An American Cacher In London

[+Monkeybrad]

FullCt and I will be visiting London the week of May 13th through the 20th. While we will not be caching heavily that week, I intend to find a few while we are in town. We will be there working in the evenings and only have one real goal, to visit the museum at Bletchley Park. Outside of that I would welcome the opportunity to meet any UK cachers for a hunt and perhaps a pint or two. Also if there are any "must do" caches in London or on the way to Bletchley Park that we should do, please let us know. If there are any events planned for that time we will do our utmost to attend, I always enjoy meeting new cachers. Thank you in advance for your input.

[+Firth of Forth]

Wow! I've just checked out your 'credentials': 2028 caches in a year!! How do you fit in any work at all?? Even better than our own UK record holder Seasider.

[+Monkeybrad]

When I work, I work hard, when I play, I play hard. My wife (Scoot the Frog) is very supportive and as addicted as I am. We spend most of our weekends caching all day both days, and usually pick up a couple during the week. Unfortunately, she will not be joining me on this trip but my friend FullCt, who will be there, is the current US one day record holder. But, tell Seasider not to worry about his record, we are there to do some work, some sightseeing and some caching, not to cache constantly. However, I would consider it an honor to get to meet Seasider, the most prolific cacher in the UK, if I understand correctly. That said, I would welcome the opportunity to meet any UK cachers to swap stories, etc. One thing I have found, it does not matter how many finds a person has, the quality of their character is what counts, and by and large the cachers I have met are an exquisite group.

[+Volvo Man]

pretty impressive stats there.

 

what's the cache density like round your way?

[+Monkeybrad]

I live about forty miles south of Nashville, Tennessee, one of the most cache dense cities in the states. The majority of my finds (1344) have been in my home state, but I have found caches in 24 states and in Ireland. Of the 1300 some odd that were found in Tennessee 750 or so were found in the Nashville area. The last time I checked there were nearly 1350 caches within 100 miles of my home, and I have found all but 324 of those. I travel the states frequently with my work and have had the good fortune to find time to cache in many areas.

[NeilFord]

Would love to meet up for a chat and some caching (maybe).

 

You say when and where and I'll endeavour to keep the diary free of clients :-)

 

I'll email you contact details.

 

- Neil.

[+OzGuff]

If you send me your e-mail address I will forward to you an e-mail I recently sent to Shunra (from the state of Washington). He has 25 hours in London and wanted to cache hard. I have a list of physical caches in the area that I thought were fun to find as well as some advice on cache-dense area. I understand you and FullCt will be there for work -- right! -- but you should be able to pick up a decent number of caches in your free time.

 

I met up with NeilFord and cached for a day just north/NW of London and had a great day! (He is also not a homicidal maniac.) (Or he curbed his tendencies that day.)

 

Best of luck and have fun!

[+Volvo Man]

Hmmm, all these Americans coming over here, trying to break the London Record, I don't know, maybe I'll just have to come over there and do all 176 DC caches in a day, that'll show ya!!

 

Seriously though, I was looking at US cache density, and believe it or not, California has 3 times as many caches as any other state in the US, and probably any country outside North america. There are over 12,500 caches in CA!! I think it's time for a caching trip to My wife's hometown of San Francisco!

 

P.S. I too can vouch that neil is quite good at containing his homicidal tendencies.

Edited April 27, 2004 by Volvo Man

[+Monkeybrad]

Thank you for your offers, I will be in contact for sure. I just realized that my original post was a little vague, after all London is a large city. I am not sure which hotel we are in but we will be in the vicinity of the Royal Albert Hall all week. Being unfamiliar with London, I have no idea what section of town this is in, but I am sure I will try to grab most everything in easy walking distance of the venue and hotel.

 

Also, to answer a couple of questions from emails, this is going to be a laid back trip, no record attempts.

[NeilFord]

Close to the Royal Albert Hall puts you in Kensington, close to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. It puts you close to the West End (or in it, depending on your interpretation).

 

Co-ordinates for the Royal Alber Hall are: 51 30.057N 0 10.645W

 

A search limited to 20 or 30km around those should give you plenty to choose from and nearly all reachable by public transport.

 

- Neil.

[+Monkeybrad]

It looks like I will be staying at the Royal Garden, High Street Kensington. Any recommendations for the area cache or pub wise. Also how long should the Sherlock Holmes series take, those certainly look interesting. I think I would like to get one of those "I defeated Moriarty" keychains as a souvenir of the trip.

Edited May 3, 2004 by Monkeybrad

[+Monkeybrad]

FullCt and I have been discussing taking a trip to Bletchley Park to visit the code-breaking museum. Are there any must see caches out in the Luton, Milton Keynes areas?

[+Chris n Maria]

It looks like I will be staying at the Royal Garden, High Street Kensington. Any recommendations for the area cache or pub wise. Also how long should the Sherlock Holmes series take, those certainly look interesting. I think I would like to get one of those "I defeated Moriarty" keychains as a souvenir of the trip.

Also how long should the Sherlock Holmes series take, those certainly look interesting.

 

It is possible in a fairly short day - start at 1 and do them in order by tube is the quickest and easiest way though there are plenty of other caches close by.

 

I think I would like to get one of those "I defeated Moriarty" keychains as a souvenir of the trip.

I'll nip out this week and top them up then as they are running a bit low

 

Incase you havn't seen this advice before :- get yourself a London A-Z and use the links provided from the Tube map to find the locations on Streetmap.co.uk. Most central london caches can be found without a GPS and just an A-Z alone, though its not true in the parks.

