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Wadders thinks it’s his Vellake corner (Meldon Mayhem series) cache and the description certainly fits the photo.
I will try to find out what he wants you to do with it. In the meantime, having found it, you can certainly log it as your first find! 🙂
[caption id="attachment_1759" align="alignnone" width="432"]
Vellake Corner (Meldon Mayhem Series) Cache[/caption]This is what is known as a Bison cache and is very popular with some.
I am guessing that this is one of Wadders caches and I have just sent him an email, so hopefully he will be in touch.
Have you found the main geocaching site: http://www.geocaching.com If you sign up there you can see all the caches on Dartmoor and you can have many hours of fun finding them all.
Hi Birdy – welcome to Dartmoor and to this web site. Hopefully also welcome to geocaching!
I have taken the liberty of moving your post to a new topic rather than where you placed it.
Does the cache you found have a name somewhere on the container or on the log book. If so it will be easy to identify. However, from its location it may well be one of the Meldon Mayhem Series.
Anyway, thank you for retrieving the cache and drying it out, hopefully we will be able to identify its owner.
This cache and its owner highlights another problem that could easily be solved. The owner only ever found 57 caches but hid 19! It’s only with the experience of finding caches that you understand what makes at least a reasonable cache to hide. If you had to find at least 100 caches before you hid any, that would show that you had at least some understanding of geocaching.
As for this particular cache, I think it was archived because when I asked for another cache by the same owner to be archived, the reviewer looked at all of the caches and reb10’s Needs Maintenance log was enough to do it. Almost all of these 19 caches have either been archived or need maintenance!
Who needs a 100 caches in one day – I’ve just completed the World’s Shortest Power Trail and I was very satisfied with that 🙂
We managed just over 50 in one day on HALO and that was more than enough, we really couldn’t wait to get to the end. My own view is that the maximum for any trail should be an average of 4 per mile which doesn’t then completely ruin a good walk.
As you mention these trails cause really sloppy caching: copy & paste logs, logging as found caches you didn’t find, not logging your DNFs, not logging Needs Maintenance and not bothering to rehide caches. But as we all know “It’s all about the numbers!”
A good meeting tonight with lots of very useful ideas for activities to be included in the Active Dartmoor week. I brought up geocaching as a possible activity and it received good support and might be included as one of the family activities. I’m not certain how this fits in with the Groundspeak policy which normally does not allow geocaching to be used in support of a commercial venture, which clearly Active Dartmoor is. Although there would be no charge for taking part it would be part of the broader goal of promoting Dartmoor as a holiday destination. However, one of the main aims would be to introduce new members to geocaching, and if these activities were run in conjunction with Groundspeak, then the spin off would be that Groundspeak would also benefit by getting new members. Another alternative would be to place geocaches according to the normal rules, but not to publish them until after the end of the week, when the commercial aspect of the geocaches had gone. That way they would then become available to all geocaching.com members to find. However, if somebody has just got enthusiastic about geocaching and found their first caches, they would be very keen to log on to geocaching.com to log their finds!
I would be very interested to hear from anybody who might know of Groundspeak’s view of this sort of venture. No doubt the Dartmoor Partnership, who are organising the week, would be looking for some sort of sponsorship from whoever they became involved with.
I will be attending this meeting at Brimpts Farm later today. Obviously my main interest is as an accommodation provider and I’m not even sure that geocaching will get a mention. However, it will be a very good opportunity to meet some land owners (as I think many of the activities will be on private rather than common land) and that may prove very helpful for geocaching.
I will report back after the meeting.
Thanks for posting this dartymoor. I’m really surprised to see this on the groundspeak forum as they are normally very much opposed to anyone advertising commercial ventures. This is something, as an accommodation provider, that I should be getting involved in but I doubt if this particular activity will bring us any extra visitors. It probably won’t help geocaching on Dartmoor either, as what we really need is for keen cachers to place good caches, not necessarily just attracting beginners to geocaching (unless they live locally).
I’m sure you are right dartymoor, but that makes it even more crazy. Abandoned caches therefore cannot be collected even if a new CO places his new cache at the exact location of an archived one! There is enough geocaching litter out there already (much of which is active caches), allowing adoption of abandoned caches would at least allow the legal removal of such litter. Fortunately, in practice the new CO will always remove this, but as you say, he has no legal right to do so. Also as you say, a simple change in the T&C’s would change all that.
