MCL

I have never done the consecutive number thing but I do have an eye out for interesting 3-letter combinations on regplates. Even more interesting if they relate some way to the place I spot them in. For example seeing ELY in Ely....which I have yet to actually experience. I have seen MCL several times, which if course is always relevant! The best I ever saw was the original number plate issued, which was A1. I was actually on the A1 near Harrogate at the time. And no it wasn't on an old car. Presumably the very rich owner ofthe plate puts it on whatever vehicle he currently owns. It was on a green Range Rover in about 1988.

Having read the further posts above, I can see merit in encouraging people to spend time looking round graveyards, and would only add that maybe the right thing to do is to set the cache just outside the graveyard, and mention in the cache page that, while doing the cache, a visit to the graveyard itself is recommended. That way, the choice as to whether to enter is left up to the individual. Much the same way we mention pubs in our cache pages. "The Upchuck & Leggitt is only just down the road and serves greasy food all day..." kinda thing.

A dadgum fine score, Dan. Well done!

erm..are you sure that car's suspension is designed to take the weight of that arch?

Oh dear, looks like I'm going to be a lone voice here. I don't agree that a graveyard, or any other place of special religious practice, is a suitable place for playing a game in. By all means go in and read the intriguing stones and admire the tombs, but don't actually set the game in it. Can you imagine what an uproar would be caused if we started placing caches in the grounds of mosques and temples? We would have all sorts of fundamentalist moslems, jews and hindus bringing down the wrath of heaven upon our heads for desecrating such a holy place with cheap tat. No, I believe we should stay out of graveyards, temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, and the equivalent places of worship for other sects and religions, for both caches and also the clues to multi caches. Although I do complete multi caches that require me to go into a graveyards, I don't enjoy doing it, and I certainly would never place one myself in a church or grave yard. I made that point implicitly in the placing of my "Really Keyne" cache. To do the cache you absolutely do not have to enter the graveyard. On the other hand, I don't want to be seen shoving my own religious beliefs down other people's throats, which is why I have never said anything about this before on here. I stayed silent until asked for my opinion. So if you are asking me for my recommendations, I say don't do them. People's places of worship and eternal rest are not playgrounds. Neither should we be encouraging the next generation to treat them as such. OK. I'll come off my soapbox now.

When it comes to what to write on the outside of a cache container, I can sympathise with those people who don't want to put their phone numbers in case of wierdos and cranks. In the UK we have a solution to that: the Geocachers Association of Great Britain runs a telephone number contact line that cachers can put on the outside of their caches. This means that anyone thinking about blowing up a container can ring the number first and start a process that will end up with the cache owner being put back in contact with the person calling. It isn't perfect, but its better than nothing. Details here

ROFLMAO! you just made me spatter noodles all over my keyboard... Now I'm going to have to get a toothpick to winkle them out of all the cracks...

In another thread someone asked why an old phone box would be painted black and white. I happen to know at least one answer to this: The answer is it is not a BT phone box. Years ago, when BT replaced most of the old red cast-iron boxes with the newer plate-glass-and-brushed-aluminium ones, they didn't always dispose of the old red ones, but sold them off to collectors and other interested parties. Wind on a few years. Then we have the situation where we have several phone companies (like Mercury, NTL, Telewest, Worldtalk etc) who are starting to get big enough to want to set up their own phone boxes as well as service domestic and business customers. In some places like new shopping centres they want to put up spanking new futuristic things in keeping with the modern surroundings. But what about in histric places like London and Manchester, where the environmental slant is on "looking the part"? So off they toddle to their scrap yards. They dust off the old boxes and stick them up. But BT get the lawyers to dig up some small print which says that only BT boxes are allowed to be red. Yes folks, it is a legal requirement that non-BT phoneboxes can be any colour you like except red. BT of course are allowed to paint their boxes any colour they like, including red. So if you see an old PO Telephone box that is painted another colour (and black and white are a common choice) then you will find a phone in it that is not BT.

Before I hide a cache I like to make sure of the environment in all seasons. I don't want to find that my well-hidden cache is clearly visible from half a mile away just because the shrubs have died off for the winter!. Or make an easy find absolutely impossible because i didn't think of the stinging nettles come the summer. No it takes time and research to find secure places that don't change much over time. Plus there has to be a good reason for the location. The other thing that worries me is my ability to service a large number of caches. I have a rule whereby I can get to a cache within 48 hours. With just my four, I have had to make three dashes in the past year. If I had, say, 50, statistically I could end up making one dash to fix a cache per week! I don't have that sort of time. So, rather than plant and then abandon caches, I would rather plant a few and look after them well. 1:25 is a good ratio, one that I seem to attain without trying.

From Milton Keynes, 220 of which two are mine. My third one is much further away.

Please don't rely on it too much. It has got the right idea in many cases, but as a brit who speciallises in the language and its idioms, I can tell you I am suspicious of: - Kaker (unless they actually mean "ka-ka" which is used to mean excrement more usually of the horse or cow variety, but applicable to the human kind as well... One place I have heard this used correctly is by the comedian and Hollywood star Robin Williams, for instance in his show 'An Evening at the Met' where he uses it to refer to what babies produce in their nappies) - Kafe is usually spelled Kaff or Caff if used at all... - Karzy is nearly always spelled Khasi or Khazi - Kayf ... look, they can't have it both ways... - Kenneth Brannagh...? Oh perlease.... I just don't believe this one. Who makes this drivel up? - Kike...I always though Kike was what they call a gateau in Birmingham.. - Kinky. Well it's not the same as perverse: I was always taught that Kinky is where you use a feather, perverse is where you use the whole chicken... Oh I give up. I'll be here all night. well actually, I *am* here all night.

