Very silly DNF

[+Foinavon]

I thought I would share this one with you all. Its strange how the incorrect coordinates took me to a berry bush. Here I was 5 miles out. Whats the furthest from the correct coordinates that anyone has gone and looked for a cache? It can happen by typos or as in this case getting the puzzle wrong.

[+Clyde.]

Funny you should post this as Bonnie and I had similar fun with a cache in that series as well : Enigma 3 : Bridge of Spies

and the funny thing about it was that a name of a nearby rd was called Bridge St and the name of the cache......the rest is history as they say.

Saying that we still managed a FTF on it though even though we were 7.5 miles out the 1st time

[markandlynn]

This one 0.33 miles from the co ords stated on the cache page.

[+Pieman]

Two disasters for me:

 

One where I was caching in East Anglia. I am used to longitude coordinates being West. I was near the Greenwich meridian and they were a few seconds East but I didn't notice so ended up at the edge of a field of wheat with the cache apparantly in the centre of it.

 

The other was very recent- see this cache. I thought that the puzzle had a brilliant twist in that the last two numbers of the North and West coordinates were missing- by looking on Memory Map it was easy to see where the cache must be. Searched for ages without luck only to realise when I contacted the CrazyL200 that I had printed off only part of the puzzle!

[+KlustaDuk]

My worst/silly experience of a DNF has to be during a recent trip to Paris. A simple micro in the city centre and it took four attempts on four separate days with various unspeakable, psychologically scarring adventures en route... The 4 DNF log entries speak for themselves, shortly before Pengy&Tiggers visit, at Paris Bord d'eau Express...!!

Edited November 28, 2006 by shr00m

[+pirate_matt]

I seem to lose all ability to do simple maths when it comes to multi/mystery caches. on one cache my gpsr told me the end cache was 30-40km away! when we re did the maths it was more like 100m

on one fairly recently i walked about 4-5km the wrong way and only realised when the gpsr pointed 20m into private land! i think the problem is that i enjoy these caches so much tht i rush the maths so that i can go and find the cache!!

[+stora]

With paper in hand I rushed out to grab a FTF and a warm summers evening.

 

On the way to the cache I met a gang of Guides who asked me did I know the way to the windmill as they where camping near there. "Of course I do" I replied, as I showed off my GPS gizmo to them. So off we all went down the path for another half mile or so.

 

We then came to a point where the path split in to two. I pointed left as that was where the GPS was showing, the girls thought it was right. It was at that point the team leaders caught up with us and said it was to the right where they where camped, so I went on to the left shaking my head as I was sure they where all going in the wrong direction.

 

Anyway I got to the cache site and after 45 mins or so I had to give up as it was started to get dark and it had just started to rain.

 

It was only when I got in and read the logs that I found out that the published co-ords where half a mile out and that the Guides had been right all along.

 

I'm just hoping that the strange experience of a lone male in the woods, trying to take them away from their camp site has not put them off camping for good

[+sTeamTraen]

A couple of friends of mine were on only their second cache hunt when they went for this one of mine. They solved the puzzle OK, but didn't notice that the final coordinates were in dd.ddddd format instead of ddºmm.mmm. So off they set... for a round-trip of almost 100 kilometres!

 

Fortunately, they survived the experience, and now have over 100 finds!

[+NinjaPete]

My worst offence was here when a wrong digit put us half-a-mile out. Since we were in an old mining area the thought of falling down an old shaft or air vent as we went cross-country was not a welcome one

 

[+cakemaker]

It's happened to me twice. First time was Dorridge View 1, when I got a solution and went off to search. Sure enough there was roadside parking for one car right by a footpath sign just as stated in the listing. Co-ords led us into a field 5 miles from correct location.

Then, last Sunday, I was doing one that required some sums to get the co-ords. I simply didn't notice that some were subtractions and added everything instead. The co-ords led us 2.2 miles round trip needless to say along a footpath!

It had been a one mile walk to get the info which I'd previously googled and not believed. All in all walked over 3 miles instead of a cache and dash!

[+wigglesworth]

A DNF by searching the wrong location is a 'joy' of puzzle caches. We always wonder if we are searching the correct place and so sometimes do not perform an in depth adequate search.

I love straight forward traditioal caches :-)

Peter