Unfortunately the reviewers do not allow this. There has to be agreement from the CO to allow adoption – crazy I know. Reviewers will also not allow adoption of caches that have been archived, even with the CO’s permission. So you need to adopt BEFORE the cache is archived.
I agree with reb10 in that this forum is precisely where these issues ought to be discussed. However, I’m beginning to realise that this is just a symptom of a far bigger problem, geocaching itself! But I don’t want to get off topic here, just enough to say that the values some of us clearly hold are not shared by others – but that is another whole discussion.
As regards caches in walls, I can assure you all that it is not a problem confined to Dartmoor. Judy and I are currently spending a few days in Cornwall, with the main aim to complete HALO – and that will certainly be another topic for discussion!!! Today we found at least 3 HALO caches in dry stone walls. They are of a different construction in Cornwall, being made mainly of slates rather than granite blocks, but the same should surely apply. One of these caches was placed on top of a wall and was hidden using slates that had clearly come from the wall, although I’m not suggesting that they were removed by the CO, but they had been used.
Re the NT, I was very surprised to see that one of the caches placed in Castle Drogo by NT staff is in one of their walls! So what hope is there for getting the message across?
I couldn’t agree more reb10, but I don’t think it was the fault of the previous finder but of the CO who placed it there. This was my log of just a year ago “First of 8 caches on a short circular walk around this part of the moor. A very easy find without the hint, but as others have said, this cache should not be in the wall. TFTC.” As I noted then, I was NOT the first to mention this, but clearly the CO has taken no action.
I also wrote this in my log for the Hangar Down Yomp “A very easy find in about the first place we looked, so TFTC
. It’s great to see some new cachers placing caches 
and I really want to encourage them, but I know I won’t be the only one to mention this, but caches should not be placed in dry stone walls. It would be far better sited away from the wall. I’m sorry about the moan 
.”It seems that you and I are the only ones who seem to care about this issue – what do others think, please speak up here and give us your views.
Hi Phil – I thought you had dropped off the planet! Anyway, your post has prompted me to write a new topic for discussion, Dave
Thanks for that GH, immensely interesting, Judy and I listened to the whole broadcast. However, having listened to that I can’t see how dartymoor used Ring Ouzels to prevent development on the Teign Estuary as they seem only to nest in upland areas in the most remote of locations and not on river estuaries?
Judy and I were fortunate enough to see one in the Chitern Hills albeit half a mile away through a twitcher’s scope! We wondered what they were watching and were told this particular valley, right next to the large M40 cutting, was a known stopping off point on their migration route.
It seems to me that it’s back to the old question “It’s all about the numbers!”
Mark Twain once described golf as “A good walk spoiled” and dartymoor says “geocaching for me is mostly about the walk”. So how many caches per mile spoil the walk? What is the optimum number?
If the terrain is brilliant (like most of Dartmoor) then I prefer one cache about every half mile to one mile and that is what I placed on both the Walk on the Wild Side and Heads of the River Trek series. If the terrain is not so brilliant then one every quarter mile is fine. Loopy Around Lifton is close to that having 21 caches in 4.2 miles. But more frequent than that? The Parramble Trails have a cache about every 200m which is about 7 or 8 per mile and getting close to the minimum spacing allowed.
We recently managed to escape for a couple of days and had a choice of where to go reasonably close to Dartmoor. Both times we chose the coast path, first from Tintagel to Boscastle and then from Boscastle to Crackington. These are two brilliant series of caches by SMacB with dramatic views, but usefully spaced caches at about half mile intervals. We could have gone for the numbers but chose instead the quality. We are looking forward to returning for the Crackington & Beyond series. The numbers on these series certainly don’t spoil the walk!
Dartymoor, will you do some sort of write-up for these Parramble Trails please. I’ve looked at them several times and can’t decide whether it’s the type of walk/geocaching I want to do. The longest loops I’ve done are only about 20 caches and I normally get bored before I get to the end of those and I’m not certain if I could face 40 or 50 on such a short walk. Obviously depends on the quality of the caches and how difficult they are to find. I would also not be looking forward to logging them afterwards. I hate the TFTC logs and normally write 2 or 3 sentences on each cache but surely you can’t do that on 40 or 50? You would certainly have to make lots of notes.
The other question is, of course, would we want to see these sort of loops on Dartmoor? I know of at least one person who posts here who wouldn’t and on this occasion I would probably agree with him.
