*mouse*

Lovely spot - was orignally going to stay at my mums, but will definately now be camping. Looking forward to it. No reply at the moment - will try again in office hours.

Welcome to caching Word of warning - it's addictive! HazelS is a wirral cacher who is frequently on these forums. I'll sure she'll be able to recommend some good caches for beginners

People. It's always the number of people that matters for mega numbers, not accounts.....

I'm speculating, but could it be someone who's had their membership removed by TPTB for some sort of breach of the rules? Or someone who as asked for their membership to be closed? The account page would be there to honour finds etc of other cachers, but otherwise be inactive........

My mum wanted to buy my Dad a GPS as a present for his 60th birthday. Being the techy one in the family I was given the job of researching and buying one for him. While I was googling it, found a couple of references to geocaching. Went out and found one without a gps - knew I'd be hooked. Ended up ordering two - one for me and one for Dad.....

I believe that this was groundspeaks initial response, but according to the thread on the tech forum they are now happy for them to be listed without an alternative means of finding as long as they are listed as puzzle and have the beacon attribute. Just had notification that our chirps have been dispatched from the US so with any luck they should be out in the wild very shortly. This gadet girl is getting excited now! Personally I think this is a great new addition to our game and I'm looking forward to having something different out there. OK so not everyone has the kit, but then not all of us can go scuba diving, or abseiling either.

Got our chirp caches in the planning stages, so as soon as they're delivered we can get them out in the wild.... hopefully in a few weeks as long as they don't take too long to deliver...... If anyone else is planning something then let us know and between us we can get a bookmark of UK chirps together

Not done it myself, but we own a night cache that the local Guides do - they chose it specifically because after you arrive at the coords, all the girls can take part using a torch (without one person monopolising the GPS). Quite a few cachers are cub/scout leaders who no doubt will have plenty of suggestions in due course. Mad H@ter and Bambography are two that spring to mind straight away....

I'd do as Hazels suggests.... I might have made an exception if they had emailed and asked first, but to log without asking if it's ok is a tad cheeky IMO!

Self portrait to prove that I made it to the top of Ben Nevis back in July. There was no way I was getting my camera out of my bag in that weather and the Oregon does a fair job of catching just how soggy I felt! And apologies as this photo means you will have to scroll accross the thread, but this panorama was created from 3 photos taken with the Oregon. Think it came out pretty well

I started out with one a few years back, but upgraded to a more recent model a couple of years ago. The GPS60 doesn't have the accuracy under trees etc that that newer units do, but it still as well as it ever did and is a great back up unit when I need it. Keep going with it for a while - if you decide upgrade there's plenty of choices out there you might like to take a look at such as the garmin dakota, oregon or GPS62 which are all paperless and support mapping as well.

Excellent - will definately be buying one of these. Thanks DrD for organising the production of these. Any chance of posting a photo of the real thing?? Preproduction artwork rarely does the real thing justice!

They're still handing them out in stores - we picked up ours from GoOutdoors a few days ago and the staff there knew all about the competition

My understanding of it is that you had to log it from the event with one of the official Groundspeak iphone or android apps. As I'm too tight to pay out for one of 'em (and the android app didn't exist then anyway), I didn't get it either lol!

We celebrated with a 10 Earthcache cake at our 10/10/10 Earthy Event Disappeared in minutes - cachers are a hungry lot!!

Couldn't you free dive 3 metres? Doesn't seem massively deep to me - a bit like diving to the bottom of a swimming pool only muddier! Admit you'd only have a minute or so to search each time you went down, but would save you having to get another person in to do it. Would only cost the price of a mask.

I have to be honest, rather than have an attribute, I would much prefer it if the cache owner temporarily disabled a cache when the woodland was shut. That way I could filter on my PQ rather than have to read the cache page to check.

I've seen a few water containers and many work well. Including one of those money tubes designed for using on the beach, a regular old ammocan, a small pelican case, a plastic pipe with screw on ends, a waterproof match pot..... All worked and the contents were dry. Think my favourite was the pelican case as it was also a nice size. As Mrs B says, you also have to weight them to make sure they sink. Or you could leave them float - the ammo can I found was floating and just tethered to the bank.

As 10/10/10 is International Earthcache Day, we planned an earthy themed event. Geoaware was kind enough to supply us with a big bag of prizes which will be handed out on the day. Oh, and there will be CAKE!

What Stokesy says - much better for urban caching as they are not so cluttered as OS. I also prefer them when navigating by car, as the maps refresh much more quickly than OS do. I have both on my Oregon and toggle between the two depending on what I'm up to and think both are good for good for different things.

Oi Stu! I wasn't even there when he smashed his face in! We will be here all day! (not least 'cause it will take him most of the morning to post a reply to this topic as he has to type everything with his left hand at the moment!)

Lots of peeps there have duel personalities presumably - cacher and reviewer. If they log under both accounts then the numbers will appear greater

Don't think that would be popular at all - for a start who would run it? The reviewers are volunteers and have enough to do already. And who get's to choose that one event is more worthy than another? A regulatory body would make for more angst I think as people would resent being told what to do. As for sponsorship and coins... well that's sounding like a full time job!! It's worked well for the last 10 years just as it is - first come first served with people talking about dates openly here on the forums, or socially on sites such as facebook. Most discussions regarding dates take place off this forum TBH, and we pick up the phone or email to check if we think something will clash. If you're a facebook fan check out keehotee's camping event group which is used to avoid clashes between weekends and you'll see it working really well. Cachers in the UK orgainse dates amongst themselves and don't need anyone to oversee things formally...... I think the summer of 2012 is the first time that we've seen a clash and TBH I think most people agree that the events are so dissimilar they wouldn't appeal to the same people anyway. Lots of us openly discuss our dates well ahead of time behind the scenes so that we can ensure we don't clash. Usually we swap dates around amicably, but on the odd occasion it is harder to sort out. Par for the course and nothing to get concerned about.....

no hes going to different hospitals so they don't start thinking Ali is battering him lol!

Personally I think an alternative camping event the same time as the Olympics is most welcome. Wild horses wouldn't drag me to London that summer and I think many feel the same. Even a mega won't be enough to pursuade me! Others I know wouldn't miss the Olympics for the world. As Hazel says, horses for courses, if they want to come they will, regardless of what else is going on at the same time. I must say I feel a sense of regret that Pirates isn't moving. One of the appeals for me has always been the change in location and the chance to explore somewhere new. As for us, we already have plans for that weekend that summer so won't make either. Wish both etevents luck though