Yes, Marc, I do.

...so the stained underwear in here isn't turning you away then?

I don't effing believe it! Absolutely priceless! Good to see that my idea is not so daft after all. However, my skid marks are not quite so...lets say "blatant". The yellow staining on mine (apple juice, I'll have you know...) does not require it to be accompanied by quite such a voluminous brown effect (wax crayon...)

I have a defence mechanism against people who might like to eye up my car for a break-in.... I leave a pair of old underpants on the passenger seat in full view. That and a pile of old tissues all screwed up in the passenger footwell. Strangely, no-one tends to find my car an attractive target any more. Having had two cars stolen from me in my life I'm not taking any chances. I hasten to add that although the underpants *look* as though they are well-worn, in fact they are quite harmless. All the sweat and ..ahem.. is purely cosmetic effect. In fact I've never even worn them at all.

Geocachers are never lost, just temporarily uncertain of position...

I'm afraid it neither amazes nor surprises a cynic like me.

No question, that was a fantastic achievement. Very well done.

I'll prod my mate, Craigsbar, since he and his delightful wife live over there in the Emerald Isle.

When I first read the guidelines about burying caches, (long long ago, in a forest far, far away...) I immediately thought of two good reasons for having such a guideline: - Firstly, if you bury a cache, as in "digging a hole and pouring the soil back on top of it", (which was my first interpretation of "burying") then in order to find it you are going to need a digging tool to get it back out again. Since it would be stupid to expect cachers to carry a spade around the world with them, then this seemed to me a good reason to stop people burying their caches. Thoughts of fluffy animals and wrecking the countryside didn't even cross my mind. - Secondly, if you bury a cache (same meaning as above) then it is likely to become almost impossible to find once the soil above it has been tamped down by rain/feet/animals etc. Since the object of this game is to find the box, then it seemed sensible to advise people against hiding in such a way as to make discovery virtually impossible. Following on from that, you then come to the situation where such a guideline *is* now in place. At this point another issue comes into play.... - A cacher, knowing the prohibition on buried caches, will not now even bother looking for evidence of burying, so any cacher who subsequently buries his cache and expects people to find it is likely to get a lot of no-finds on his logpage. This seems to me to be defeating the object. Early on in my caching career, I did do a cache that was, as far as I interpreted it, pretty much buried. This explains why it took me several trips back to the area to locate the thing and when I eventually did find it, rather than feeling triumphant, I simply felt cheated in that I was told by the rules (well I thought of them as rules back then, being young and innocent...) not to look in the very place where the dadgum thing was in fact hidden. It went against my natural sense of justice and probably deeply scarred me, mentally, for the rest of my life. I have subsequently had to spend eight weeks in therapy just to get over it.... Anyway, all this means that I interpret "burying" as meaning "needs to be dug up". If the hole already exists and is simply covered over with moss/rocks/logs/candyfloss or whatever, then I don't call that "buried", just "covered", implying that it only needs to be "uncovered" to find it. The whole point about the "last ten feet" scenario, is that after a few caches we should be able to spot telltale clues as to the final resting place of the target. That conveniently positioned log, or the small pile of twigs, which would go unnoticed to a non-cacher, is enough to make the cacher's nose twitch. Concealing below ground in an impossible-to-spot hole is just plain daft. Finally we come to the use of animal holes and the like. No. Absolutely not. I and many other people have a phobia about putting our arms into deep holes for fear of what might be in there. Putting a cache in such a place is not funny and its not clever. Just ask yourself, as the cache owner, *do* you want people to find this thing or not? Its as simple as that.

Hmmm...Looking at the zoom-in, and taking note of the way the shadows fall for the surrounding trees etc, it seems to me that the thing is not a dome at all, but rather the opposite, ie concave, a dip, and hole-in-the-ground. Working on this theory, then a crater of some sort would seem a likely possibility. Either a bomb crater, or maybe a small meteorite. The only other thing that springs to mind is some kind of bowl-shaped roman amphitheatre, which might explain the path around the top.

(shuffles letters about frantically)...

No but I bet you could manage a micro in it's place?...

Well I understood that even if no-one else did... Omally you have a perfectly evil sense of humour....

I have discovered that the contents of two of my three caches has stayed pretty much the same sort of "quality", even though my caches have a high churn factor. I do know that some caches that start of with very high value things in them do tend to slide downwards, mainly because when one swaps (for example) a CD burner out, one is unlikely to have anything quite so "expensive" in one's pocket to replace it with. Further, one is going to be quite pressed to find anything else quite so small yet expensive to exchange it with. So maybe a £50 item gets swapped with a £30 one, and then the next time a £20 one and you can see where it is all leading can't you? Some people might say don't take the high value item, but I say well what was it put in there for in the first place? Chances are i would put the item back into another cache anyway at some point. But I think the tendency is that once the very high value items have gone, things settle down to a happy medium and stay pretty much on the level. However, I wondered about this question too, a long while back, so I did an experiment. One of my caches was deliberately planted with, well frankly, a pile of old tat in it! Just to see what happened as item churn took place. In fact gradually the things got "traded up" until after about 20 visits the cache levels out at a higher overall "value". The difference overall was not very great, with maybe the total value of items in the cache going from £2 to about £5 and staying there. Now when I plant a cache I tend to spend about a fiver on it's contents, apart from the ammo box cost itself. In fact that cache has been taken down temporarily while I refit it and add a few more goodies to it to give it a new lease of life. But frankly I don't really get hung up on the cost or the value of items in caches.