Claret Zip

We DNF when we feel we have really put in a reasonable amount of effort to find a cache. If it is just a case of us being short of time or tired then we don't DNF it. Recently someone DNF'd one of out caches - a multi. In their comment they said that they had solved the puzzle at stage one and then realized that stage 2 was too far for them to walk! That shouldn't really have been a DNF in my book.

We had a fortnight there last summer and thoroughly enjoyed caching on all the islands. However, I think you are right that March might be a bit early. I have to second the suggestion from *mouse* about the Peak District. There are loads of caches and you would be in great countryside. There are a number of series that we have enjoyed. In particular "A Quarry Caper" series and "A Stoney Stroll" series, both by The Stoney Stashers stand out for me as excellent circular walks. However, there is so much in the area you could easily devise your own walk based around caches - we often do.

I usually stock up on things from the local supermarkets - novelty stationary items, marbles and even toy cars are quite cheap. Poundland sometimes provide suitable multi packs of useful this and that. Also I do a trawl of the local charity shops from time to time as they sometimes turn up interesting things. One of my favourite things to get at the moment is from a small antique stall on our local market which sells pre-decimal coins. I can get half crowns, florins, thruppeny bits and so on for about 50p (that's an interesting exchange rate...). Basically any little item that catches my eye goes in the swag bag. Now Zip junior is older we don't do swaps so often but sometimes we trade if we see something we like e.g. an attractive geocaching badge, colourful foreign stamps. A while back daughter was delighted to get a camping spoon and fork from a City centre cache. She's never actually had cause to use it yet but it pleased her for some reason...

After a couple of attempts with trackables we got disillusioned and are inclined not to try again. The first we set off in Canada, shortly after we had started caching. We gave it a mission to try to get back to the UK. For a while it was quite exciting as it moved around Canada for a while, went to Hawaii and then back to the US mainland. Unfortunately it then got in to the hands of someone who appeared to have had a burst of enthusiasm, found loads of caches then lost interest. Our TB apparently ended up in a cache that was never published. Still at least it did travel a bit. Our second attempt we had quite a nice little figure that we released in to a new local cache. Never heard of it again. It appears to have disappeared almost immediately.

First off let me say that we don't do swaps that often these days. When we first started out, and Zip junior was a bit younger, then the novelties we found in caches were a signigicant part of the fun and were important for keeping her interested. These days the lure of the plastic is usually enough incentive. I still carry a bag of cache treasure though so that if something takes our fancy we can trade. In recent months though we have come across quite a few caches that contained nothing but a log book. I don't mean micros - obviously we dont expect to find swaps in these. Nor do I mean older caches where general cache degradation means that all the treasure has long since been nabbed and not replaced. I am referring to newish caches in a decent size container where there appears to be no treasure whatsoever. I wondered whether, as the sport matures, more people are getting passe about the treasure so people decide not to bother with it at all. A shame possibly because I still think it is a great way to get the kids attention. Alternatively maybe there is some sad individual in our area who is plundering new caches of their contents! Seems a bit unlikely though. Then again, a few months ago we found one cache in a really quite large container. The description had said something along the lines of "plenty of space for people to leave bits and bobs." But that is all there was - space! We wondered whether the cache setter assumed that this was how it worked - he left an empty box and people found it and filled it up. Anyway - I just wondered whether others had noticed this at all and whether it was growing trend. How important do people feel it is to stock a cache? Do you feel a bit let down if you find a largish container and then there is nothing in it to swap with - even though you know more than half the time you will TNLN anyway?

When I am having to poggle about in the undergrowth and under leaves and things I always like to find a stick to help me so that I don't put my hand in something nasty. Unfortunately there isn't always a stick available of the right size and strength so I started to look around for some sort of telescopic stick that I could keep in my cagoule pocket until required. Nothing of the right specification seemed available until I hit on the idea of buying a telescopic umbrella from Poundland. I customized it by removing the plasticky umbrella bit and the struts and this left me with just the thing I was after - a pocket size telescopic metal stick. As a bonus the plastic bit folds up nice and neat and also fits in a pocket and is handy to sit on if I can't find anywhere dry when I want to eat my sandwiches. It unfolds into a mat big enough for two. Not bad value for £1.

I wondered if anyone else on here had tried to buy anything from this company www.aboveandbeyond.co.uk There is a link to them from the main geocaching web site as a UK supplier of Travel Bug Dog Tags. The first time I used them, about 18 months ago, the package was sent with no stamps so I had to pay not only the cost of postage but also a £1 administration fee when I collected it from the sorting office. A bit annoying but, hey, anyone can make a mistake. A few weeks ago I sent for another tag. Together with post and packing the cost was £6.10 which I paid by Visa. After a while I realised that it hadn't arrived but when I checked my Visa bill they had certainly charged me for it on 3rd March. Anyway I sent them an email on 26th March politely enquiring when I might expect to receive it. I am still waiting for a reply! OK so £6.10 is not exactly a huge sum, not really worth making a fuss about and contacting the credit card company for or anything like that. Still I am irked that they can't even be bothered to reply to my email. Has anyone else successfully bought from them? Can anyone recommend any of the other suppliers of dog tags who are a bit more reliable?

