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I did once check a written log against the online one, and it was more hassle than it’s worth. The names were not written on the paper log in the same order as the online ones, and cross-checking was laborious and time-consuming. In the process I made a mistake and deleted a perfectly valid online log. I soon received an email from the irate cacher about this. Of course, I apologised profusely and invited the cacher to relog their find, but I think they had the huff by this point and never did. Since then, I haven’t bothered.
I just read about the deleted logs issue – it’s a pity to see all that hard work go down the drain (for DD and the CO). I may be wrong but I think that the CO can only delete logs on their caches when they are not archived. Now that the caches have been archived there’s no reason not to just add a quick found log to each one (which is possible on archived caches), and reclaim your legitimate finds. Just a small word of moderation though: perhaps PR is having his own problems with these issues at the moment to which we are not party, and widespread condemnation of his actions here and on Facebook may not be helpful. I don’t personally know PR or his circumstances, it’s just a thought.
When I heard the series might be arcived, I wrote to the CO and offered to adopt them, as I think it’s the best Dartmoor series I’ve done. Sadly, I had no reply, and this morning the whole lot’s gone. Such a shame.
What Ochico was too modest to mention was that they can provide a rucksack badge and certificate for anyone who does this great walk (for a modest fee, of course 😆 ). I did it last year. Took me two and a half days with two nights wild camping. It was great fun and I recommend it to anyone.
I think placing a series of caches round this ancient boundary, in a kind of trail, is a great idea! 😆
I recently replaced my cache at Princetown and had a similar problem. When I originally placed the cache it was a good sized container with an A7 memo pad for a log (which cost £2.00 if I recall). This cache was later reported missing, so I went and replaced it with a smaller pot containing a film pot log inside.
When I did my maintenance visit I discovered that the original hadn’t gone missing after all, but even more oddly, the memo pad had been taken from the first cache and loose A4 paper left inside, and the film pot had gone missing from the second cache!
I’m a big fan of geocheckers for a number of reasons.
Firstly, since finders have to plan their caching trips, and make the effort to drive somewhere and walk a variable distance to find a puzzle cache, I think it’s just a courtesy to supply some means for checking the accuracy of the solved puzzle, where it’s necessary. Checksums can be useful in this regard, but they are not 100% reliable.
Some puzzles need a checker more than others. Where questions need to be answered individually, a single wrong answer can scupper the whole solution, so it’s reassuring to be able verify answers before venturing out. In other cases there may some ambiguity about answers, or resources that give conflicting answers. Other puzzles give a vague clue to which there may be many interpretations. A geocheck gives a solver a means to try one or two alternatives, where there is any doubt. This can be abused of course in the “blanket bombing” tactics you’ve mentioned, Dave.
Some puzzles have a clear and explicit answer, once the key is discovered, so don’t really need a checker, as the solution is clearly correct when reached. This is why some of my puzzles don’t have checkers on them. And Dave’s “Moor – Casual Danger” cache is just such a puzzle with an unambiguous solution.
Another reason that checkers are useful is when the solution reached by the puzzle is subject to some variation, as in the cases you Dave mentioned. This allows the puzzle setter to give an exact solution to a finder where it’s not possible to reach the right answer with the information given in the puzzle alone.
The final thing that checkers are good for is to give supplementary information to a finder that is conditional on solving the puzzle. For example, you can give locations for trail heads or parking which would be useful for the finder. If these were listed in the cache page itself, it might give a clue as the final’s whereabouts.
When it comes down to supplying a checker, I’d much rather make it easier for a genuine solver to enjoy finding the cache than to penalise everyone for an individual who wants to circumvent the puzzle.
That’s true enough, but the mornings continue to draw in, so the number of daylight hours are still shrinking! Still, it’s nice to know that our darkest hours will soon be behind us, and the lighter evenings will enable me to finish Remote without a torch maybe?
I don’t begrudge the extra walks at all, and how I chuckled to myself when a TB appeared on Nakers Hill scant days after I’d just been there myself. Brilliant! And then another one appeared in Rattlebrook Head, just after I’d been there too! How did it know? Was there a conspiracy afoot? This time I could hardly contain my mirth. And then as if that wasn’t enough, what about Trig Points? This could only be the work of a true genius, I thought, as I fair split my sides in glee!
Congratulations to Dave for his achievement, I hope you haven’t worn your boots out. I remain a fair way behind you but hope to complete this series soon. Having said that I have the small matter of some inconveniently placed TBs to tackle first…
This series looks like something you can really get your teeth into, and I’m really looking forward to getting on with it.
