FIRST LAID! GC210FH - The Old Drove

I laid our first Team Fruity cache in Eastbourne the other day! Sadly the Magellen Blazer 12 used to log to co-ordinates seemed to be about half a mile out - which resulted in replacement co-ords being obtained with the HTC Diamond/XDA Ignito running GCzII (smashing free Windows Mobile app for Geocaching - see link in sidebar) and double-checked in Google Maps before re-submitting.

The cache used was the one pictured in an earlier post. To refresh your memories and help you to find what you're looking for, here it is again:

Checked on the cache today to ensure that the recent poor weather had not displaced it and it's all there and in place. Hopefully the FTF won't be far away :-)

GC1FCDV - Hidden and Dangerous? #4 (Abridged, Newhaven)

Having acquired yet more work (three jobs now!) plus two more OU courses (I've finished the first one), driving lessons, and with the recent death of my Father - geocaching sadly had to take a back seat for a while. However, having persuaded some work friends to come out tomorrow lunchtime for a third bash at trying to find a cache close to our office - I updated GCzII on my phone (HTC Touch Diamond/XDA Ignito) and have since been hitting "Find nearby geocaches" whenever I can get a sat-lock.

Today I headed over to Newhaven to present the first of five classes in 'How to get the best out of your digital camera'. Getting there in time is a bit of a close-run thing, however I have a good hour or so spare (at whichever end of the trip I choose) to get back in time to teach my Web Design level 2 evening class. Standing on platform 1 of Newhaven Town station waiting for my train back to Eastbourne, I hit "Find" yet again... and it found one within 200 feet of my position! Despite being lumbered with a bicycle and a busy road in between myself and what surely had to be the cache site, and just 10 minutes before the next train was due - I just had to make an attempt.

I got there, my GPSes agreed that I was virtually on top of it, and the 'hint' was VERY helpful :-) I found it, signed it, carefully replaced it and hurried back to platform 1 just in time to catch the train.

Smashing idea for a series of caches and lovely little hide in a pretty busy area. It was one of those caches where you're in the area, read the title, description and hint, and it all 'clicks' for you. It's a great feeling! Thanks for the hide "LostInTheWoods!" and I hope that we find #9 (GC1F6N7) in the same series tomorrow!

(Apologies for lack of photos - it was very dark already and I only had my camera phone with me!)

GCWGZZ - Gildridge Park

Az drove me out to help him with his first find (my 4th) on our way to KFC for our (hopefully regular) Chicken & WoW night. We figured we'd do Gildridge Park, as at 5:30ish on a work-day, we expected that it would be quite muggle-free and it wasn't too huge a detour.

After some initial trouble with my phone's onboard GPS (which

doesn't like seeking without a reboot for some reason), we managed to get a lock, and half-walked half-ran across the park to a sparseish group of trees. The trunks of these trees were quite twisted and look like great hiding places for caches, and sure enough, my GPS got us down to '2 yards' next to a particularly gnarly one. We looked where the additional clue told us to, and it was there! Smashing hiding place, and unlikely to be muggled despite being in quite an open area!

We signed, dated and websited the log and replaced the cache exactly where we found it. It was quite dark by then, so the photo ended up being quite dark and the auto-focus wasn't at it's best - but it is at least readable. :-)

A nice cache-and-dash in a lovely area. Thanks for the hide 'searching sarab'!

GCTPMY - Ruth-Less

Captain and I (Lifson) went off for another run around on the Downs yesterday with a view to picking up Go Pack Go's "Ruth-less", a small tupperware cache up near Butts Lane. Having remembered to bring his Eastbourne Resident's Card, we didn't have to pay to park and so were able to spend as long as we needed on the find without having to worry about being ticketed!


We had a pretty good idea of where the monument was in the first place, so headed straight there and just confirmed our co-ordinates when we arrived. We completed the cache co-ordinates from the clues given, and after enjoying the amazing view over Eastbourne for a few moments, headed on our way.

Where the readings came out, we had to scramble down quite a steep hill. Had either of us lost our footing, we'd have been in trouble! Fortunately, Captain is rather more sure-footed than I, and there were lots of trees and vines for me to hang on to. There were two 'paths' (worn bits in the ground) to roughly where we were looking, and having gone down the first, Captain found that the second path was closer to the cache. I went back up and around and joined him at the cache location as the area between was rather full of brambles!

