Oxford Stone

Another GC bomb scare today (apologies if this seems wrong place - but I daresay there will be a red-faced CO out there)... http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10188278.Treasure_hunt_sparks_police_alert_and_closes_Oxford_park/ Intriguing thing is - there are no trads in University Parks - but some fiendish mysteries in the area! Wonder which one it was?

Bomb scare in Oxford (that's Uxfurrdohomygardthat'swheretheyfilmedharrypaadurr) today: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10188278.Treasure_hunt_sparks_police_alert_and_closes_Oxford_park/

The other day I was looking for a multi-cache and as it was under trees decided to ignore GPS and go with my instinct. The hint was face high so when I found a cache chest high I tutted to myself, signed the nice clean bit of paper and walked back to my car. It was only then (in a bit of a stupor, it was freezing!) that I thought to myself, hang on that was a different name... I'd actually found an unpublished cache - which it turns out having exchanged messages with the CO has been turned down as, you've guessed it, too close to the multi! I've said that if they manage to relocate it in the same immediate vicinity but more than the magic 0.1 mile from the original co-ords of the multi, I'd like to claim my 1st FTF - but if they move it a long way away, that'll just go down as one of those oddities. In just 3 months of doing this I've stumbled across all sorts of other unspeakable things but that's the downside of doing a lot of urban caches in winter.

I'm still in the mulling stage for putting out a cache. Next week I'm moving house and there's a nearby cacheless meadow to explore for a good hiding place (interesting, pretty, muggleproof). I've noted it can flood so it'll be an off-the-ground job. I'm going to visit garden centres, DIY stores and stationers for an interesting container. And I've thought of a not overly elaborate puzzle but not one I can see even referred to as being used before. All the above info taken on board - many thanks!

Live in Oxford (though soon moving elsewhere in Oxfordshire) and was born in Maidstone in Kent. I support Maidstone United FC which makes me a Stone, they're the Stones. Every time I find a cache hidden under stones (or in one case inside a false one that you can buy in garden centres to hide a key in) I have to refrain from leaving a giveaway pun in the log. My 3-yr-old son is very proud to be Oxford Stone Junior and makes sure Iadd that when we go out "looking for treasure" together.

I did two urban trad's - both with snow underfoot - and then 3 virtuals in my home city today. Should have done a virtual yesterday when my 20-day stretch broke! Oh well it's there as a target for the summer.

Budapest, a city I've been to 4 times, looks amazing on a map. Zoom out. The whole perimeter of the city limits is one long... I think what people like to call a power trail? A cache every 150m or so. I think one or two involve rock climbing or abseiling. City centre does not look too bad either - I can see 4 within 250m of the hotel we stayed in last summer.

Paste from Wiki but I know my company's research agrees: The use of English online has increased by around 281% over the past ten years, however this is far less than Spanish (743%), Chinese (1,277%), Russian (1,826%) or Arabic (showing a growth of 2,501% over the same period).[2] The foreign language internet is rapidly expanding, with English being used by only 27% of users worldwide. Re Google translate / freetranslation etc: simple literal phrases like "The box is in the hole near the bridge" are handled perfectly, but metaphors, slang, or phrasal verbs with the verb a long way from the preposition, confuse the hell out of it! Back on subject - spend an evening prepping caches before you go, and maybe note down key words you pick up by looking at descriptions and hints in local language and English - cache / box / under / behind / in / on / opposite / magnetic / hole / tree / fence / post / gate... you'll probably learn how to say Muggle in multiple languages before you're done. And as a cacher you have a curious mind. So pointing some of that curiosity at a foreign language is no bad thing is it?

After he'd been to about 15 I retrospectively logged caches for Oxford Stone Junior who's 4 in May. He's now past 50 and has found 3 before us in a variety of settings and is very proud of his moniker. I put something in the log that he may be interested to read later. Will he still be into this when he's older? Who knows. Definitely worth setting up a basic membership though.

Thing is though I look at some "oh so clever" mystery / multi caches with codes in runes and x alone knows what else - why not simply put the whole thing in a foreign language (and I have friends in Hungary and Finland too) - not as the hint but as the puzzle itself? There's a cache in Oxford which involves fannying around with the atomic number for vanadium and I can't do it. I'm a linguist not a chemist. So my cache may well use languages to perplex.

Two short lunchtime caching walks today and yesterday in woods N of Maidenhead. Snow on the ground, -2 according to my car just now. Feel really braced for it. On Monday I did an urban one - parked 20 yards away but there was a blizzard. Might go urban again this weekend as I'm on quite a good stretch by my standards, albeit one a day in my lunch hour. Some caches might even show up more in snow - others will be totally buried. Should be an interesting weekend's sport.