My headlight broke a couple of months ago, so it looks like I’ll be off to buy a new one, as I suspect I’ll have to do a lot of them in the dark!
I have been asked once by the reviewer about the solution to a puzzle cache, but that was a long time ago. This wasn’t the case with the last puzzle I put out though. Perhaps he was too busy publishing hedgerow caches to bother.
No, Dave, no point missed. I was simply talking about the choice of final location of Unknown type caches, not whether puzzles are soluble or not.
This is a constant puzzle-setter’s dilemma. If you put a puzzle final in a rubbish location then people moan about it. If you put it in a place that’s worth visiting then you put off a lot of potential visitors because it’s a puzzle. You pays your money and you takes your choice I guess.
I thought the route for this series was excellent, and I really enjoyed the walk. There can’t be many other routes which are just right to encourage cachers who might be a bit wary of venturing deep into the moor to give it a go and actually see why Dartmoor is such a rewarding place to walk.
Having said that, the series seems a bit confused in its intent. If it’s set out to waymark a nice walk then having very difficult hides en route detracts from the walk. Also, I would disagree about not having the harder finds at the start of the walk. It’s much more discouraging to have a DNF 2 miles from the nearest parking, particularly if there is bonus info in it, and extra particularly if there is no hint!
If a cache is set so as to be hard to find, then perhaps it shouldn’t really be on a lengthy walk. Such a cache will just hold everyone up frustrate them.
I agree that having a simple “TFTC” log makes me want to tear my hair out. I am a bit more relaxed about newbies doing this, as they may not appreciate that their comments can wound us owners so deeply, but cachers with a few hundred under their belt really ought to know better, and there are some repeat offenders locally I’m sad to say.
I couldn’t agree more with the other comments about putting caches back where they were found, I mean, it’s not rocket science is it?
There are a number of issues raised here which I myself encountered a while back, and I’m afraid to say they have soured my enjoyment of geocaching, and have contributed to me giving up owning a lot of my caches.
The main problem with all of this is the question of cache ownership: don’t forget that it’s WE who own the caches. We think them all up, we put together the containers, we trek out to somewhere nice and hide them.
GC.com is a cache listing site only. The caches are not theirs. Somewhere along the line the organisation has lost sight of the fact that without us there would be no caches, and no need for a site on which to list them.
There seems to be an increasing attitude from GC.com that they musn’t be seen to support the placing of caches that are in any way risky, again forgetting that it’s US who places the caches in their physical locations, not them. So why do they persist in seeing themselves as accountable for the physical caches? How long before 5T caches are banned for health and safety reasons? Hell, that’s probably given them an idea.
Another problem is that the review process generally is flawed in so many ways, and I feel is no longer fit for purpose. I think that there are many ways in which the publication process could be improved, which would benefit everyone. It is tedious in the extreme when we have devised and set our caches to have them turned down, often for arbitrary reasons, and here’s what really gets my goat: for reasons that are not even consistently applied.
There are many examples of this, but I shall give you just one here which highlights this problem. I thought up a challenge cache which admittedly would be very challenging indeed (see dictionary definition of “challenge”, and no, it doesn’t mention anything about frogs), and would keep most local cachers busy for a couple of years at least. It was turned down on the basis that not many people would achieve the target, and that most caches should be able to be visited by many. Various emails went back and forth between myself and one of our reviewers, and I have to say that the last one sent to me was pretty offensive. I complained to GC.com at the time and received an apology from them, but not from the reviewer (Oh really? I hear you ask, that’s not like them at all!).
Anyway, a few months later, the same reviewer published a challenge cache which required the finder to have found thirty 5/5 caches in order to log a find. Hello? Anybody home?
It’s a fair cop when caches are turned down because of a miscalculation on the part of the setter, such as proximity infringement, or land use agreements, etc, but the reviewers’ general aloofness and unwillingness to enter into dialogue, along with their lack of accountability to us, the cache owners, needs to be challenged.
The other comments in the facebook exchange are correct but mssing the point entirely. No, we won’t all die if no more caches are placed on Dartmoor, and yes, a definitive ruling by the MoD was needed before a decision could be made. It’s us being at the mercy of these martinets that has got everyone’s backs up.
Guess who’s not going to be asked to be a reviewer then?
Ha ha!
WGS84 is a global system used by all GPS devices, and you only need to worry about conversion if you start off with co-ordinates based on a national grid system, such as the British National Grid. Each local grid is offset from the WGS84 grid by a known amount, and adjustment needs to be made for that amount when converting from WGS84 to another grid system. The upshot of this is that if you start off with WGS84 co-ords (as on the GC website) then you don’t need to do anything at all.
