drsolly

What would you like me to talk about?

That request by the landowner (that people should not use a public right of way) was *not* a reasonable request, and so you were right not to allow it. I'm sad that you're no longer a reviewer; you performed a valuable role that I certainly wouldn't be able to do, but I hope that you can continue to enjoy the game of geocaching.

The UK's new number one geocacher.

Same here. We don't like to go out with a big crowd. Another advantage of going out alone, is that there's no-one there to witness me getting lost, failing to find, falling off the bike, falling in the water, getting stuck in a snowdrift and all the other humiliations of caching. Plus, when you reach an advanced age, the need to wet a hedge is more frequent.

Congratulations to Esscafe on reaching 30,000!

Next time a Member of the Public asks me what I'm doing, I'm going to reply "I'm acting suspiciously". I'll then watch carefully as his brain processes this.

If any of the three caches along that route were on the ground, they'll have floated away, I should think. There was also one on the bridge over the Ouse that I took those pictures from - if that's anywhere near the ground, it might well be in jeopardy too. Maybe cache owners should disable the caches that are underwater? I mean, those that aren't supposed to be underwater.

North of Milton Keynes, if you go caching anywhere near the river, you'll find that the fields are submerged. For example, MKBW Green 2. Here's some pictures: http://blog.drsolly.com/2012/11/water-water-everywhere.html

A couple of days ago, I found a cache by the two sticks that stuck out at an unnatural angle from the hole in the tree. If it hadn't been for those, I might have taken a lot longer, because the cache was invisible if it was pushed right into the hole. So I threw away the two sticks, This is one of many examples I've seen, where an poor attempt at camoflage has had the opposite of the effect that camouflage should have. I'm not sure what to call it. Uncamoflage? Discamoflage? Sorethumboflage?

We're making a family visit to CP at Longleat in a few weeks, and I was planning to go get some caches while there. I can't imagine that they'd charge me £15 for going out caching - I wasn't actually planning to tell them what I was doing while I'm staying there. Apart from telling them when we want to eat. £15 sounds like a reasonable charge for a two hour thing - I'm guessing they not only provide equipment, but also someone to explain how to use it, to put in the info, to walk with people or some such, and I'd expect it to cost some money. And that £15 is gornisht compared to the eye-watering sum we'll be paying for accomodation.

Thats what I do at the mo, but the flask/water doesn't keep its heat after a 4+ hours. Two flasks. One with me. One in the car for use on return. But. Must admit, the thought of being able to 'Brew up' on return to the car had crossed my mind on more than one occasion! I looked into the possibility of getting a microwave for the car, so I could have hot pies.

Most slugs counted.

My "Chiltern Hundred" series isn't on the Cotswold Way, but is in the Cotswolds.

Fujitsu Loox - I just bought one on Ebay for 99p, you'll usually spend £20-£25 16 gb CF card for maps and cache data - £15 Pilot GPS - £10 Mapping - All Uk, OS 1:50,000m maps from memory-map, £80 (you can also use those with your smartphone)

That's not html, but maybe it's uuencoded data.

I do believe that your "wish" has almost been granted with a facebook group for those living in Chesham. Fortunately, I don't know about it.

I've wrecked a few. Here's three of them. I was looking for a keysafe by groping along a rail; I couldn't see what I was doing, so I had to grope. My finger touched the cache, the magnet wasn't very strong, it dislodged the cache, which fell down. twenty feet. Into the Thames. and there was no way to get down to it. I went out the next day and put up a replacement. I was looking for a small, it was hidden among a pile of rocks, so I was up on the rock pile, turning over rocks and wondering how long this would take. I changed my position and heard a loud "CRACK" from where my feet were. Yes, I'd trodden on a rock that was on top of the cache, the cache was one of those fragile plastic boxes that you get takeaway meals in, and it was totally broken. Ladysolly was groping for a cache by a river; touch ... splash and before either of us could do anything, it had sailed majestically away out of reach.

