*mouse*

I've put out containers that were essentially free - a peach jar, a note pad and pen that were a promotional gift, a few toys that a friend's kid had grown out of and didn't want. I've also put out ammo cans stuffed with swaps - easily over a tenner. I guess a £3/4 is about average for me. We bulk buy swaps, containers and notebooks when we see them cheap to keep the cost down. For me the effort put into a container is important - it's one of the reasons I only have a few hides to my name, but I think quality over quantity personally. Others I know feel differently and that's their prerogative.

Only stages with a physical hide count. So questions to answer or parking coords etc will not have to follow this rule. So if all your stages are reference points then you will only have to worry about the final cache.

Can't argue that The Plume is fantastically located for exploring Dartmoor. We often camped there for convenience, but the number of fights I've known break up in the back car park over the last few years generally puts me off staying these days I'd rather hike up the hill and wild camp!! However over recent years The Plume has got a bit indifferent to cachers (double booking events etc) and so the local event has moved to the Prince of Wales down the road. I've not been to an event there yet, but by all accounts the staff there are lovely and the owner can't do enough for cachers. Looking forward to going to the next event in October GC312DG. You also have to have breakfast at the Fox Tor cafe - hands down best fry up in Princetown. Now I want to go back to the Moor. D@mn!

*runs in and gives Milt a happy hug and then runs back out again*

While I agree with what you're saying I think it still has importance as the far as the UK Mega Account goes..... if you get the account mega status is automatic. As someone who's on a committee who hasn't got status yet (as was the committee I was on) you will know that the absence of mega status means there are extra hoops to jump through that holders of the account will never have to experience.

Contact your local Rights of Way officer. They're job is to keep paths clear and so will help you to gain access to paths. HOWEVER if a landowner is anti walkers, I suspect they will be even more anti caching. Is this really somewhere you want to bring people? To a piece of land where walkers are actively dicouraged? Even if they do have the legal right to walk there?

There's too many hypotheticals to give a decent answer, but my attitude to anyone who accused me of anything would be very much 'put up or shut up' so I would instigate a private discussion with the person involved to see if we could get to the bottom of it. If they had proof then that's a matter for the police and not for anyone else in the geocaching community be they reviewer or ordinary member. If one of the parties was a reviewer I 'might' consider talking to Groundspeak about the matter. But ONLY if I felt their behaviour seemed unprofessional to the point where it reflected on their ability to do their job. TBH I think that's unlikely.

I have to say that if I go on holiday somewhere I research it myself, I don't wait for someone to spoon feed me stuff. A mega trip is no different. If you want to make the most of a trip you need to make that happen yourself. If you didn't know what were the best caches, best places to eat, best places to visit then I have to be honest - I think you only have yourself to blame for that. You were camped opposite a local - but you never asked me to recommend you a place to visit!! As for recommended caches - the favourite points system does this brilliantly so there is no longer the reliance on bookmark lists like there was 2/3 years ago. One of the reasons I enjoyed Scotland so much was because I made a list of the places I wanted to go while I was there (Ben Nevis, Loch Lomond etc) and ensured I incorporated them into my trip. I didn't rely on the Scottish Committee to tell me where to go or what to see! TBH the research is almost as much fun as the trip itself. Some of the side events have really focused on Welsh themes. For example Tatty Bear's Picnic at The National Museum of Welsh Life and also the event at Big Pit. The sunset on the Welsh Mega event is located at one of the most scenic spots in the UK. I think the committee have done well to incorporate a subtle Welsh theme in to the week without over doing it. I will say that I think that British Mega events have become a tad formulaic. It would be nice to see this freshened up a little. Speaking from experience I know that this is much easier said than done though. It will become increasingly difficult for future committees to do something original and different from the previous. I don't envy them that.

If you're not already aware, a voting process has now been put in place to decide who inherits the UK Mega Committee Account if there is more than one contender. Doesn't stop other megas being organised, but without the official account, mega status is not automatic so involves more work. You may be the only contenders - in which case no problem, but thought you should know the state of play as you might need to tender for it. Good luck with it anyway

We're in Devon atm otherwise I'd go - but if it's still there Friday and we have the time we can divert to go get it on our way to Mega. Depends on traffic though and how the Bryn Glas tunnels are looking as don't want to be too late getting to Kennexstone.....