 

HTH

Chris

[dipstick21]

FullCt and I have been discussing taking a trip to Bletchley Park to visit the code-breaking museum. Are there any must see caches out in the Luton, Milton Keynes areas?

THIS ONE comes highly recommended but don't attempt it if you're wearing a business suit

[+Monkeybrad]

A-Z guide is purchased and ready to go and I will definitely print out the tube map before I leave. The Dark Deeds at St. Mary's cache certainly looks interesting, I guess it will depend on whether or not we rent a a car for the trip north. FullCt and I have been working on the Station X code and it appears that we have solved it so we will definitely be going to Bletchley Park now. I was looking at my pocket query map and noticed that there are very few caches to the west of where I am staying(The Kensington Palace area), does anyone know the reason for this? I am looking forward to this trip and to getting the opportunity to meet some of my fellow cachers from across the pond.

 

Thank you to everyone for your recommendations, please keep them coming.

Edited May 6, 2004 by Monkeybrad

[+Monkeybrad]

Well, I am off in the morning, I will be checking here while I am visiting your fair city. Thank you again to everyone for the information. If anyone would like to meet up for a pint or a cache or two, email me and I will do my utmost to accomodate.

[+klaus23]

hey monkeybrad - you were busy in Ireland too when you were over!

Every cache I get to has one of your calling cards in it

any plans on coming back?

[+Monkeybrad]

My wife and I are going to try to head back to Ireland in late summer. The hospitality was incredible and the caching top notch. We'll let you know when our plans solidify.

[NeilFord]

Just wanted to say I had a great afternoon wandering around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens with Brad yesterday, locating Sherlock Holmes 7, doing a few of the micros and chatting about caching activities. We even had a chance to chat with the Parks Police at one point ;-)

 

Thanks to Brad for the entertaining company and for providing some really fiendish ideas on novel cache hides :-) Definitely got some incentive to think outside the box.... be it ammo or tuppaware or.....

 

BTW - the London parks are definitely the place to be on a hot sunny day ;-)

 

- Neil.

[+Monkeybrad]

Well, I have finally gotten mostly caught up on the work that I did not do while visiting your shores and can take a moment to add a postscript to my trip. While we did not cache heavily the caches that we did find were most rewarding. We found forty-one over the course of the week including the Station X cache at Bletchley Park and all of the most excellent Sherlock series in London. I will have to say that my "I defeated Moriarty" keychain is now one of my most prized caching mementoes. I feel like we cached all over London, as we followed no particular pattern and basically just did whatever was closest to wherever we were, if time allowed. I am happy to report zero no finds this trip, a real rarity for me. We did however skip over some that we should have attempted due to an upload error on my gpsr that I did not discover until after the fact. In addition to our 41 trads and virts, I had the good fortune to find 13 locationless caches, from the time capsule in our hotel steps, to the Tower Bridge. London turned out to be a locationless treasure trove, although I did not even see a Tardis while I was there. So counting those we had 54 for the week, a fairly respectable number.

 

The cache owners that I came into contact with were all top notch, thank you to everyone for your caches and guidance. I must also say that I have never visited a city where the cache maintenance was so first rate. All week long we did not find one cache that had a wet log or needed any other type of assistance.

 

I would like to add a special thank you to Neil Ford for his company walking around Hyde Park. I truly enjoyed our conversation and the opportunity to get the British view of caching. I look forward to returning the kindness if you ever get to my neighborhood.

 

Thank you once again to everyone who assisted in planning this trip, in hunting, or in placing the caches that we found. I cannot wait to come back and hunt some more. London caching is among the best in the world.

[+OzGuff]

BTW - the London parks are definitely the place to be on a hot sunny day ;-)

I think they are pretty decent places to be between midnight and 6am...

[+shunra]

BTW - the London parks are definitely the place to be on a hot sunny day ;-)

I think they are pretty decent places to be between midnight and 6am...

I have just finished logging my finds of my overnight London marathon of May 21st and 22nd. I attempted 66 caches, and logged 52 finds (the remaining 14 are DNFs for various reasons: locked gates, darkness, crowds, multistage caches which lead me in wrong directions, lack of access to nexessary pictures (I was using cachemate rather than printouts), and plain bad luck. Yet, 52 is a record for me, and if Ozguff's previous record of 43 hasn't been broken yet by someone else in the menatime, it's a record for central London, too.

 

On the way, I acquired some painfull blisters, I found my 400th cache in Green Park, I was impressed that most caches in London are hidden by a single person who has delegated the maintenance to others, and I particularly enjoyed the Regent's Canal series (but some others, too).

 

Caching at night is great. It would be helpful, though, if London cache owners would mark the times during which their caches are inacessible. With some courtyards closing at 5 pm, one doesn't need to do an overnight marathon to get stumped.

 

Thanks to all of you who place and maintain caches in London!

 

Daniel

in Port Townsend, WA

[Sparticus]

One thing I have found, it does not matter how many finds a person has, the quality of their character is what counts, and by and large the cachers I have met are an exquisite group.

Who said caching is a numbers game anyway. The quality of caches and cachers is what makes this sport so enjoyable for us. Thanks for the above comments. How true they are.

[+shunra]

Who said caching is a numbers game anyway.

Caching can be anything you want it to be. My favorite caches are the ones that require me to swim across an estuary, to climb a steep mountain, or to kayak for several miles, but I can certainly enjoy the challenge of a numbers-oriented hunt, like the overnight London marathon I did two weeks ago. There are many ways one can earn one's blisters