Oxford Stone

It's all down to the "you only cheat yourself" adage isn't it? In the last 24 hours I've, far from the first time, "short circuited" a couple of very long multis by just massaging in numbers / squinting at the penultimate stage. Cheating? My first T5 I couldn't do the Playfair cipher but noticed the cache was back-referenced in another of the CO's caches, and took a lucky punt. Cheating? Messaged another recent finder of the cache, but he'd not done the other one - he'd simply mapped the day's caches of a prolific cacher who'd found it and got lucky too! Cheating? A fiendish series of 5 puzzles, 3 of them the answers along a road but with a gap... hint to hard puzzle "low metallic"... looked under railing, there's the cache. no idea how to solve the puzzle. Cheating? Exchanging large or small hints with other cachers - cheating? Logging puzzle caches (and the odd tree climb where he didn't tuch the cache) for Oxford Stone Junior, just gone 5 years old - cheating? Tricky nano in Oxford, multiple DNFs but happened to see some toher cachers get it so logged too. Cheating? My conscience is clear on all of the above. What I wouldn't do is traipse round a mega event queueing up to log caches, easy or hard, found / retrieved by someone else. Part of the beauty of cacing is that we can all play it our way. I should stress that I love solving or setting a good puzzle - and indeed a good multi, nothing like the satisfaction of doing it properly - but sometimes unorthodox means are called for. I'm just a bunch of contradictions, aren't I?

I'd think, and hope, that people are withholding comment as they can't exactly understand the particular issue and don't want to speculate. My outlook on geocaching is "woohoo, a free treasure hunt!" and don't want to get involved in politics - though I do have my opinions on megas, apps, premium membership and so on. I know that in my area we've got great reviewers and a good community of cachers who give each other feedback, flag up cache issues and don't squabble. Occasionally someone drops out of the hobby - suddenly or gradually, loudly or quietly. But it's certainly a sad day when someone like the OP feels hounded out of it.

There is no prohibition about there being a fee to gain entry to a cache location. I am doing two in Calistoga, CA next week at the Geyser and Petrified Forest and then there are all the ones in parks that have a fee for entry. There was one in Palm Springs where you had to enter a museum and take note of some things displayed there. http://coord.info/GCR10B top of my FP league table. I'd stored it as being central, but had not bothered to translate the page (ich spreche deutsche nicht...) - so got quite a surprise with 544 steps to climb! Worth the entry fee (€3 IIRC). Photo "Da Hoch!" on 17/4/14 nicely captures the internal view of the spire as you climb it. There was a 252 foot gap (with the River Thames in it!) from one of my caches to the next. The other one's now archived.

I was driving over the FR-BEL and BEL-NL borders last week and wondering if any frontier roadsigns anywhere are harbouring a cheeky filmpot? http://goo.gl/maps/CP6N1 this sort of thing.

project-gc.com - see my profile, I've taken stuff out of the mygeocachingprofile data to avoid duplicates. p-gc updates daily if you pay them, weekly otherwise. No work involved. Mygp you have to feed it a pocket query every so often. I keep it largely for the UK county map with its numbers.

Yes it's a very subjective system, despite everything... as discussed elsewhere. Different grid... I seem to remember someone on another thread claiming to have done 366/366 straight off in the 1st year of caching; found that a bit hard to believe, but if they say so! My longest slump is still 7 days between first two weekends of caching. I'm on 362 after 17 months - 3 days in Aug and then 29 Feb 2016, to go. So I'd venture getting to 365 in under 2 years is pretty good going but probably bettered many many times.

Had a look at that Ottawa cache, good concept! http://coord.info/GC36N4J is an old-school multi I do want to try one day; http://coord.info/GCG56T might do in two goes as it includes a mile walking along a busy road. In general - big thumbs-up for multis, especially when accompanied by kids who can look for the numbers.

Enjoyable trip to Belgium + NL last week. 1st ever 3 countries in a day (GB/FR/BEL on the drive over), and on my stats a top 10 FP for a cache in Bruges and a couple of top 10 low altitude in NL (but I don't trust those particular stats too much!) As mentioned on a recent multi thread, they do like their multis over there - proper town walking tours with a dozen waypoints. Done well, they're excellent! Next planned holiday is flying to Porto and then on to Spain. Already done Portugal but Spain will be a new one. Then in 2015, Brazil???

