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Ireland / Scotland / UK Souvenirs


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I've reviewed the following threads after searching for "Scotland" in the forums:

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/344847-wales-scotland-and-england-souvenirs/

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/309435-england-scotland-and-wales-are-separate-countries/

Help article https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=92&pgid=98

 

I recently returned from a week in Ireland/Northern Ireland and a week in Scotland driving across both countries - highly recommended. I had previously been to London and already received the UK Country Souvenir.

During my trip I found caches in all the Ireland regions, in Northern Ireland and in various areas of Scotland. I already had the UK Country Souvenir and received the following new regional souvenirs after this trip - Dublin, Leinster, Munster, Connacht & Ulster. These cover the 5 regions in Ireland and nothing from Northern Ireland and Scotland. Is that accurate? Are there no souvenirs yet for Northern Ireland or Scotland? Help article references Southern Scotland as a region but maybe there's no souvenir yet?

Just wondering and thanks for the input. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:

I've reviewed the following threads after searching for "Scotland" in the forums:

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/344847-wales-scotland-and-england-souvenirs/

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/309435-england-scotland-and-wales-are-separate-countries/

Help article https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=92&pgid=98

 

I recently returned from a week in Ireland/Northern Ireland and a week in Scotland driving across both countries - highly recommended. I had previously been to London and already received the UK Country Souvenir.

During my trip I found caches in all the Ireland regions, in Northern Ireland and in various areas of Scotland. I already had the UK Country Souvenir and received the following new regional souvenirs after this trip - Dublin, Leinster, Munster, Connacht & Ulster. These cover the 5 regions in Ireland and nothing from Northern Ireland and Scotland. Is that accurate? Are there no souvenirs yet for Northern Ireland or Scotland? Help article references Southern Scotland as a region but maybe there's no souvenir yet?

Just wondering and thanks for the input. 

 

 

From Wiki (so it must be right!):

 

Ulster ... is a province in the north of the island of Ireland. It is made up of nine counties, six of which are in Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom) and three of which are in the Republic of Ireland.

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1 hour ago, Team DEMP said:

Are there no souvenirs yet for Northern Ireland or Scotland? Help article references Southern Scotland as a region but maybe there's no souvenir yet?


Just wondering and thanks for the input. 

 

I didn't get any regional souvenir for the cache I found in England and Wales so for unknown reasons UK doesn't have any regional souvenir.

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I've just scrolled through my souvenirs - something I rarely do, they don't float my boat. The only two "geographical but regional" ones I have - ie they're not sovereign states - are Hamburg and Nevada. So... Germany (cities or provinces?), USA, island of Ireland, Australia (looking at a friend's profile) do them; the other countries I've visited (UK France Spain Portugal Greece Italy Belgium Netherlands Switzerland Brazil) don't.

I'm currently enjoying adding Spanish provinces on my statistics map from 1/19 to 6/19 in the last year, all on work trips) but no souvenirs.

Any other countries that do provincial souvenirs? 

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A good link that shows a breakdown is https://project-gc.com/Statistics/ProfileStats#Souvenirs . I think anyone can see there's as a basic member. 

I show Canadian provinces as well as a Canada country souvenir.  Like you, I have Germany and a state souvenir within Germany. Z

Maybe there's a pattern but seems random to a casual observer like myself country vs region and which you get or which they offer. Some of Ireland gets regional souvenirs but not a country souvenir while UK gets a country souvenir and no regional. US and Canada seem to provide both a country and a regional (state/province) souvenir as well as Distrivt of Columbia which isn't a State. 

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Thanks for that link - I knew I'd seen my souvenirs arranged by category, as opposed to the alphabetical order display on the official site somewhere.

 

USA, Canada, Germany, Australia with big states / provinces lend themselves to such things I suppose. Brazil would too but caching isn't huge over there; quite surprising Spain doesn't have them. 

 

On the UK / England etc question, quick (hopefully non-political!) recap:

 

On my passport it says United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So UK = Eng + Wal + Sco + NI (none of these 4 are sovereign states in their own right); GB = Eng + Wal + Sco (though at the Olympics etc we're called GB, with Northern Irish athletes competing too; cricketing England are actually England and Wales; rugby and cricket both have national teams called Ireland). The "mainland" of the "British Isles" (a phrase that logically has to include Rep of Ireland) can in physical geography be referred to as Britain, too.

 

The bit I "revised" yesterday was the 4 historical Irish provinces (+ Dublin) - I'd forgotten that that "Ulster" and "Northern Ireland" have different definitions, with Ulster actually including 3 counties in the Republic. Remember what is now the Republic of Ireland was until ~100 years ago part of the UK.  