Congratulations Dartymoor, you now qualify for my top UK Rankings list (at least when I next get a chance to update it ;))
Like Dartymoor, I was really sad when I saw some of Matt’s caches being archived. Initially I thought it was just the Dewer Ramble and the odd cache, but when I saw his post on here I realised it was much more serious and would have a real impact on Dartmoor geocaching. It is a real shame that Matt has come to this decision especially after his huge efforts with the Dartmoor Forest series, which is now totally in place and shouldn’t require too much maintenance in the near future.
Unfortunately there is no way I can adopt these caches as well as the HoD series and hopefully somebody else might be prepared to or maybe Matt might have second thoughts on these caches? If not they will be a real loss to Dartmoor geocaching and to those cachers who have made a start on the series and who had hoped to take several months or years to complete it.
Whatever the outcome I would like to thank Matt for his inspiration and help to me, and no doubt to others, who have come new to geocaching and who have respected him for his caches remote on the moor and of course for the numerous puzzle caches. I am sure that he will continue to log the usual stream of FTFs on my caches and we will eagerly await his return to ownership hopefully not too far in the distance.
Thanks once more Matt for all your help, encouragement and some truly great caches. I still rate the Heart of Dartmoor series as the number 1 series on Dartmoor and the Tavy Treasure Trail as the number 1 cache, many thanks.
SM – It’ll have to be 500ml as I’m afraid we only have bottles of Jail Ale
FMC – Welcome to the web site, you probably have all the hints you need now?
SM – I still need my hints for your cache – perhaps you could post them here for everybody to see?Now everybody knows the approximate location of the final cache in the series (The Room) the puzzle becomes almost trivial. However, you will need to visit the caches at Laughter Tor and Skir Hill to get the codes to find the Key cache, which opens the Room cache. I must go and oil the lock as the last finder said it was getting a bit stiff. I’ll get the beer ready 🙂
Like you, I have a cache at the house, solve Room with a View – The Room (GC2JBT0) and I will give you a free pint! But it must be all your own work, although I will give you a few hints if necessary. This applies to anybody else who finds all 4 caches in the series 🙂
I think I need the “few vague hints” the FE’s mention in their log before I will get anywhere with this one?
Sorry SM – where did I mention any other of your caches apart from the one at your home? And I did emphasize that there was no criticism intended of you.
I have already said that where a cache is in a great location it makes sense to place a new one there and I have done this both at Bench Tor and at Foxtor Mire, so I am certainly not criticising your Hartor cache.
What I am questioning is the logic behind replacing a C&D at exactly the same location rather than finding a similar location close by, as you have correctly done at Denham Bridge. I am also questioning why a cache is archived today and a new one placed tomorrow in the same location by the same CO (and I do understand why this is done at home addresses).
I hope that clarifies my original topic.
Nice to see some active discussion!
Miss says “So no credit for hiding caches” and StationMaster replies “And why do people need credit for hiding caches”
I’m not sure that placers “need” credit, but any ranking system ought to reflect the efforts of placers. Somebody might dispute my simple arithmetic, but if on average every cache is found 100 times during its lifetime, then to maintain equilibrium I calculate that everybody needs to place 1 cache for every 100 they find. So if you have found 2,000 caches then to be fair you ought to have placed 20.
In a ranking system, every cache placed would be worth 100 finds – that might change the UK rankings a little and encourage a few more caches to be placed!
Hi Jaughan – thank you for your first post, which I would certainly agree with. Please do explain your personal equation – I’m sure that you won’t upset too many!
Answering Miss, these are just ranked by total number of caches found.
This is an interesting log which supports much of my argument about whether geocaches should be correctly labelled:
Puzzling and frustrating – so many plastic boxes are hidden around here that they seem to outnumber the rocks themselves. Some have logs that have been signed by cachers, but none that we found seemed to actually be geocaches. So far as we could tell, all were leaky lunchboxes dumped by enthusiastic kids with no thought for their future maintenance.
Realistically, it ought to have been possible to find the real cache – but the GPSr was being a little vague and we didn’t have the clue with us as we were paperless and without internet access, so after a long hunt and yet another lunchbox with pink butterflies and sparkly unicorns we decided to call it a day.
Much as we’d like to log a find as pay-off for finding things in plausible locations, in all conscience we can’t. We’d suggest this one might be worth re-siting somewhere a little away from the tor, in some tricksy location that kids won’t think to go to and which lends itself to a specific clue.