Judging by the OP's Hides, I'd guess they're heading down that same path Haha - I'm proud not to have any caches where D=T, as I actually think about the ratings! Lots of tough puzzles / field puzzles; 2 up trees where, once you're up the tree you can't really fail to find the box. No agenda to put out rare combos. If I ever put out a 1.5/1.5 film pot, feel free to beat me round the head with an ammo box / obsolete Garmin (you choose).

As I limp along in the mid-50s on my D/T grid, I'm wondering: What's the shortest period of time in which anyone claims to have done all 81 combinations? Is there a trail somewhere designed just for this - from a back of a roadsign 1/1, to a solve a vigenere cipher in Sanskrit and abseil down a volcano 5/5, all within 8.1 (ish) miles? And if not, why not?

Interesting point. I'm just back from a week in Belgium / NL and the cache in Gent with the most FPs was... a multi. 10 points to visit, find the number, do the calculations and end up in a bar where the CO pays for your drink! Made for a brilliant family walking tour, enjoying the scenery as we went. There were many more multis, all in Dutch, again giving thorough tours of Gent and Bruges. There's a big UK series called Church Micros - many of these are multis, as if you can't find any numbers in a churchyard, where can you? If you like that sort of treasure-hunt info-gathering then they're great but if you want to do loads of caches in a day then obviously steer clear. I'm on a permanent mission to keep my trad % below 90 (in the 88s ATM) as once I got past 1000 caches the total number stopped being of interest. I'll probably pick up a multi on the way home today - already solved as the CO's made it too obvious (local dialling code, googlable telephone number, person died x006...) - occasionally I've known I COULD "short-circuit" a multi but have chosen to visit the waypoints anyway just for the sake of exploring a spot I'd otherwise not see. My own multi is all of 10 metres long but that's another story...

We're a couple with a son who will be 5 by then. I've found a steam railway at (?) Goes that looks worth a visit. I've just looked at Delta Park and that looks brilliant - many thanks! I'd been considering a standard them park south east of Brussels but this looks ten times more interesting.

I read this with interest as a multilingual whos' coming to B / NL caching at the end of the month. It seems amazing in a country like Belgium, where surely most people speak at least 2 languages, that someone can get so angry and rude about hints in Spanish! And if you can't work out what "cuatro troncos" means, well... Don't let it discourage you.

Hello! We're spending a week based in Ghent at the end of May, and want to come over to NL for a day. Can anybody recommend any good caches, or just nice places to visit? Vlissingen, any particular beaches or things to do? Thanks in advance.

Love it! The only one of these library phone boxes I've seen is in Thruxton (off A303).

My 2p-worth: 0.1 mile, really not far is it? If you want to place a cache close to a church, even if there's a non-CM cache right by it, can't be too hard to find another place close by. If a CM (trad but preferably multi - so many numbers to be gleaned in and around churchyards!) took me to a fantastic view of a church from a hill a mile away, I'd think "fair enough". I've found plenty of caches and wondered "why did you bother putting that there?" and can imagine that "why did you bother calling that a CM and put it there?" must be a question some cachers ask. ... but I'm not a big follower of the whole CM thing. S Oxon Stone (who got me into caching) is, and has an interesting challenge up his sleeve, watch this space. Pebbles & Co has put out clever multis for loads of churches in SW Oxon and as I'm trying to drive down my trad % (88 something now), they're always good. Picked up the info at Imber Church on the Salisbury Plain firing ranges last weekend but not picked up the cache yet.

I need to wear a baseball cap more often - am forever scratching my bald head on thorns! Can't imagine wearing shorts on a caching walk, too many nettles. As the weather gets warmer, backpack replaces fleece for carrying swaps / pen / stamp / wallet / car keys. Sturdy shoes if there's a chance of a tree climb, otherwise am happy walking up to 3 miles just in light boat shoes.