 

[still not being political - just saying...] Ironic name sometimes, the UK - given that we're not always very united (remind me to come back and revise this if there's another independence referendum in Scotland or Wales), and have only had a king as opposed to a queen for 51 of the last 182 years... as for the Great in GB, that's just from the French "Grande Bretagne" - yes, we're just Big Brittany.

 

Something quite rarely seen is an outline map of England all on its own - google it and you'll see most are of Britain, the UK or the British Isles. 

 

Dead simple, this "being an island with no borders" game... ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Oxford Stone
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16 hours ago, Oxford Stone said:

USA, Canada, Germany, Australia with big states / provinces lend themselves to such things I suppose.

Yes, I drove over 8,000 kms return (about 12,000 km total for the whole trip) to log my first cache in Western Australia. In Europe you would drive through many countries in that distance. It's much more of an achievement to log states in Australia, than for those living in Europe to log the equivalent number of countries. Mind you, I would have only needed to drive about 5,000 if I had driven to the closest WA cache ?.

On that thought, it would be nice to have the number of finds in each Australian state listed, as they are for the USA and Canada. And for countries much smaller than our states.

Edited by Goldenwattle
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20 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

I didn't get any regional souvenir for the cache I found in England and Wales so for unknown reasons UK doesn't have any regional souvenir.

 

England, Scotland, and Wales area not characterized as "official" countries by the authoritative source that the Geocaching list of countries is based upon.  Instead, there is one souvenir for all of the United Kingdom.  While Northern Ireland is officially part of the UK,  GC treats as part of Ireland geographically rather than based upon political boundaries.   For some reason, GS decided to release regional areas in Ireland (then released a souvenir for all of Ireland), but didn't do so for regions in the UK.  

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5 hours ago, Oxford Stone said:

USA, Canada, Germany, Australia with big states / provinces ...

This is the first time I've ever seen Germany listed together with USA, Canada and Australia in the context of "big" (as in "large area") :D!

 

Anyway, I think that the creation of regional souvenirs in Germany (one per Bundesland) has more to do with the immense popularity of geocaching in Germany.

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23 hours ago, baer2006 said:

This is the first time I've ever seen Germany listed together with USA, Canada and Australia in the context of "big" (as in "large area") :D!

 

Anyway, I think that the creation of regional souvenirs in Germany (one per Bundesland) has more to do with the immense popularity of geocaching in Germany.

:) all tiddly by American / Asian standards. I remember going on an all-day drive in NE Brazil, looking at the route on a national map and we'd moved a fingernail's width.

If Germany was a US state it'd be 5th biggest, between Montana and New Mexico... I had no idea it was smaller than France, Spain, Sweden and Norway - my Euro-geography needs brushing up. You learn something every day (or as they say in French, je me coucherai moins bête ce soir (I'll go to bed less stupid tonight)... 

Edited by Oxford Stone
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Groundspeak lists the caches found in the UK by region - our trip last month included Northern Scotland, Southern Scotland, and Northwest England.  It would be easy enough to add souvenirs for these regions.   I don't pay that much attention to souvenirs but it is somewhat surprising that Groundspeak has not chosen to add regional souvenirs for the UK.

 

Scotland has its own character and is called a country of the UK.  It competes as a nation in the World Cup of darts.  Given Groundspeak's classification, I was not able to convince a challenge cache owner to let me count it as a separate country, but a souvenir would seem appropriate.  

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15 hours ago, geodarts said:

Groundspeak lists the caches found in the UK by region - our trip last month included Northern Scotland, Southern Scotland, and Northwest England.  It would be easy enough to add souvenirs for these regions.   I don't pay that much attention to souvenirs but it is somewhat surprising that Groundspeak has not chosen to add regional souvenirs for the UK.

 

Scotland has its own character and is called a country of the UK.  It competes as a nation in the World Cup of darts.  Given Groundspeak's classification, I was not able to convince a challenge cache owner to let me count it as a separate country, but a souvenir would seem appropriate.  

 

The Scotland vs. England football game in the women's world cup got a fair amount of press.   It seems that Scotland and England are recognized as distinct countries for many sporting events and those that live in Scotland (or Wales) think of them as distinct countries, but the two most commonly used authoritative sources of country lists do not.  I personally thought it would have made more sense to have souvenirs for the regions of the UK and just one souvenir for Ireland.  

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4 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

The Scotland vs. England football game in the women's world cup got a fair amount of press.   It seems that Scotland and England are recognized as distinct countries for many sporting events

For the majority of sports events (e.g. the Olympics) , the UK is just one country. The situation in football (and presumably some other "old" sports) is different for historical reasons.

 

4 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

and those that live in Scotland (or Wales) think of them as distinct countries

Understandable for several reasons, but some sort of strong "local identity" is by no means limited to the UK. Ask a Corsican whether they are French ... probably half of them will answer a firm "Non!" ;) .

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