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian). BWAHAHAHA...

Wow - I'd love to hear about the scenarios when you need the extra ammo! I'd maybe need that with people who cycle on pavements in Oxford.

Thanks funnynose, might consider that! (I ought to fess up at this stage to working for SDL - company behind www.freetranslation.com and various other clever bits of linguistic / customer experience technology, eg people who bought this also bought that as seen in online shops)

Can I pick up on the roaming fee rather than the linguistic element of this? I'm quite new to GC (end Oct) and it was my reason for getting my 1st smartphone. I'm off to Vegas for a conference next month (I live in England) and will go to Italy on holiday later this year. So the thing to do is store a max of caches on (in my case - android phone) c:geo, right? And use free wifi in Vegas hotel / Italian cafés where possible? Is that the strategy - and make sure not to hit Live Map when out and about? On the language side - though I speak French, Spanish and Portuguese I too will be a bit stuck on some of the hints from what I've seen - but I see it is an opportunity to learn some Italian. Here's an all-Italian one from the deep south of Italy: La Grotta di Sant'Angelo, o Santuario rupestre di San Michele arcangelo, è un interessante ambiente (OK - interesting ambience / atmosphere, St Angelo's grotto...) rupestre, secondo la tradizione basiliana diffusa in Calabria a partire dal V secolo d.C. gercate vicino i muri. (near the walls? but what's gercate?) Additional Hints (Encrypt) Cerca una tegola rotta ma non sul tetto (near a - erm... broken but not on the... erm... I'm getting broken tile but not on the roof, but google and freetranslate not helping with gercate... aha, my Italian colleague tells me it's a typo should be cercate, look for!!! Yup it's tough isn't it!) Actually looking at the Bologna ones, I'm in luck, mostly translated! But if I visited my mate in deepest Finland... Which parts of the world are you finding a lot of caches with no English?

Not a gregarious one I've decided - solitary / with family / a friend is great, but I really don't understand these mass get-togethers where someone finds a cache and then 50 other people line up behind to sign the log, having discovered nothing more stimulating than the back of the cacher in front. There's a D1/T5 under a bridge in Oxford, and the CO is mighty peeved that that is what happened at last year's Oxford Geolympix - 1 guy abseiled down for it, the world and his wife signed the log from the road above. Went on a short trail yesterday and a lot of the pleasure was seeing no-one else, muggles or cachers. If I found myself catching up with another cacher on a trail, I'd avoid traipsing on alongside them, it'd defeat the object. Rant over - if you're an event lover and can tell me I've misunderstood the concept, feel free to tell me!

Ah - glad to see item 3! Since November when I started caching in earnest I look like a rose gardener / self-harmer, permanent scratches on my hands. Am going to get some cycling gloves. Otherwise - smartphone with stored caches on c:geo (it's amazing how many areas in rural England there's no signal to pick up the live map); Pen Walking shoes live in the car - always did but get a lot more use now Some of OS Jr's unwanted plastic toys so he can trade That really is it. I always take a map on country walks but smartphone technology is ample for urban stuff. Nearly needed tweezers once or twice but not quite!

The great thing about caching is that EVERYONE gets something different out of it and does it at their own pace. I only started in late Oct (tutorial from a friend) and then early Nov on my own. I'm now on 123 and a 12-day stretch - and have more or less cleaned up the feasible ones in my home and work towns - often doing cache-and dashes at lunch / on the way back from work. Colleagues find it amusing to see me come back to my desk with muddy jeans having walked a mile to find a box under a tree at the back end of a muddy field. My rhythm is going to change for several reasons: relaxing having got 100; done all the low-hanging fruit as mentioned above; but on the plus side, in the spring I can see longer walks coming up. 100 of my 123 are urban but a canal walk on 27/12 and then a woodland walk yesterday with 3 1/2 - year - old Oxford Stone Junior (now on 53, of which he found 3 before me) have shown me that rural caches can be a lot more fun. I'm delighted to have a son who, like his dad and his late grandfather, loves gettin gout in the countryside and geocaching will be a part of his education: exercise, navigation skills, obseervation, learning about the countryside and respect for it. As for planning - I just type the place into the website, sometimes zoom out to get an idea of density / a good route to pick up a handful. I've still never done more than 9 in a day. Forthcoming overseas trips for me: Vegas for a conference so 20 caches are stored on my phone - but I don't care if I only get to two or 3; then we want to go to Italy in the summer in the area where the famous car factories are (ie Bologna / Parma / Modena). Parma seems to have ONE cache and Bologna about 40 from memory, so guess where we'll be staying! Enjoy the hobby at your speed, Scott!