Yes, urban caching for me now = when I happen to be in a new city - if I want to go caching, then it's a country walk or (in winter) a village. There's a series over here called church micros, which means that in most villages in the UK you have a cache you can get without getting muddy! There are 2 or 3 very involved multis in the area - the "pre-trail" type where a 5-mile walk will get you one cache. Now back on the radar having been ignored when I was just after numbers. I've got a caching buddy into the concept of keeping trads under 90% and he's enjoying that too - even though he professes to hate puzzles!

Bumping my thread up ... My grand total is now in a mid-1300s wilderness where I probably won't get excited until 2000 and that's maybe a year away. I have as predicted slowed to about half my pre-1000 speed. Surprised myself by doing a 100-day stretch but really, really don't expect to get close to that, ever. I now own 13 caches (and have organised an event) - FPs on 12 of them, hovering around 20% according to project-gc. Proud to be perplexing, amusing, challenging and entertaining cachers. Yesterday the family went on a 2-mile walk, OS Junior properly got into swapping swag (had a clearout at home) - fairly boring caches for an adult, but the pleasure of seeing a (nearly) 5-year-old using his eyes and enjoying the countryside is to cherish. 51/81 on the D/T grid (targeting 60 by the end of the year), peeping at the Jasmer challenge, focusing on keeping trads below 90% which means taking the time to do some quite involved multis and puzzles. First-ever CITO next week; Junior got his first earth cache on Saturday and got a basic grasp of geology and fossils. Squinting at the road map to see if I can fit in 5 counties on a visit to my sister's; have enjoyed city breaks in 2 new countries, going to Lisbon and Hamburg with some memorable caches. When I started this thread I'd never have guessed I'd put out as many as 13 caches, organise an event or - more importantly - see some of the places near and far from home that I've been to. Who knows what adventures lie ahead?

Couple of comments re connected caches - My 3 puzzles in my home town, each contains a hint to the enxt on the log paper. Just my way of boosting traffic. I've helped my Finnish caching buddy / colleague solve 3 out of 4 increasingly hard music puzzles (near a music college) - I think it was one on chords or harmonies that was beyond us. Intervals and so on, not so bad. Nearest unsolved puzzle to my office, if I looked up how to do bookkeeping (accounting) I might be able to do it. http://coord.info/GC1N2MY just never felt the urge...

I'm a fan of puzzles, but there are plenty which are beyond me. I don't ignore them in case I get help / inspiration though. I've put out 5 of my own - 1 you have to do some google research about what is the world's oldest continually used (association) football ground; 1 is cryptic indications of local pubs (then number of letters in name); the other 3 are ways in which a colour, letter or town name can be represented by numbers... getting a reasonable number of FPs traffic not much lower than the surrounding trads. As mentioned above, puzzles with more than one possible answer = badly thought out!

I've helped my son do 13 of these before his 5th birthday.

... because if you start a new thread, some smartarse says "we've already discussed this, are you stupid or something?" I love the idea of the optional kite flying opportunity.

It's already been said, but surely the onus is on the choosy cacher to do some research? There are a couple of towns near me with about 20 caches each - mostly in residential areas, lots of disabled / need to be disabled / "litter at GZ" logs, and I'm not wasting the petrol when 2 miles outside each town is lovely scenery and bite-size circular walks where a handful of caches can be picked up. As winter finally draws to a close (do we have any southern hemisphere contributors on here?), I'm looking forward to doing a lot more rural caching and a lot less urban. There's also the other eternal caching truth - each to his own, enjoy the hobby your way.

I went through this, backdated a few for OS Junior in late 2012. He's now on 570 or so in 6 countries - we go caching together every Saturday and Sunday. I'm writing his logs as he's not yet 5, but often ask him what he liked / remembered about the day's caches and include that - along with a special mention for any he finds before I do, and there have been a few dozen of those! The email address for his a/c is my work one but if I change job I'll use a gmail a/c or some such. Great to get children involved - particularly useful for retrieving low-down caches, too! We were in Hamburg recently where 4 or 5 in a row were under benches / teleescope platforms etc. Just told Junior "have a look under there" and he'd run ahead and find the treasure before we'd got there.