else in the same position might decide to split their pocket queries by the river instead of by time though, so that they have a Welsh one and and English one. Not picking on you in particular, but just because you wouldn't want to exclude them, doesn't mean that everyone wouldn't. Personally, I'm not sure we would particularly use it either, but we don't know until we've tried it and we understand that for some people it would be very, very useful. Sorry, but all the bickering (mostly on the other threads) from people who can't see how they would use it, have got my goat. It's making us look REALLY bad in the eyes of cachers from elsewhere, to say nothing of gate-crashing the other thread. Can't we discuss this like adults and come up with a sensible solution here in "private" and then go to the others as a group and say, "This is what we want"? Rant over... Feeling slightly better now... B.

This is sort of where my thoughts are going. Why don't we depart from the political boundaries and go for less obvious, but more useful "regions" based on geographical features? This would require some discussion here, but was what I meant with my post in the "other" forum. Can we come up with areas that are particular problems and try to work round them? B.

Personally, I don't think this list is much use and think that some sort of county system is the only way to go. You have to accept that there will always be people moaning that their favourite county isn't included, but keep in mind why people want this functionality and ignore the moaners. I think people want it simply because many of the British County boundaries coincide with convenient geographical features. So, by setting a pocket query limiting the search to a particular county you can have a list of all the "local" caches or eliminate "problem" caches that are the wrong side of the river etc. Yes, some people won't use it, and there will be complaints because in this matter you certainly can't please everyone. A constructive list based on as few counties possible is what you want though (if you want to be less political about it you could call them "areas"). For this reason, I suggest you pick a rough list of old counties (because this is what most people relate to in my experience) and make a few changes to adjust some of the counties that really don't exist any more. That way you should get a list with a sensible number of "areas". Another alternative would be to stick some counties together to form slightly larger "regions" with borders in sensible places, but for this to work you would need to get opinions of some very local cachers. Hmmmm... Maybe this is a discusion for the local forum... B.

Not sure we are up to the walk bit, but we might be able to help as drivers... B.

Oh dear - 960 pictures, 298 caches, 19 months... How sad are we? Worse, we use dial-up to upload most of our pictures ! B.

I think we could probably lend a hand there if you are desperate (and depending exactly where you plonk it!). B.

A bit drastic, but avoid dairy produce. Seriously. A friend of mine is lactose intollerant and swears that when she stopped eating lactose the midges lost interest and this is supposed to be a known issue. Apparently, dairy produce also gives you a snotty nose (for want of a better expression), so if you suffer from sniffy-type-allergies, reducing your milk intake should help there too. B.

Eh now, I'd drill it if I were you because these shiney things have a habbit of disappearing, especially if it makes it to the USA. Seriously, strange though it may seem, GeoCoin theft appears to be a big problem over there. Drilling holes (which devalues coins to collectors) and using them to attach labels/TB tags will almost certainly prolong its travelling life. It can usually be done quite neatly and then a split-ring key-ring loop can be used to attach a label/tag. This is the method we have used on our 150-odd travelling coins, most of which are still travelling (and a lot of which we met when they turned up in Shrops at the event last September!). I believe others use this method too, including Scaw who must have well over a hundred coins out there. B.

I really like the idea of sending it so other cachers can see it, but don't forget, some coins (like the early Canadian ones) are trackable on other sites. Before you drill a hole in it to attach a TB tag, you might want to double check... If you can post a picture here (or in the GeoCoin forum) maybe someone would be able to tell you whether it is trackable elsewhere or not. B.

Found the problem! The program was looking for specific colours on the map at the same time as changing them into the desired colour. That was fine for the standard colouring (with a little care over sort orders etc), but when a flat colour was introduced it was mucking things up. I've now changed it so that it works out what all the colours should be on a first pass, then changes them all on a second pass. Things now look a little more consistent. Works fine for us now, Thanks! In fact we like the look so much and the fact that it updates, that we've replaced the old map permanently. B.

We've done that one and it's a good one; not as simple as many virts. Has two DNFs and about 50 finds... We've DDNFed Not Dotty, though we didn't log it as such because by the second visit we were convinced it had gone and just contacted the owner. It hadn't... B.

Looks to me like it's getting confused and replacing N. Yorkshire with Hereford and Worcester... Does the same to us too, which is a pain since nearly a third of our caches were done in N. Yorks. B.

We did this cache too and seing these pictures reminds us what a great time we had in "Shrops", and what great caches we did, especially on our last day. B. The view from Camelot... ...Camelot from Vale View GeoCoin Exchange.

What an excellent idea for a thread - I've really enjoyed following it. We just love looking at photos taken at cache sites and it's one of the things that really makes this site for us. So far there seems to be a shortage of coastal pictures, so here's another photo of ours from a while back taken at St. Abbs while doing Roond Hill. This cache has a couple of nice photos including this one, which was taken by leftrightorstraighton... B.

Here are some of our favourite photos from more recent caches... On the way to Drew's Mistle... At the Hunt and Munch... (Dogs and bones, you know how it is...). Another one that is just how it came off the camera and was on top of a windy hill at Borderline View Two. Stobb Cross. On our way back from setting our cache at Dry Rigg. We take photos at pretty much every cache we do (that way we can remember which one was which), so check out our profile for more. B.

is it fairport convention? Well Done! Over to you... B.

I didn't think it was THAT hard... B.

YAY! That's our second right answer!! OK, our question... Which music group, often credited with being the first of its style, was formed in 1967 by Simon, Richard, Ashley and Shaun? B.

The liver? B. EDIT: D'Oh! Wrong page... EDIT2: The Great Michael? The gun is in Edinburgh isn't it?

I remember this cache well. First we drove past it and said, "That would be a good place for a cache..." Then one day we did the cache that was already there and said, "What a great place for a cache!" Shame it's gone, hopefully it will return once the upheaval is over? B.

What he said! ^ ^ ^ Thanks loads - we all had a great day too! B&T.

Actually, I have it here. I picked it up from a cache this weekend - not sure which as we did quite a few. It seems someone must have picked it up and placed it without logging it. T Awww! Thanks guys!! We really thought we'd lost that, which took the shine off the great event slightly. It's now been restored in all it's glory at the top of our short list of events. And to know the coin is back travelling is great as it is a kinda special coin to us. That's really made our day that has! So that means we lost nothing at Shrops except our sanity... One very happy deer.