I’ve cached in a number of different countries and the published caching co-ordinates have all worked fine without me having to do anything. The bigger problem when caching abroad is to get hold of detailed local maps so that you can navigate from a road to the cache without falling down a hole/getting run over by a train/shot for trespassing etc. Have fun!
Well I can’t even get my votes registered at all! Since posting my glowing review of OC.com, I have had a chance to read a lot of the forums attached to it, and all is not rosy in the garden after all. I think the basic approach that the site takes is good, but I am disappointed about how the peer review process works. I’m not always thrilled about how GC reviewers work either, but the only other alternative is a total free-for-all, and I can’t see that working to anyone’s satisfaction either. Maybe it is a case of the devil you know after all.
I didn’t know about the OC.com site before this thread came out, but now I’ve registered with them and had a chance to look around I have to say I’m quite impressed. There are several factors which in my mind make it score over the GC.com site:
1. It weakens GC.com’s monopoly
2. You can import your finds from other caching sites, so you have a cumulative find count
3. It’s decentralised (one of its strongest points) and puts control back in the hands of the cachers and cache owners, getting rid of a lot of redundant bureaucracy and interference by the listing site
4. It allows the placement of virtuals
5. It provides several methods of visit-verification, so no more grumbling about whether a logged find is legitimate or not
6. Visitor feedback should enable cache quality to be clearly visible (rather than using “favorite points”, which are a bit of a blunt instrument) and may act as a deterent to the placement of poor caches.
7. Potential caches are peer reviewed, and if reviewers are local, I would expect them to be more sympathetic to the needs of the local caching community than the current GC reviewer system is.
8. It’s free!One downside is that the website is not so slick, but if the site becomes more used, then further investment by the site owners may follow.
Another problem is that the cumulative find count is not “live”; you have to create a pocket query, download it, then upload it to the OC site. I’m sure this can be improved, but it is cumbersome at the moment.
So, not bad overall. The problem about critical mass is still the big one here, but unless we populate the site, that’s not going to change. With this in mind, I intend to duplicate all of my caches on OC.com, with visit verification turned on (just to add to the fun). Others may wish to do the same?
The beacon we used belonged to my friend, and I didn’t ask how much it cost, but I understand that you have to buy the unit and then pay a subscription to use the service. The cost of that subscription depends on the level of support you want. The automatic OK messages come as part of the package, and there is a manual OK button you can press which will send the usual message and location, with a tag that it was generated manually. If you injure yourself and the unit is not damaged, it will continue to generate OK messages, but the location won’t change. The manual message confirms you are still conscious, and this service is also included in the subscription. It is possible to send SMS using the unit, but this is very expensive. When summoning help, you may get charged by the rescue team, and the subscription includes insurance against these costs, and a guaranteed level of SAR should it become necessary. I don’t know how much these subscriptions cost either, but I can’t imagine they’re cheap!
We did discuss the ten torists many times whilst walking the route, and wondered how they managed to do a greater distance in less time than we managed. Part of it is that they split their equipment up between the teams to lighten their load, but mainly we thought it was because they were about twenty years younger than us!
Interestingly, the ten torists refer to the West Okement valley as the Valley of Doom, for obvious reasons, and this is where we camped on our second night. Waking up next to the river at 6AM on a sunny Sunday morning in that setting was grand. It meant starting the day with a bit of a chuff up the hill, though better at the beginning of the day than the end.
We took a GPS Spot Beacon with us as a test for an upcoming more remote walk. This device sends an “I’m OK” SMS along with a GPS location to a nominated phone and email address every 10 minutes. This is done via satellite link rather than mobile phone so works anywhere, and the device can be used to summon SAR in an emergency. A useful bit of kit to have along. We used this to log our track, but you can’t use it for navigation. We had a map and compass of course as back up, but we navigated mainly from memory. I’ve walked most sections of the walk quite a few times and the route isn’t a difficult one to follow particularly with good visibility, although we did have to resort to the map on a couple of occasions.
Well I’ve done it at last. Having set up the Forest Boundary series of caches I have felt duty bound to complete the Perambulation myself, which I did last weekend. It was harder than I thought and took me 2 and a half days, rather than the 2 I had originally anticipated.
When I set up the series I had anticipated that the caches could be picked up on the way, but to be honest, the walk was hard enough as it was without having to make numerous side trips, however small, to pick up any caches.
