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Caches By County


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Deego

 

When you say "listed by county", how are they listed? By what criteria? ;)

 

The reason I ask is that when I was doing all the caches in N Yorkshire (like Harrogate Hunter), some were very close to the county boundary and in a few cases were actually ON the county boundary and I had to email the owner of the cache to establish precisely which county they 'fell' into! :)

 

I also remember one cache as being listed (meaning the county was included in the title of the cache) in N Yorks but was in Cumbria and another being listed in Co Durham but was in N Yorks! :(

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Deego

 

When you say "listed by county", how are they listed? By what criteria? ;)

 

The reason I ask is that when I was doing all the caches in N Yorkshire (like Harrogate Hunter), some were very close to the county boundary and in a few cases were actually ON the county boundary and I had to email the owner of the cache to establish precisely which county they 'fell' into! :)

 

I also remember one cache as being listed (meaning the county was included in the title of the cache) in N Yorks but was in Cumbria and another being listed in Co Durham but was in N Yorks! :(

I think it is only estimated data; as it would take someone sometime for an accurate county positioning. But it is near as dam it, after all it can only be slightly out and just because a cache is in Cheshire and not Manchester is not going to stop you getting it if you are in the area. Treat it as a guide and not the definitive answer.

 

Milton (aka Moote)

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The counties are only approximate, though generally no less accurate than the counties given in some cache names! :blink:

 

Basically I have a coloured-in map of the pre-1995 counties (if you want modern counties, you're SOL). When a new cache is placed, I 'plot' the cache on this map and see what colour the dot is. Crude, yes, but it works much of the time.

 

If anyone has accurate coordinates for county boundaries that they could send me, it'd be much appreciated!

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some were very close to the county boundary and in a few cases were actually ON the county boundary and I had to email the owner of the cache to establish precisely which county they 'fell' into! 

 

A good point! For one of our caches you have to park in Wales, but the cache is across the River Wye in England :blink: After considering the approach roads to the cache we decided that it made most sense to put Monmouthshire (where the parking coords are) after the title, although technically it's hidden in Gloucestershire :blink: Mrs B

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some were very close to the county boundary and in a few cases were actually ON the county boundary and I had to email the owner of the cache to establish precisely which county they 'fell' into! 

 

A good point! For one of our caches you have to park in Wales, but the cache is across the River Wye in England :blink: After considering the approach roads to the cache we decided that it made most sense to put Monmouthshire (where the parking coords are) after the title, although technically it's hidden in Gloucestershire :ph34r: Mrs B

 

Been there and done that one! :blink::huh:

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I am currently in the process of making up some GSAK 'Polygon' filters for each county. So far I have all the English/Wales counties from the South Coast up to North Yorkshire and Lancashire.

 

If anyone would like a copy as it stands thus far please PM me and I'll zip 'em up for you. The files are in GPX format and thus are easily loaded into the Polygon filter function of GSAK. They are reasonably accurate but I cannot guarantee that they will pull in all caches to the correct county.

Edited by Motley Crew
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The counties are only approximate, though generally no less accurate than the counties given in some cache names! :D

 

Basically I have a coloured-in map of the pre-1995 counties (if you want modern counties, you're SOL). When a new cache is placed, I 'plot' the cache on this map and see what colour the dot is. Crude, yes, but it works much of the time.

 

If anyone has accurate coordinates for county boundaries that they could send me, it'd be much appreciated!

I could classify caches by county using GIS (official Ordnance Survey boundaries).

 

I did it for this Cache Density but these will be the current ceremonial counties.

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Put my thinking head on again; I can’t actually see the importance of this County data, as they are only administrative boundaries and not political.

 

Surely what you would be more interested in is nearest caches from a location and from a bearing from a location.

 

Are we all getting obsessed here by minor details?

 

Milton (aka Moote)

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Put my thinking head on again; I can’t actually see the importance of this County data, as they are only administrative boundaries and not political.

 

Surely what you would be more interested in is nearest caches from a location and from a bearing from a location.

 

Are we all getting obsessed here by minor details?

I agree 100%. See also here.

 

I can think of two reasons to have this data:

 

1. "Geek factor" - I want to have found all the caches in county X. Well, we all find our geek aspects to this game, I suppose. (Some of us even like to imagine that we have non-geek aspects :D)

 

2. The site lists states/provinces for the USA/Canada/Belgium (yes!) but not Germany/UK etc, we're being discriminated against. Hmmm.

 

In an ideal world (and I am *not* a hippy, past or present) the site wouldn't even list countries. Or at least, a country search wouldn't be available. In fact a country search is generally pretty useless, as attested to by the number of forum threads that say "I'm going to <country>, how can I narrow the search down to near where I'm staying ?". A list of all 7980 caches in the UK isn't much use for anything.

 

So while this stuff is "nice to have", I can think of a dozen other features I'd rather have first. Probably. :D

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Are we all getting obsessed here by minor details?

