Lizzzzeeeee

Hi Ratty & Son, Welcome to this (slightly mad) hobby! I'll email you when I'm next planning some caches in Berkshire, you should meet lots of cachers once you start finding the darn things - there are loads of great cachers in your area. One suggestion, I notice from your profile that you haven't logged your DNFs, I would suggest you do as you'll have quite a laugh when you look back in a year or so's time to see your story. It also gives the owner and other potential finders feedback and you might get an email or two giving you clues from people who have already found them. Take a look at the logs from Obviously Built Early Like It Superceded Knights to see that even the most experienced cachers don't always find the cache first time!

It's not just the other half we get earache from, the kids only need to spot a GPS being put into the car and they cry "oh no, we're not doing THAT are we!"

Is it made by Lakeland Plastics? They make lots of really good ideas that you can't possibly do without but have done perfectly happily for the last XX years!!!!

It's got to be 1:25,000, they have lots of interesting features that don't appear on the 1:50k ones. and as I have two small kids we don't walk that fast. PS I have one of these OS Select maps centred on the middle of my world (rather than home as I don't go east much). The printing quality is not like that of the usual Landranger maps - it looked to have come from a very large inkjet. Hope it doesn't smudge in the rain! I wouldn't buy another for that reason. But then it could be my eyes going - I am getting on a bit now!

It's archived at the moment but I spotted some time ago that Running Rings by Backbiter in Sussex has the waypoint GC-HER0 which I thought was pretty cool. Wouldn't it be good if GC.com could make archived waypoints reavailable?

My advice now would be to keep hassling the police. Ours was stolen from our drive, used in an armed robbery about 10 hours later (having been filled up with petrol on the way to the crime [it is a Suburu Imprezza so doesn't do many to the gallon]). The police forgot to tell us they'd found it and it was only when I had an irate credit controller on from the storage company asking us when we were going to settle the bill that it turned up. The kids car seats took another two months to be found in a police storage area having been lobbed into the same field the car was dumped in. No damage to the car, apart from the locks and the CD player (minus the front security bit) which was faulty and they didn't even load our insurance. Let's hope you get it back soon in one piece . . .

You dont get a cable with the basic yellow etrex. It might be better to buy another unit as the rest of the range come with leads included My Emap didn't come with a cable - I had to buy one separately. It does use the same cable as an Etrex though. Not sure about other models.

A group of us did get together back in April at the Pub up on the Devil's Dyke by the DevilsCam webcam cache. The pub seemed about the right size, able to cope with our demands and from what I remember it was far enough east that we did get a few cachers from Kent (and even a few from Hampshire!). It was just an evening pub meet so only listed on the forums rather than an event cache. Maybe we could organise another one soon? Lizzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Thanks for organising this Paul, it is now entered in the Coddies social diary . . . Personally I prefer gammon!

Pharisee, do you think his mum would run me up a couple of fancy dress costumes for my boys for their Halloween disco next week, and I could do with some more sitting room curtains? At the other end of the customer service spectrum I ordered some camofabric from an army surplus store and 6 months later they hadn't delivered and hadn't refunded my card. They did finally admit they couldn't get it and refund me but I was starting to get a little impatient!

If the police can manage to "lose" my husband's Imprezza for a month they can certainly lose a cache box. It was stolen from outside our house and almost a month later we were on the verge of getting the insurance payout and buying a replacement when a repair garage called to ask when we were going to settle the bill for the storage - we didn't even know they had found it! Apparantly someone was on holiday - meanwhile I was left to manage for the school summer hols with no car! We were glad to have it back though and it did turn out to be quite exciting - it was used in an armed robbery - fortunately noone was hurt.

It's got to be kids - take a couple with you at all times and you can get away with all manner of strange antics! I have a couple available for hire, contact me via the PO box no, very reasonable rates for geocachers!

Ali (aged 7 and three quarters) and I have done the Newbury to Hungerford series by bike along the canal and it was great, wouldn't recommend shorts though as the stingers are evil in parts. We're about to attempt Bath to Marlborough again on bikes but were shocked to discover no caches between Devizes and Savernake - or is it my query going wrong (Let's hope is not that that section is really boring!). Can someone please go out and place a couple before we leave, probably on 16th Oct? We'd like nice easy ones, very near the canal and definitely not multis that include climbs up steep hills near the canal as Ali is only small and the cycle ride will be enough on it's own! Thank you

Hopefully when caching there should never be a need to climb over/under fences as you are trying to head for an area which has already been checked out and approved. However, when walking I have had to climb over fences quite often due to footpaths not being maintained. In Cornwall recently I was using Memory Map & my GPS so I knew exactly where I was and the footpath shown on the map would have taken me straight through a densely wooded field boundary and across a barbed wire fence. The footpath was actually a bit further up and necessitate the walker to clamber through waist high nettles before crossing a makeshift bridge - but at least no fences! Farmers are guilty of moving footpaths and, if the area is not frequently walked, the new route is not always obvious to us people who go along with their nose buried in the map!