Still, the weather was superb, and Dartmoor was on her best behaviour, with a cool breeze throughout, and nice and dry underfoot. I usually come back from walks on the moor with damp feet, but after 78km, they were still bone dry.
I really enjoyed the walk, and would highly recommend it to all!
I’ve long had an uneasiness about the monopoly that GC.com has over our hobby, and the precarious position this places us in. All our accumulated experience could be wiped out if the company ceased trading, and if they decide to hike prices (and it was only a matter of time before the did, and will do again), then we have no option other than to pay up or quit.
I have tried my hand at Terracaching, open caching and munzeeing, and all have their pros and cons, but they are at the end of the day marginal pursuits compared to geocaching, and they don’t have the same appeal. The small numbers of players taking part in these activites ensure that they remain marginal, and they will probably not gain the critical mass to make them serious players.
Also, since GC.com does have the monopoly, they don’t pay much heed to what their customers want, and the ongoing debate over virtual caches is one example of this.
I did think a while ago that there might be a market for a web service that brings all of these GPS-based activites together in one place, so one could go out and find all kinds of caches and other markers on a single walk, and all the resources could be found in one place. Perhaps more importantly such a site could tally up all the various stats from the different component games to give a dashboard of statistics. Such a site would also tend to boost activity in the less popular caching sites, as all finds would contribute to the “numbers”, not just GC caches. That would probably help to balance out the market, and encourage a more co-operative attitude from GC.com.
I personally think that the position the GC.com is in at the moment is far from beneficial to us, and anything we can do to give us a bit more control over our hobby can only be a good thing.
True, reb10, tracks are not needed to make a trail, but they get the ball rolling if someone has a trail in mind.
I have it on good authority that the Perambulation route has been completed in around 15 hours. The route is about 50 miles long, so a 15 hour trip would then mean a non-stop 3 miles an hour over mainly trackless moorland. You’d need quite a few Mars bars for that I should think.
I’ve normally had enough after 20 miles on the moor, but I do intend to do this as a single walk one day, although I expect to break it up with an overnight stop like most other people who do it.
I’m off to Sweden later in the year to walk part of one of their historic trails, the Kungsleden, high in the Arctic Circle. There aren’t many geocaches there either, but the route passes close to Sweden’s highest mountain, which may be just too tempting to pass up.
Part of the reason that Dartmoor has so few trails is that there are very few actual tracks to base a trail on. Any caches on the open moor are going to be placed pretty much at random, and the terrain doesn’t really lend itself to trail placement.
As for frequency of finds, whatever your preferences, and whether or not you are after the numbers, human nature will always tend to favour the walks which give you the highest return on your investment of course. Also, not everyone has the physical ability or inclination to venture onto the moor, and so these caches will always have relatively few visitors.
It’s a bit of a dilemma when placing a cache too. If you want lots of visitors then place an ammo can in a layby on a busy minor road. But there’s no fun in that, so we place them on the moor instead. Given that people are after numbers, though (and there’s nothing wrong with that), a greater concentration of caches on the moor will definitely attract more visitors. Perhaps we do need a power trail after all…
It doesn’t really bother me whether someone logs a DNF or not, except that if I have DNF’ed a cache that others seem to be finding, another DNF is a source of immense comfort to me!
Everyone does this caching thing for different reasons, and if you want to get your numbers up, then the HALO series is just the ticket. But this isn’t why I cache.
I have spent my last two caching sessions doing the new Plym Challenge by the Tamerton Chocolates. This is more like it!
Personally, I get the most out of caches that I make some kind of personal investment in, whether that be time, mental battering or just a long walk. You get out what you put in. The Plym Challenge has got me walking many miles, and chewing my pencil to bits, but even though I got a DNF in the end, I would much rather there was this kind of cache out there (which has obviously taken time and planning to set) than your toss in a hedge micro.
But that’s only my opinion. If you’re after numbers – don’t do this kind of cache. Simples.
Thanks, TC. When’s the Tavy Challenge coming out???
A big thank you to everyone who has adopted any of my caches. They have all been taken now, except for the four I’m keeping.
dartmoor strider has taken over: SX7088, Bag Tor, Pil Tor, Green Down, Gidley Bridge, Fireplace, This Will Be The Ruin Of Us (Revived) and The Scrubbs. Thanks, DS!
Congratulations Dartymoor, it’s a big milestone to get.