The format for this seems to have changed recently. You used to get little numbered blobs for the caches then a panel on the right that told you their name. It now seems to have symbols for the caches rather than numbered blobs, the symbols giving you an indication of what sort of cache it is. Then when you hover over the symbol you get the name. I think I prefer it how it used to be, though that could just be me getting used to a new format. If we are going away anywhere on holiday or for a weekend I like to prepare to do a few caches. Usually I print the google map and list of names then the cache listings I am interested in. I am not sure I can do that so easily with the new format given that the cache name will only appear in a tooltip when I hover over it.

OK do you know what this is ?? We usually find that a dock leaf and a bit of spit works really well on those.

We did one like this recently. It was a multi around a town we were visiting and the coordinates took us to a small church yard where we had to find the last resting place of a member of a well known family, then do some calculations based on that person's dates. The clue didn't say whose grave it was but when we saw the name on the stone we knew we had got it right. It was interesting to find the grave of someone moderately famous in a place that we didn't expect.

These people might be able to help: http://www.sofmilitary.co.uk/military/select.asp

The main pleasure in caching for me is finding the box and enjoying the walk, especially if it takes me somewhere I wouldn't otherwise have visited. Having said that it is a bit disappointing when you find a box containing just tatt - not so much because we want to swap but because it shows how mean spirited some previous cachers have been. We always take a bit of trouble when we set up a cache to put in some decent swaps and try to get things that could appeal to kids and things that adults might also want to take. I have my caching bag with me at the moment as we are planning an after work hunt and it contains a selection of things that might be "useful" e.g. boxes of paperclips, nail clippers, reels of cotton, mini torches(again!) as well as toys e.g. matchbox cars and packs of colouring crayons. When we first started out, the junior member of our team was always keen to swap. These days she tends to be a bit more selective and is usually only bothered if there is something interesting. In particular we have found a few with old coins such as Victorian pennies and foreign coins and she is always very keen to swap for those.

Maybe it depends where you are going. We are going to France on our hols at the weekend and I have compiled quite a good list of caches in the area we are staying in. Almost certainly more than we will manage to get to.

We hid a cache on Sunday (our third). Since it didn't get published until about 10pm and considering that it was a multi involving, we estimated, about 3 miles of walking we didn't expect any finders too soon. I was astonished when I read me email on Monday morning to find someone had found it at 7.15am that morning! Such dedication.

We have a Geko 201 - bought about a year ago from Argos for £119.99 I think. I too saw the Aldi advert and spluttered a bit. We have found it perfectly OK for geocaching though it sometimes gets in to a bit of a spin when there is a lot of tree cover. No maps but usually when we go out we have a pretty good OS map with us anyway so no problem. I would definitely recommend it as a good starting model - in fact we have no plans to upgrade anytime soon.

Hi I live in Macclesfield and have been geocaching for nearly a year now. I have to say I have not tried Heron's Rest but I notice that it is a micro which probably is a hard one to try for your first cache. Why not try the two in the Bollin valley as they are both quite easy? They are "Step Into Cheshire - Riverside Park" (GCY98E) and "By The Bollin" (GCWAZB) (Highly recommended ) Good luck

We have had a Garmin Geko 201 for nearly a year now but at the weekend it did something that surprised us and I wondered if anyone here could shed any light on it. On the satellite screen, under the text that says "Ready To Navigate", it usually then tells you with what accuracy it is operating thus "Accuracy xxxft". At the weekend we were out walking and we noticed that this text had changed to "Diff xxxft". As we watched it changed back to "Accuracy" but intermittently went back to "Diff" again. I have looked through the manual but can't see any explanation as to what this means. Has anyone else seen this or know what it means?

I saw this show last night and was bit disappointed. It seems to be more of a travelogue with a little bit of clue solving.

Until?

Yes we once found a condom in a cache but fortunately I was able to distract Zip junior and removed it from her view before she rifled through the cache contents. We left it in the cache after we had finished though, after all it's not exactly dangerous.

We have only been caching since Easter so I apologise if this is a well known fact to some of you senior members. But I just wondered, what was the first cache placed in the UK, when and by whom? Is it still there?

Agreed. One of the reasons I think geocaching is such a good idea is that it helps to keep my daughter keen on getting the boots on and going for a walk. Naturally, for a child part of the appeal is what you might find in the cache and it is a bit disappointing when at the end of a really good hunt they just find a container of complete tat. I have read suggestions in the past that you keep a bag of cache goodies and let them choose from the bag if there is nothing they fancy in the cache, but that just doesn't have the same appeal as finding "treasure". We have only been geocaching a few months and have done just under 30 so far but fortunately we haven't had many that were so completely tatty that we found nothing we wanted to take. Yesterday my kid was particularly delighted with cache contents - from one she got a US dollar bill and in the other a geocaching.com pencil.

We saw this advertised when we went to see "Pirates of the Carribean" at the cinema last week http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/cars/new...e_treasure.html Apparently Volvo have buried a car somewhere and there is a treasure hunt competition to find it. All three of us had the same thought - wouldn't it be funny if a geocacher stumbled across it first! I can imagine the log - "Took car left a fridge magnet" SL TFTV

Ditto. I have lived in this area for over twenty years and, as we have always enjoyed walking, I thought I knew it pretty well. However, in just a few months of geocaching we have discovered lots of lovely pockets of countryside we were not aware of and have had the chance to revisit areas we did already know but seeing them in a new light. Also I have learnt always to carry spare batteries and to put the car / starting point in as a waypoint before setting off!

Speaking as someone with a phobia for all moths and butterflies I say the fewer the better :-(