The Patrician

.... or if you want a prog to download: http://www.wxtide32.com/ Regards, Neil

Those sound like the blokes I was thinking of. I haven't looked at my college law notes for many, many years. Regards, Neil

All land in England & Wales is owned by the Crown, ever since a certain William the B******* popped over in 1066 and conquered England. Wales was added later by his heirs. Scotland, as ever, is different. Good King Bill then divided England up amongst his barons, keeping ownership but giving them a tenancy on the land. The barons continued this tenancy and sub-tenancy down to the level of us plebs. That's why you don't own the land your house stands on, you own the Freehold (you don't pay rent to anyone) or the Leasehold (you do pay rent to someone). That's why the Crown finds it so easy to acquire land for various purposes; they already own it. Edit: Footpaths and public highways - you have a legal right to "pass" and "re-pass", you can be done for loitering! You don't have a right to picnic, or watch racehorses (famous legal case, the name escapes me). You probably don't have the right to place plastic boxes, or indeed to grub about in the hedge looking for them! The answer is to be discreet. Regards, Neil

Two days after that article was published, the USAF responded: "The sky isn't falling and neither is the Global Positioning System, the U.S. Air Force said during a Twitter news conference. "No, the GPS will not go down," tweeted Col. Dave Buckman of the Air Force's Space Command. "GAO points out, there is potential risk associated with a degradation in GPS performance." "The issue is under control. We are working hard to get out the word. The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There's only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard," the Air Force official said. " http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Aheadofth...7002&page=1 Current satellite status (updated daily) is here: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/gpscurr.html We're probably ok for a bit! Regards, Neil

As I anticipated near the beginning of this thread I found a couple of caches in the Brecon Beacons at the weekend (I think I only deserved one of them, the owner of the Cribyn Earthcache was probably over-generous in letting me claim it as a find). Now a total of 52 caches found in 7 years of searching! Regards, Neil

The OS have a spreadsheet: "The spreadsheet includes a full set of Transverse Mercator projection functions, which allows you to: * Convert latitude and longitude to grid eastings and northings for any Transverse Mercator map projection, including the Ordnance Survey National Grid. * Convert grid eastings and northings to latitude and longitude for any Transverse Mercator map projection, including the Ordnance Survey National Grid." at: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/...preadsheet.html and an online coordinate transformer at: http://gps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/convert.asp Regards, Neil

Checking my profile I see that I've been Geocaching for 7 years now. In that time I've notched up the magnificent total of 50 caches found. I have some L O N G gaps in my geocaching activity. I'm afraid if a cache isn't up in the hills somewhere near where I'm climbing, or I haven't got kids with me (geocaching is a great way of encouraging children to walk) I can't generally be bothered. I do generally do the ones close to home, or if I know where I'm going for a walk I will check the route to see if there are any caches en route. The next ones I'm aiming for are some that have appeared on the top of Pen y Fan, sometime next month probably. At this rate I'll get to 60 by the end of the decade! Regards, Neil

This chap has a tracklog of the walk: http://www.daly.co.uk/john/walks/coasttoco...oute/index.html GPS waypoints here (you have to pay a sub): http://www.go4awalk.com/longpaths/thecoasttocoast.php & free: http://www.billh.demon.co.uk/c2c/coast2coast.html#gps http://www.walkingplaces.co.uk/c2c/gps.htm Regards, Neil