Mark was one of the first people I communicated with in geocaching . . . I met him at the Chi meet and also when he was broken down near Guildford on the CIN fox hunt, he really had a heart of gold and always seemed to be in it to help other people, I am shocked and saddened to hear the news today. Best wishes & love to Mark's family, RIP Lizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeee

I too was surprised at the cache dessert that is the Malvern Hills. It's a good few years since I've been walking on them and I know a really good hotel nearby so I had it top of my list to visit next time Matt and I have the luxury of a child free weekend, but what's the point if there are no caches nearby!!!! Surely there must be some cachers nearby who can lay some, it is such a beautiful area!

But how would you know how to get there without your GPS? My Tom Tom (aka Turbo Totty) is programmed with all the Ikeas set as favourites, I'm thinking of making them into a locationless cache - I have visited all but one of the Ikeas in the UK and all those in France! and you thought geocachers were strange!

Don't miss a virtual, Flyer (West Sussex) GC63D7 whilst you're at the Festival. I'd recommend Trundle One GC842E and Trundle Tots GC842F if the visibility is good, it's worth the walk up the hill! Also Windy Miller's GCJ5H9 has more lovely views (but is again at the top of a hill!). If you want a decent walk then Yew GC7FE0 and Inside Out GCC0FD can't be beaten. I wouldn't necessarily bother with the Chichester Harbour caches unless you like looking at lots of mud (I'll probably get linched by a bunch of twitchers for saying that!). By the look of the traffic at previous Festivals I'd probably plan to arrive in the area 2-3 hours before the start and cache until it starts! The roads around Goodwood aren't that good! Oh and I'd agree with 68 Guns that Mullet Over is definitely worth a visit to Arundel!

Excellent idea! Although I don't think you should restrict distances to 15 miles+. I used to enjoy longer walks but now time restraints when I'm on my own and kiddie leg restraints when I've the kids with me mean 6-7 miles is more the norm. My best day's caching to date was when I set off at 6am to do a 10 miler with 6 caches on route. I'd gladly let people have the details of that route and maybe even plant another cache on route in a rather boring part! Thanks for your efforts so far.

If you can't find a dog a couple of kids will do, nobody ever comments when kids do daft things in the undergrowth. I have told mine to pretend they're having a pee before! I've also frequently held my GPS to my ear and pretended to be making a phone call when approached by muggles! Who says I'm strange

I use GC:UK and getright to do daily downloads (thanks Mr Woodsmoke for pointing me in the right direction!). I do find I need to do several downloads though: on my PC I have the whole of the UK caches downloaded into MemoryMap but on my PDA I try to only have the local overlay, otherwise it runs really slowly. The difference in the start up speed now that I've restricted the number of caches from all to the nearest 200 is incredible. It was really clonky before; but then I have a Toshiba e740 and they are pretty clonky at the best of times!! Strangly it is the number of overlays rather than the size of the map that slows it down.

Q2 - my eMap has waypoint averaging. dadgum fine feature! You can leave the GPS averaging and nip off to the pub whilst planting caches. It keeps a count of how many measurements it takes at the rate of about 30 per minute.

Congratulations on finding him, you can keep him, but please look after him well! I didn't intend them as travellers but I did find one myself last week in a cache over 60 miles from home that I had not visited before, it was just a fluke. I'll be making the one I found into a travel bug with a proper tag. BTW, has anyone else had weird coincidences of finding travel bugs follow them around or that other cachers from another part of the country hit the same caches (obviously Seasider will find this as he's visited everything! but I mean people with lowish cache totals like myself)

You don't need a landcruiser to go through there. We nearly made it... I remember the kids trying to point something out to me as we drove through, I thought they were talking about the people waving to us from the bank!!! Sorry we couldn't stop to help . . . but you know what mums on school runs in 4x4's are like!

Big white UN style Landcruiser. Cos it goes through puddles . . .