Westwoods 2 posted this comment a few weeks ago under the home page. I am moving it here to give it more prominence and also because I am going to update the home page.
I also visited Westwoods 2’s circular walk around Chudleigh Knighton Heath yesterday which is a delightful walk with 9 caches placed within the Devon Wildlife Trust’s Nature Reserve and a walk I would strongly recommend.
For information:-
The DWT is working out it’s own protocol for siting caches in their Nature Reserves and Natural England is prepared to allow them to decide about SSSI’s on their reserves.
I asked for permission some time back and they have been very helpful but were unaware of the caches that had already been placed without permission. Hopefully this won’t cause a major problem and should eventually open up areas for caches that were previously unavailable.
For those that missed it, ITV ran the article on their teatime news bulletin on Tuesday 21-02-2012. Thought Mr Westwoods 2 spoke very eloquently about the Trail and the sport we all love so much; although he wont want me to inform you that the reporter referred to him as a ”seasoned geocacher” – still young at heart is our John!
This is the link to the article:
http://www.itv.com./westcountry-west/fullprogramme/
Unfortunately this link seems to get overwritten each day and so you get today’s news instead of yesterday’s. I haven’t had any luck trying to search for the required bulletin.
Sorry Dave!
My apologies to Dave and anyone else who has tried to access this link – It does indeed only stay ‘live’ until the following evening’s bulletin and isn’t available on the very limited itv player. Didn’t even have any luck tracking it down on you tube! So looks like John’s small screen debut is lost forever.
Still, at least we have the (not so small) consolation prize of an excellent DWT Trail in Chudleigh Knighton to look forward too!
Apologies to all my “fans” for lack of information re.TV appearance,I only found out from my son in Warrington who’s Mother-in-law rang him from Cornwall!!(Beginning to sound like a multi!)
I can assure you you didn’t miss much but if it makes a few more people aware of Geocaching it was worthwhile.
Many thanks to John for his hard work in making sure this series wasn’t archived unnecessarily; delighted that the DWT has seen sense not least because the LympstoneBogtrotters are yet to attempt this highly acclaimed series. Also, looking forward to your television debut John – please do keep us informed as to when it’s being aired!
Thanks Phil-but it wasn’t DWT holding things up. I’m not the only one to have had problems with Natural England and SSSI’s!
As for TV I’m hoping they’ll cut my bit!
Sorry about this late reply – we have recently put a cache at Yarner Wood NNR and Natural England were very helpful and enthusiastic at the prospects of attracting a different group of visitors to their reserve. It did however take a couple of months as they are quite slow to respond to E-mails (I am sure that due to Government cuts they are probably very busy and we end up on their low priority list). We are planning to place a similar multi cache at the nearby Bovey Valley Woodlands very soon, so watch this space!
They were also incredibly slow in replying to emails for my Trendlebeer cache – but most important, do seem to be geocache friendly. I was half expecting a flat refusal!
Just a quick update-Chudleigh Knighton Walk now at last given approval by Natural England after it took them several weeks to ascertain the danger to historic buildings on the Reserve! (The only buildings are the remains of US army fuel dumps from WW2)
We have filmed a short piece for ITV about the walk mainly to publicise the Devon Wildlife Trust but also hopefully to spark a little more interest in Geocaching. No information yet as to broadcasting but there may be a link on the DWT website.
If anyone is interested in siting caches on DWT reserves please contact Steve Hussey at DWT and I think you will find him very helpful.