You've reminded me that the canal towpath N of GC3TFQ0 has been washed away and you need to climb along a fence over a stream if you arrive from that direction... I'm very happy to see that thehoomer and another cacher have already flagged this up in their logs, possibly saving a lot of hassle / danger for a family / reduced mobility caching trip.

I'm on 111 caches after 2 or 3 months and am already developing an allergy to 35mm film pots. But I've seen 4 superb magnetic nanos and some ugly, uninspired larger caches - TBs or no.. As it happens I'm going this lunch break to search for... an ammo box in the woods! There's a TB in there wants to get from UK to Oregon and as I'm in Vegas next month it seems rude not to drive 3 miles, have a quick walk, hopefully successful, and help it on its way.

I'm a c:geo (app on android smartphone) user so will often submit a log while walking back to car / on to next cache. So they're not all that long in these cases. Even then I try to paint a picture in those few words, eg a cache up a tree: "Signed in situ, great view! TFTC" would hopefully make the CO smile AND make people looking at the log who've not been there yet, wonder what they're going to find. Without offending anyone above - some of the longer entries are a bit self-indulgent - it's a matter of remembering your audience, ie the CO and other cachers (HH - you obviously recognise this - "If I write something verbose it's probably with the CO and other cachers in mind"...) Just remembered my favourite log entry of all time from my Dartmoor letterboxing days - it was something like this: "When we found this box we were so happy we took all our clothes off, danced naked around the tor and conceived our first child in the heather." Obviously not suitable for a magnetic nano on a housing estate in Amesbury...

- That would be Switzerland really, no State in the US would be allowed to require such a thing. But I'm not so sure they can own hunting rifles - just machine guns. Hehe excellent! I have a Danish hunting friend who managed to fatally shoot his Land Cruiser - all the cables under the steering column and a LONG way from the nearest road (by Danish standards) - but I digress. I'm over in Vegas in 4 weeks and looking forward to caching there. At least one cache implies you have to dodge the eagle eye of the security guys - that's the sort of challenge I like! Not sure if it'll be in the middle of the night from jet-lag induced insomnia (or on the way back from a casino...) or daytime that I'll be out and about.

Obvious problem there is that some people will do the caches in reverse order - or be on a tangent and just pick some off in the middle... (Don't tell me that's not allowed and I've got to go back and do the Route Canal series in order...???) More the merrier though - while dartymoor thinks it's spurious, thehoomer and I and other people in the Oxford area will know stories of kids getting swept off the Thames towpath and so on. It's a genuine safety thing, not just preserving a nice pair of jeans.

Have to agree that waxing lyrical about this one would be a ***** challenge in itself. However - wandering off subject - in defence of the banal urban nano, they are great for: Winter caching - dry and safe Beginners - getting your eye in Cash and dash - just to get that fix / tick off a county Last and not least - family friendly. On Saturday with OS Junior, did a self-proclaimed family friendly "look around you" series in E Oxford, OSJ loved finding 5 caches in an hour or so especially one which was on the back of a street sign (yawn) but one which included his name. All part of the fantastic fact that GCing can be approached in infinitesimal different ways and enjoyed by all. Back on subject - yes I put TFTC if it's a banal cache and I'm using c:geo on my phone in a hurry. Sometimes go back to a computer later to add something else but TFTC is sometimes code for "meh, boring". Now, when am I next going to be in the Amesbury area???...

Oh yes, I'm sure you didn't want it to go away. What I make of it is Geocaching being a much more rogue underground activity on the European Mainland than it is in North America. We'd never rappel off an observation tower (archived cache in Germany from earlier in the thread) or climb up suspension cables on a pedestrian bridge (the cache you referenced). This does not necessarily apply to the UK, I've not personally heard of any of that kind of stuff going on. Although what you're saying in this post makes me wonder. I mean over here, it's a major controversy if an FTF hound runs out and finds a cache at 2:00 AM in a park that has posted dawn to dusk hours. While in Germany, the illegal stunting act of rappeling off an observation tower has 150 favorite points. Hello, culture shock. That post made me smile. I mean don't confuse me with Piers Morgan - but there are different attitudes to lots of things either side of the Atlantic aren't there? Which state is it where geocachers are legally required to carry a sub machine gun and a hunting rifle?