Certainly! And you object to this because...??? :D

 

So while this stuff is "nice to have", I can think of a dozen other features I'd rather have first.

Name six! :D (Preferably things which wouldn't require the voluntary co-operation of all x thousand cachers, or need modifications to the GC.com website itself).

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Sorry Outta Luck!

 

Thanks, Teasel :D I'm going to have to make a list of all these TLAs!

 

One reason why I'd find it useful to have the counties put on the end of the cache names: I've been looking at the long listing of the "Top Rated" caches in the country thinking about which the Blorenges might attempt as their Big 100. Whilst we may be happy to go as far as Devon, Hants, Shrops, Bucks we're unlikely to choose one in Norfolk, Northumberland or Highlands... not for a quick weekend away. So the county detail would be useful to me.

 

(Now I guess someone really geeky/clever will tell me that if I do this, this and this and select up to 8 counties and click on here and press "top caches" and hi-light my belly button, back space Alt+C and press "eject" the computer will do this for me :D ) Remember, you're communicating with a woman who's only just found out how to insert those cute little animated smilies (Thanks, HH ;) )

Edited by The Blorenges
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I've been looking at the long listing of the "Top Rated" caches in the country thinking about which the Blorenges might attempt as their Big 100.

Have a look here and hopefully the distance from home should be listed for you :D

WOW!! Perth Pathfinders are doing alright out of that, I counted at least 5 of the top UK 20 belong to her. congrats.gif

 

party.gifparty.gifparty.gif

Edited by Haggis Hunter
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One reason why I'd find it useful to have the counties put on the end of the cache names:  I've been looking at the long listing of the "Top Rated" caches in the country thinking about which the Blorenges might attempt as their Big 100.

On the Top rated page, you should be able to point at (with the mouse pointer :D ) the name of the cache, and a little yellow box should popup showing the county for that cache. Not ideal for quick viewing but possible.

 

As for seeing top rated in just one county (not posisbly to select multiple counties yet), just select the county in the dropdown at the bottom of the CacheTools page, and press the Go button.

 

Will see about makeing the county more prominent and being able to select multiple counties :D

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Have a look here and hopefully the distance from home should be listed for you  :D

You can do the same direct on G:UK :D

 

Just run a search, by entering a postcode/placename etc into the top box of the search, then on the results page click the 'rating' column, this will then show the top rated ones at the top. The county and the distance to the entered location will still be shown ;)

 

This has the benifit that you can filter your search a bit more to just show caches you are interested in, as well as showing lots of other information.

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Is there a list of the UK caches broken down by county ?

 

I have had a look on uk site but I cant find any...

 

Sorry Teazel if I have just given you some more work !

On the download page of G:UK, there is a option 'County Update for GSAK' which is a special GPX file that includes the county, which can be used to similar effect. (I'm pretty sure GSAK will have the option!)

Edited by barryhunter
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I am currently in the process of making up some GSAK 'Polygon' filters for each county. So far I have all the English/Wales counties from the South Coast up to North Yorkshire and Lancashire.

 

If anyone would like a copy as it stands thus far please PM me and I'll zip 'em up for you. The files are in GPX format and thus are easily loaded into the Polygon filter function of GSAK. They are reasonably accurate but I cannot guarantee that they will pull in all caches to the correct county.

 

See also Counties of British Isles which is a set of files I made for someone to use in GSAK, (although I have to admit no idea how to use them :D ), they are plain text files rather than GPX.

 

(this also uses county data at approx 1995)

 

[and yes I am a geo-geek :D ]

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Are we all getting obsessed here by minor details?

Certainly! And you object to this because...??? ;)

 

Teasel, I'm not objecting I'm just making an observation. County boundary's are very mobile in the UK some of the counties are not even recognised on the G:UK file, so in reality it is just a paper exercise which looks good but has it's limitations. We should concentrate on caching and not whether a cache is misplaced county-wise by a few hundreds of yards, as I stated in an earlier part of the thread, just because a cache is in another county you are not going to neglect bagging it if you are in it's vicinity.

 

Milton (aka Moote)

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Is there a list of the UK caches broken down by county ?

 

I have had a look on uk site but I cant find any...

 

Sorry Teazel if I have just given you some more work !

On the download page of G:UK, there is a option 'County Update for GSAK' which is a special GPX file that includes the county, which can be used to similar effect. (I'm pretty sure GSAK will have the option!)

Yup there is but I wanted to get the archived cache countries/counties into GSAK ;)

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Thanks everyone for all this useful stuff on selecting/finding top rated caches - I'll have to try it out tomorrow cos I've just come in from a "noshing night out" and my little brain can't cope with anything more complicated than a horizontal surface at present... ;)

HH - if you have a look at my "musical reply" on the "Nicknames" thread you'll see I used two of the smilies on there, to give an agricultural feel :D Howver, they're not actually animated, just animal... :D

Nite, nite folks!

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