Greatings From Telford Shropshire

[FreyaWatton]

Hey I'm new to this and have attempted 5 finds today but got nothing. Could anybody local help me out?

[+whh0]

Hi and welcome!

 

If you have a Facebook account you may want to look up the Shropshire Geocachers group, whilst there are a few from the UK on here you may get a faster/ more local response there.

 

You could also look for a local event to meet local cachers. Go to "Hide and Seek", towards the bottom of the page are "advanced search options". Choose "all event caches", put in your postcode and see if there are any meetings close to you.

[FreyaWatton]

Thank you very much

[+colleda]

G'day, I'm not local but will try and help a little and suggest you review the caches you didn't find. Have a look at the size rating to get an idea of possible hiding places relating to its size. And the difficulty rating, stick to say 2 or less until you get the hang of it. Also, read back through the previous logs and see if there are any little hints given away or even a spoiler.

Are you using a dedicated GPSr or a phone of some type. A GPSr will get you fairly close initially but whether phone or GPSr, give it time to settle. This could be a minute or two, possibly more if there is tree cover or building interference. If using a phone (particularly if its an older model) widen your search area radius, even up to 10 metres is not unusual or unreasonable.

And be methodical with your search. It can be too easy at times to start dashing all over, particularly if your GPS device is having trouble settling. Good luck.

[+Harry the furry squid]

What Colleda said. :)

 

Also - another thing the previous logs will tell you is when it was last found and how many DNFs (if any) there have been since. If it's supposed to be easy, but has had a whole raft of recent DNFs, it may well be missing.

 

The same applies if it's one or two caches in a series where the last find was a lot less recent than the rest of the series (often accompanied by a suspiciously high number of watchers) ... because people aren't always very good at logging DNFs.

 

Another one worth looking out for is a lot of favourite points and comments along the lines of "wow, cool camo!" and "ace, never seen one like that before!" Nothing at all wrong with caches like these - they're a fantastic antidote to film cans in ivy-covered trees - but a lot of them fall under the heading of "cool and unusual camouflage" and for this reason they can be a bit of a pig to spot.

 

Caches in woods can also be a bit of a pig, because the trees interfere with GPS reception.

 

(Incidentially, if you want some tips, I work in Telford and am usually up for a walk after work.)

[+MartyBartfast]

Also did you know that on each cache page there's a section entitled "Additional Hints", towards the bottom of the description, that may have some gobbledygook below it, if so click the "Decrypt" link at the side and the hint will be revealed.

 

Not all caches have a hint, and the hint cold be anything from a cryptic "Robin Hood's tights", to the obvious "It's in a hole 3 feet up the large Oak tree beside the gate"

[FreyaWatton]

Thanks very much guys.,,,I'm current out of action with a bad foot but will try again once able