The A48 isn't a bad road at all so will be easy enough to divert around Newport although I'm sure it'll be busier than normal so probably worth giving yourself some extra time. I'm trying to convince keehotee it's an opportunity to cross the river on the Newport Transporter Bridge which if you're sad enough like me to enjoy old engineering type thingys is definitely worth the diversion. Only 2 in the UK and 8 worldwide so a bit of a unique experience! (edited to add it's shut this Thursday / Friday so don't try if you're only down for the weekend!)

Even when eating chillis??

At the time keehotee was more annoyed that he'd scratched his GPS than the fact he'd smashed his arm falling off a *ahem* 4ft wall. Nothing to do with a bottle of red and a couple of healthy shots of three monkeys then Personally I've not had any serious caching injuries, other than the usual scratches, cuts and scrapes. But have have spent a fair amount of time sat in A&E with keehotee!

A nasty dog bite that causes a life changing injury maybe, but DNA from poo not at all likely.... It's over £300 a pop to submit DNA for comparison (police DNA budgets and submissions are part of my job). We rarely send off the human stuff as the chances of getting DNA from poo are so low. As for dog poo - can't see that happening in a million years. rather than send off a 101 poos to get a handful of hits, it would be more cost effective spend the money on someone to go pick it up and bin it.

..... if you subscribe to Trail magazine atm. Linky

There are dead drop caches out there already - one quite close to me in Brizzle actually!

Hi billy - welcome to the game You're based in a great location being right on the edge of Dartmoor - some of my favourite caches are on the moor. You're spoilt for choice! Devon cachers are some of the friendliest I have met and there's a really strong caching community down there. If you ever interested in meeting up with some local cachers then you should keep an eye out for the Stop the Clocks meet at Princetown. It's not published yet, but is usually around about the time the clocks change.

Yes - use the free maps Bear and Ragged have linked to. The Bristol area and South Wales are really well mapped on open source so there is no need to pay anything

A few options: The official Groundspeak app c:geo (but scrapes the site so TPTB don't like it) Geobeagle There's probably more but these are the three I use. I think I prefer the official one though.

I made it as far as The Children's Hospital before work decided that they had a job for me and my plans to time my dinner break with the show went out the window. Ah well, never mind!

I'm not scared of cattle and 99% of the time walk through their fields with no trouble. But I do have a healthy respect for them and their size. Sometimes a cache just isn't worth it - if they look particularly frisky or are crowding a stile I usually walk away. Once smiley isn't always worth the risk. Through my job I've seen first hand the damage a stampeeding herd can do. I was involved in a case where a farmer was crushed to death by his own cattle. It wasn't pretty.

I don't like the idea of retrospective logging either if I'm honest and I wouldn't do it myself. To my mind you should visit the coordinates with the express intention of finding the cache (be that physical or virtual). If you visit a trig because you like to bag trigs and then it later becomes an YOSM, you still visited that trig because it was a trigpoint IYSWIM. It's about intent for me. But at the end of the day it's no skin off my nose if someone wants to play the game differently - I will only ever log YOSM once and not retrospectively. Others like to chase it around and have logged it dozens of times. Who's to say I'm right or their wrong or vice versa?

I'm not sure about it being female - most of the boys on this forum are distinctly absent from this thread!

We both use the forums, we both research caches, we both do the techie bits on gsak etc... And on a day when we're both off work (and not doing something else), it's a sprint for the car keys to decide where we're going!

There are other listing sites out there that use peer review. If you don't like the way it's done here then there you can always use them. Personally speaking I think the reviewing on this site is amongst the best of all caching sites and it would be to the site's detriment to adopt a peer review system. A visit to each cache is not practical - caching is growing exponentially and just seems a ridiculously complicated undertaking. Besides what makes a cache visitor any more quialified to judge a cache. Surely it's much better to have a small dedicated team who have a detailed knowledge of local land owner agreements and UK guidelines? You couldn't expect every cacher out there to have this level of knowledge. If a regular cacher finds an issue with a cache then that is what the 'Needs Archive' and 'Needs Maintenance' flags are for. As for the cache of yours that was archived, from what DalesmanX has written on the cache page it appears that his decision was well founded. If there is a problem with a cache and you have chosen to ignore it when it's flagged up to you(preferring instead to delete the logs that have brought it to your attention) then don't be surprised to see an archive log. This makes your proposal for peer review seem even more contradictory. Clearly your peers have given you advice on that cache and rather than take that on board you have removed their logs!!!! If you work with TPTB and other cachers then they will work with you. If you don't - expect action to be taken that you might not like.