I did the Way Down West loop last year, with 110 caches in one day. I started off at 6AM, and it took about 12 hours if memory serves. The thing you tend to forget about this type of series is the sheer amount of time processing the caches takes. You might look at the map, and say to yourself, “only 20 miles, won’t take too long”. If you allow 2 minutes to find, extract, sign and replace each cache, which is probably an optimistic amount of time for some caches, the WDW series I did meant I spent around 3.5 hours of that 12 just processing the caches!
I too really don’t like TFTC logs, and even on a long series try to write something unique about each individual cache, so I made notes as I went round. They do tend to blur into each other after a while, so there’s really no other way.
I’m glad my caches have been enjoyed enough for people to want to keep them going, and I’ve had many kind offers of help.
ELDitton is taking on the Dartmoor Forest series. Station Master has taken on Blank, Down, Gutter and Snappers Tors. Tamerton Chocolates has taken on the scientists and Shavercombe Brook waterfall
Thanks for your kind words, Dartymoor, but I’m not stopping caching, only owning for the time being, and yes the Dartmoor Forest series is going too.
DD has (or will be) adopting: the remainder of the Heart of Dartmoor series, Beardown Tor, Little Mis Tor and Laughter Hole Stepping Stones.
I’ve also dumped him with Beehive and Ducks’ Pool, both of which I hope he will accept.
There are still plenty more up for grabs though, so roll up, roll up!
I’ve long thought about a system similar to Jaughan’s, and I think that the one problem it may solve is cache quality. My system simply involved multiplying the difficulty rating for a cache by its terrain rating to give a score. Your total score is just the sum of all these cache scores. Most cachers are keen to boost their numbers from time to time, and so a loop of 50 caches might seem a good way to do this. If these were cache and dashes you might get a total score of 100 or so. But using a scoring system, you could get 100 points with far fewer higher rating caches. Higher rating caches would then as likely as not get more visitors, which in turn might stimulate cache setters to create more intersting hides to attract these visitors. Of course, it might just lead to inflationary ratings!
I don’t think it’s up to any of us to police how others play this game, so long as no-one and no property is damaged in the process. We all do it for different reasons, and there is usually something for everybody. I couldn’t honestly give two hoots if someone finds one of my puzzles but hasn’t solved the puzzle. If they sign the log, they get the find.
I couldn’t agree more. I got into caching in the first place because of the excuse it gave me to plod all over Dartmoor, as if I needed one. The more the better, I feel. There are more than 20,000 letterboxes on Dartmoor, so I understand, so we still have an awful long way to go before we reach that density. Keep them coming, I say, then I can get back on the moor and find some more caches. Hooray!
I’m afraid I would have to disagree with many of your comments here, Dave, but then I would say that, as I am clearly a repeat offender in your eyes.
Firstly, I would not say that labelled and identified caches are in the majority anywhere you go. You may have been lucky in your trip, but containers with nothing but a log-book inside are far from rare, and I don’t think Dartmoor should be singled out in this regard.
Also, I think the labelling is unnecessary anyway for a number of reasons: what an accidental finder does with your unlabelled geocache has, I suspect, more to do with their psychology and opinions than with the packaging of the box. On Dartmoor as well, I think that most cachers from here or elsewhere, and letterboxers too for that matter, will know when they have found what they are looking for. As long as somewhere the cache has its name on it, such as on the logbook, that should suffice.
Finally, Dartmoor’s geocaches are indeed often just a container with a log book stuck under a rock, and I wouldn’t disagree with that, as that’s exactly what nearly all of mine are. However, I am just glad that some people have taken the time and effort to place caches around this beautiful location which I can then go and find. I think it matters rather less whether those caches have an official green sticker on them.
And finally, I’m not going to line their pockets by buying their official stickers anyway. Setting caches is expensive enough as it is.
I’ve tried a few of these, and they are an interesting variation on the GPS theme. The plus side is that they don’t need a reviewer’s approval to place, and cheating is not allowed as your smart phone’s GPS location must match up to the Munzee you are photographing. The downsides are that they don’t need a reviewer’s approval to place, and you can’t do them off-line, which limits their placement to locations where there is a mobile phone signal. I guess there won’t be many on Dartmoor yet, although I understand they are working on making it work off-line.
There is yet another variation, called Geocheckpointing, which is geared towards taking people to nice locations, where they won’t have to hunt for too long for their find, but there is only one of these in the UK at the moment. This version of the game does not seem so appealing, and if this kind of approach is to be taken, it might be more straighforward just to have your smartphone register when you are at a location, and count that as a find. All checkpoints would then be virtuals in effect.
Well done, Dave, I think we all owe you a big thank you for persisting with this. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