Of course it’s about having fun – but Groundspeak are stopping this fun! Take a look at muddypuddles Alphabet Puzzle Challenge, there are 223 logs against this cache but only 13 finds! Almost all of the logs are from cachers who want to complete this challenge and there are 37 watching the cache. An unbelievable amount of interest has been generated by this cache, but Groundspeak has now changed the rules and this type of cache will not be allowed in the future. Hence my question “Are Challenge Caches Dead?”
The thing that Groundspeak seem to ignore is that everybody has a choice whether or not they wish to accept a challenge – it’s not compulsory. Therefore these silly restrictions should not be there, you either accept the rules as laid down by the CO or you don’t do it. I can set a challenge that forces cachers to place new caches and Hobo can set a challenge that means you have to visit every country in the world 🙂
The last time somebody threw me a challenge (it was no less than Phil of LympstoneBogtrotters) I readily accepted and the Dartmoor Mega and Minor Challenges were born! However, that was February and this is June and we have a hotel to run (not that this weather helps much!)
A very interesting idea, but one I feel that is doomed to failure. No matter what some folk say about it’s the walk that counts, in reality it’s the numbers that count, and if you can’t log it and increase your Groundspeak stats, then I don’t think anybody will be interested.
It certainly supports my theory that making a cache Premium Member only doesn’t protect either the cache, the cache site or the environment.
Without pointing the finger at anybody and only looking at the photos, it looks to me as though somebody lost their temper with this cache and savagely attacked the gorse bush. This is not how anybody geocacher should behave, because it gives us all a bad name and we should all try to protect the environment, even gorse bushes. Hobo & Miss’s caches are not always my favourite because of the gorse but this is their trademark, we expect it and can laugh with them. As we all know what to expect, we can either choose to attempt the cache or not, but trying to destroy it is surely not acceptable.
I am very happy with the “good humoured banter” but I also hope that we can discuss topics of interest to fellow geocachers. Hopefully shared information will be beneficial to all and I have certainly learnt about Greasemonkey which has helped me enormously with the mega/minor challenges. I would like to think that the site does provide new and helpful information and maybe helps us all see things from a different point of view.
If you use the GC system for rating caches the key question seems to be “What is the trail like?” If you choose “There is no real trail. Wheels are out. May be following a stream bed or be very rocky.” then you will almost certainly get a TR of 4. Surely this is applicable to most of my caches on the open moor?
If you choose “Could be gravel, sand, mud, etc. May be an animal trail. If you’re riding a bike, it had better be a mountain bike.” You will get a TR of 3, but I challenge even Hobo to ride his mountain bike to many of my caches!
All of the caches Mark found yesterday were rated 3 or 3.5 except one which was 4, so no way were any of these overrated according to the recommended system. However, I was disappointed to see that 8 of Mark’s logs were just copied and pasted in and were totally identical! Not very encouraging to any CO as Mark should know, especially after the enthusiastic review I gave of his Coffin Stone!
This has gone way off topic so I have split it into a new topic “Density of Dartmoor’s Caches” and will let this one continue as before.
TC says “Sometimes it is time for caches to go – free up some space for new ones.” I’ve seen that written many times on an archived cache, but normally when the CO can’t be bothered to maintain it. We’ve less than 4 caches per square mile on Dartmoor, so that argument really doesn’t apply – there’s so much space for new ones – maybe TC would like to place a nice new series to replace those being archived?
Unfortunately I couldn’t get Groundspeak to recognise my rave as a mega event! I doubt if there are going to be many caches found in Bellever this weekend, we are surrounded by police road blocks as far away as Holne in one direction and the Warren House Inn in another. Nobody can get in or out without an interrogation! It’s a shame there wasn’t any police intelligence to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
I too find it disappointing that some of the oldest and perhaps best caches are being archived and I’ve already posted a note on the Ten Tors Challenge Bonus cache asking plymplodders to re-consider.
In my opinion there are 4 great series left on Dartmoor:
Ten Tors Challenge by plymplodders placed in 2005
Dartmoor Myths & Legends by Cantor Clan placed in 2005
Alphabet Challenge by Windrush placed in 2007
Heart of Dartmoor by muddypuddles placed in 2009These series are not placed in a straight line or loop and therefore take you to most parts of Dartmoor and would normally take several visits to complete. I’ve already adopted the Myths & Legends series and it would be very good if somebody could adopt the Ten Tors Challenge series before any more are archived. The reviewers seem not to be allowed to unarchive a cache purely for adoption, so caches need to be adopted before they are archived or the owner persuaded to unarchive them first.
Whilst on the subject it is very good to see that Red Roaming has adopted other Cantor clan caches in order that they can continue.
