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It’s to do with the numerical bit of alphanumerical challenges, Dave. The ultimate being GC4ABP3 which has the requirement for each number to come from separate series.
Oh dear……..
So the series was put out since my last visit and has been removed before I had a chance to enjoy any of them.
Oh dear….
Not the first time I’ve come across a fit of pique like this though.
Dubbin is what I have always applied to leather boots- is there any alternative? It now comes in a toothpaste style tube which is really easy to apply- to everything in squirting distance as well as the boots!
One last comment- it shows how flat Dartmoor is that anyone can think of wearing wellies out on the moor. On hillsides of even moderate steepness, they are more slithery than skis.
It’s pretty much six months since this cache was archived, directly by Seattle staff.
So as nothing has happened in the intervening period, it appears that the whole initiative may be forgotten.
Interestingly, this multi required various counts of visible objects to be made whilst walking on a public footpath across a very small block of military land and then finding the final stage which was on the very tip of a cliff promontary. Technically, I believe the final stage was still on MOD land but the biggest hazard was not unexploded ordnance but nudists!
I also use Hunter boots and have for decades- the hills up here are even soggier than Dartmoor. Currently mine are 12 inches high and that means I approach all but deep rivers with equanimity. They are Harkila which are about the same price range as Lowa Hunter but they have really light soles and lower parts which give the impression of wearing trainers. The uppers are leather. I’ve had them three years and apart from after crossing over-deep rivers in pursuit of DD caches ( both here and on Dartmoor), not had a wet foot.
The achilles heel of Hunting boots is the heel- the leather tends to bend and then crack there. Keep that part of the boot very well “dubbinned” for longevity.
This really is quite simple: a cache has an owner and only the owner or an agent appointed (in advance of a visit) by the owner has the right to interfere with the cache. Stick to that as a principle and everything else falls into place.
I know we have all replaced wet logs or cracked boxes and that is normally welcomed by all concerned but even then, we are taking a liberty.How is someone like me from 100 miles away (almost exactly) supposed to find it? I know of similar places here with really good proper Welsh names to further confuse anyone from across the border. If I put a cache out, the finding of which relied on my local knowledge, how many Dartmoor cachers would be able to find it?
I suggest this cache is not fair- full stop.
I have followed all this with interest. On the whole, I am content that caches are reviewed so that they don’t cause problems when published. And that the review process is stringent. However, one initial problem is that the reviewers are the type of person who when driving through a 30mph speed zone at 30 mph, slam the brakes on to pass the speed camera at 20 mph. Just in case.
Here in Wales where 80-90% of the moorland is SSSI, we have to get permission off the landowner to place a cache and all details including name and contact number forwarded to the reviewer if the cache is in a SSSI. All because someone tried once to place a cache beside a Snowdon Lily ( a very rare plant on the highest Snowdon peaks). Do w have this lily in South and mid Wales? No we do not but we are constrained by this rule. And some landowners refuse all requests to place a cache. It is much easier to place a cache on farmland where no permision is required or even in a layby where no one seems to care.The net result of this is that geocaching is becoming an increasingly sedentary activity. A trail appeared through the western beacons this spring: 45 caches in laybys. If you walk more than 450 metres to do all 45 caches, you’re an incompetent parker. And all in some of the grandest walking country in the UK…
Another aspect of this is that the reviewers seem to pay little attention to the exact location of caches beside roads. One cache was placed at the bottom of a garden last year- just outside the garden wall but when cachers started looking amongst the wall, the house owner got upset. Not surprisingly. The cache owner blamed the cachers looking for the cache but it wasnt their fault- it was his. Eventually the cache was archived. But not before the rumpus echoed through other surrounding caches.
So my feelings are that the balance needs to be changed. That it should be possible to place caches in low-grade SSSIs (lets have an agreement with the country agencies to sort that out). That more attention should be paid to caches (and questions asked) in review which are near houses. There are other similar questions they should be asking but are not.
An intersting conversation. Open moor trails are few and far between away from Dartmoor but open moor series (such as the Ten Toors series or Somewhere on Dartmoor) are more common. These take more than a day to complete or if possible in a day are a challenge to do so and need car assistance. In mountain areas where more there is more ascent involved than on Dartmoor, long trails would involve alot of vertical ascent in a day and be exhausting.
I must admit that I enjoy these more and they seem to come in various forms- some have a letter= a number solition to where the final bonus is but others ask other things of the cacher. Gwyddno’s Mountain Challenge in North Wales has 15 mountain general knowledge questions to solve at home. I recommend this series- the final is beautifully placed- there are 3-4 ways to get to the cache- all but one are a 5 for terrain and the other is a 4.5. But it does not require climbing skills or equipment.