The Essex Death March, done round about last Christmas. It's 14 miles, and my maximum is 12. Plus I had tendonitis in my hip at the time. Plus it was wet and muddy, and the slipping around increases the effort. Plus, my boots were too tight, so they were hurting my toes. By the time we got to the far end, I could barely lift my legs, and it took me three days to recover. And then there's the time I jumped into a hole, and couldn't get out. And there's the time, about 20 months ago, when I went caching near Gravesend, thinking that the snow had thawed, but not at Gravesend it hadn't, so I did 52 caches with 20 inches of snow on the ground, and I was the first fool along the footpaths since the snow, so I was breaking trail the whole way, and what should have taken 4-5 hours took 10, and I had no food or water with me (in winter, I find I don't need water during the day) but I did have a head torch so that when it got dark at 4pm I could carry on, and round about five I was walking in a wood along the side of a hill; steep uphill on my left, steep downhill on my right, all concealed under the snow, and a big tree had fallen across the track, and I had to make a major effort to get around it, and then I found somewhere to sit for a moment, and made the wonderful discovery that I had a banana in my pocket, best banana I've ever eaten, and when I got back to the car at about 7:30 I could barely move and my feet were frozen (my hands pretty cold too), and as I drove home, I kept getting cramp in my legs from the exhaustion. A great day out, I found all 52 caches. So yes, I've pushed myself too far quite often. That's part of the fun.

I regard muggles as part of the fun. Some of them are friendly and helpful, and I'm friendly back to them. Some of them are unfriendly and unhelpful, and I'm friendly back to them also, always with a nice smile. But if I'm on a public footpath, then I will politely but firmly insist on my right to be there, and when I'm attacked by their dog, I will insist on my right to defend myself. An angry and agressive muggle can be the high point of a caching day, turning an otherwise bland and routine cache, into a bit of an adventure. And a helpful and friendly muggle can be even better, warming the cockles of my heart. So I use the soft answer that turneth away wrath, except that sometimes it doesn't. On Saturday, I stopped the car in a layby and jumped out to look for a cache. I was immediately confronted by Mrs Angry, who jumped out of her van and wanted to know what I was doing there. I hadn't actually done anything yet, so I told her "I'm admiring the view". She didn't believe me. And she said so. She's had stuff stolen from her field, chickens and blankets, as I recall, and there was a list of other stuff too. She took my car registration number. So I took hers. And she asked me again what I was doing. "Admiring the view", was what I replied, because in truth, that was all I'd done so far. "That's the weakest excuse I've ever heard," she replied, and I wondered how she'd regard "I'm counting the slugs". So she repeated her allegations of theft, and I asked if she was suggesting that I was here to steal her chickens, and I suggested that she call the police if she had that suspicion, since she had her mobile in her hand. She said that the police are fed up with her and wouldn't come. "But I'm going to tell everyone in the village about you," she shouted. I wondered how many people in the village would be interested. I certainly wasn't. "I don't believe you were just admiring the view, that's a weak excuse." "Well, it's the only one you're getting," I said as I got into my car and drove off. A few hours later, I was in the village, having finished the circuit, and I'd just biked back to the car. A van pulled up, and I thought, "Here we go again". But it was a man, and he wanted to know if I knew of anyone in the village that wanted a foam mattress. "Sorry, I don't know anyone here who would want a foam mattress," I replied. See - muggles are part of the fun.

I've found a way to deal with Facebook. Twitter also.

I've been wondering about how come with the number of cachers growing so much, the number of posts to this forum is so much less than it used to be. I think the answer is fragmentation. Once upon a time, there was this forum and GAGB. Now there's forums and message boards for most regions in the UK - any time now, I'm expecting a message board for people who live within three kilometers of Little Chalfont. And there's Facebook, that's another dozen forums. Diversity is sometimes good, but you get less discussion about topics that aren't purely local when there's 30 forums instead of two. So many posts now are "I went out caching yesterday and found four caches".

Fujitsu Loox, tends to cost around £25 on ebay.

At one point today, my PDA crashed, so while I was rebooting it, I resorted to the iPhone (memory Map and the geocaching app), and I found the cache quite easily. Maybe it's not as pants as I thought?

I gave the iphone a good workout today, trying to use it as a GPS. I don't think it's much good, read my blog for details.

I want to go out for a day, load up with food and water and go for eight hours or more until I get back to the car. I like the challenge of finding the best route along the way (which isn't always the route that the cache setter intended). I like to stop every 5 or 10 minutes to have the fun of hunting for a container. I like to get home totally exhausted and with legs aching, and with a feeling of accomplishment that I've done a particularly difficult or interesting cache, and that I've completed the route with no DNFs. One of my best days out was 18 months ago, with the snow 18 inches deep, doing a ring of 50-odd caches, with no food, no water and nearly frozen feet. The increase in the number of people setting rings and long series, has definitely been a plus for me (and, I think, for several other people who like the same sort of thing). At the same time, there's still tons of caches to do that aren't like that, such as "Your Mission ..."