The big Granddaddy of these series is the SWMCC series in South Wales- have a look at my log for SWMCC 30 for my statistics for the series. From memory 6000m of ascent and over 100km horizontal travel on foot.
I didn’t know about the opencaching.com site but all of these small sites suffer from the same problem- lack of critical mass. Too few caches, too few cachers, too little resources, too little anything. At least the opencaching.com seems to have some resources. But I am not at all sure I could cope with a caching ranking system which includes “awesomeness”. For me the list is a major thing but if I start dipping in and out of various sites the list goes to pot.
My protocols on this are;
If I don’t get to carry out a complete search in for whatever reason, I write a note.
If I do not find the cache I write a DNF note unless there is good reason. There is a cache I would dearly love to find, I’ve visited 4 times, dnf’d four times, posted three dnf logs, been polite enough to not ask for assistance from the c/o and writing a fourth dnf log seemed rather pointless as others have found the cache in the meantime. And the c/o is a hard man!!I do think that cache owners ought to consider granting finds more regularly to people who post dnfs on caches which subsequently turn out to have disappeared. Under no circumstances should a cache owner grant a find to anyone who asks for it but a poster of a dnf log who provides helpful, clear assistance to the c/o ought to be rewarded for it.
The worst case that I have come across of a claimed find that wasn’t, was this: Two years ago, a day before a big wedding in London (so you can find it in my caching record!!), I went caching with my two kids in Snowdonia. We did a series that had been published a couple of months previously and as it was in thoroughly awkward countryside no one had done the series as one walk. One cache we came to had one online log but a blank logbook. The online log had lots of photos but not of this cache. So the cacher had claimed a FTF when he hadn’t found the cache. I claimed the FTF in my log and the local FTF hound did the cache the next day after reading my log. He was not amused! In this case, he was cheated out of a FTF but I agree with the comment that cheaters are cheating only themselves.
I recommend the caches in that area and all caches by that particular owner- all great.
This is a concern and ought to be a concern to the tourism bodies. Plenty of us come to Dartmoor exclusively for caching or letterboxing- read the logs from cachers from away and you will see plenty of comments like”the rest of the series will have to wait until my next visit”.
In some ways Dartmoor ranges are unique. I cannot imagine trying to put a cache on the Sennybridge military range just next door to me. Indeed in areas such as Sennybridge or Castlemartin in Pembrokeshire, this is already policy. There is no public access at all.
As said, there is a considerable logistic nightmare to enforce this. About the only bit of the high Brecon Beacons that it has been possible to place a cache on is the eastern half of the Penyfan massif which is owned by the Honourable Artillery Company. They are a territorial unit but own property themselves. Is that military land? There is only low-intensity training there- basically yomping over it. And HAC and their agents have proved themselves to be pro activities such as geocaching by granting permission.
Ok,
hard hat on…..
trench dug…….
Take the average terrain and difficulty score of a cacher.
Subtract 1 from each (all caches bar “First in Scotland” have a rating of at least 1 for each).
Square each resultant figure and then multiply these squares together. Multiply that figure by the number of caches found. It has a most remarkable (and pleasing) effect on some of these 20000 finds totals!
It is a Golden Plover- in winter by its plummage and by the grass colour. In summer, it is an altogether brighter bird. The British Trust for Ornithology has just completed the latest 4 year atlas and the results have yet to be published. So I do not know if it still breeds on Dartmoor. It still breeds in South Wales on a sporadic opportunistic basis.
In the 1988-91 atlas it was confirmed to breed in SX58 and SX68 and to possibly breed in SX 67 and SX 69 (all 10 km squares)
In the same 1988-91 atlas, SX68 had breeding Dunlin- another hill breeding wader.
It is a female- on my recent trip to Dartmoor, I only saw one Wheatear- obviously declining on Dartmoor as well as Wales. It migrates to Africa and the problem may be there rather than in Europe. Although, if there is any species that can survive in the Sahara, this is it.
For some science, try here
or
hereYou can find facts about any British species on this site.
Tell me one thing: Why is a cache in a hedge in a litter-bestrewn lay-bye the equal of a cache up the top of the hill which requires some(times alot of) effort to walk to but which, depending on the weather conditions, may reward one with unforgettable views?
My answer to the above is that one of the latter is worth 10 of the former and now that statistics are published for most cachers, I have my own personal equation to adjust their cache found total. I’d better not go into that here as, as a first time poster, it might upset too many!