The cache is a small tupperware container (see right) which was well hidden in the undergrowth (better than in the photo!) It's invisible from the path, so very unlikely to be muggled, but easy enough to spot when you're on the hill and you know what you're looking for. It's a lovely little cache in brilliant condition, and had a few different items in, including another travel bug (I'm definately going to buy one of those!). I was intregued by the USB memory stick, so took that, and left a screwdriver multi-tool in exchange. We signed and dated the log, and replaced the cache carefully back where it was.

Not as long a multi as Old Town Open but still good fun, with some great views and a some physical effort required. :-) Tried the USB stick when I got home, and although it worked fine, it was disappointingly blank. I'm going to load it up with some Geocaching programs, links and the like, and put it in another cache when I can.

Thanks to Go Pack Go :-)

GC1JN66 - Old Town Open

I wanted to go off and try to find a significantly-sized cache in Eastbourne somewhere, and see if I could persuade Captain to get into this Geocaching lark. He wasn't convinced when I described it to him, but he dusted off his classic-style GPS (I use the ones on my phone and laptop) and agreed to join me for a hunt as long as it was a good walk about and out of town.

After a bit of a browse, I picked GC1JN66, "Old Town Open" layed by "The Long Man Trackers". It looked like it filled all of our size and location requirements (up towards the Downs) - so off we went. The clues were all accessable by road, and were ingeniously designed! The tags (as shown below but with the answer numbers scrubbed out to avoid spoiling!) were stamped metal plates which looked like they might have been markers left by fence installation people or the council, so they wouldn't be nicked/removed by local scallies and the like.






Having gathered up the clues and worked out the co-ordinates of the actual cache - we set off up the hill on to the Downs. I'm not the best at hills, so Captain went on a little way ahead to narrow down the location. He worked out where it was, in a little slightly clearer area off the main path. We clambered up into the area, which was quite steep and very soggy underfoot, and used the trees to move around to find the cache. It took some looking for, as the trees widened the area of discrepancy on the GPS to around 25 feet.

Then... we found it!!!

It's a smashing cache. :-) Very waterproof it seems, as it had rained the previous day and the inside was spotlessly dry. There were lots of items in there (including a travel bug! I want to get one of those!), but I decided not to take anything, as a) I had nothing to leave, and b) I'm going to leave it until I've found a few more before I start trading stuff around. I signed and dated the log from the two of us on behalf of Team Fruity, and hid it all back where we found it.

Thanks to "The Long Man Trackers" for such a great hide :-)

The continuing saga of GC1J19N

Well, I went back to Hampden Park station and had a look at the shelter on the platform - and couldn't see anything there. Having said that, the description did say that you "wouldn't have to buy a platform ticket". Now whether that's because they don't make you buy a ticket to get on to the platform, or whether it's not there - I'm not entirely sure. I did have a good mooch about - however a bunch of chavvy girls were hanging about shouting at random people (including me) so I figured that it'd be best not to find it now anyway - as they would probably move/destroy it for kicks. :-( I'll have another look another day, Fortunately, being so close to my daily route means that I can look regularly.

The Scented Garden For The Blind is another cache which I can probably get to easily. It's in Hampden Park (which I used to go through on my old route to work). It's quite open to muggling, but as long as previous Cachers have done their jobs - it should be okay. Here's hoping! Must have another go at Hidden and Dangerous #9 again too.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking a Team Fruity guest star (codename: Captain) out for his first cache hunt on the Downs (I'll be taking several sets of co-ords), taking my camera so we can liven this thing up a bit, and we maybe even find a quiet spot in which to lay Fruity Cache #1!

Nearly found GC1J19N, and the arrival of goodies

Further browsing of the Geocaching site revealed that there is a cache which is almost directly on my route to work! "Watt Mast? #6 (HP Railway Station)" is barely a couple of minutes deviation from my regular route, so I left the house a bit earlier than usual to go and have a look for it. Another 35mm cache in quite a public area - this would probably be quite a challenge to find.

I use the very nifty Richesse GPS application. The only problem (and it's a small one) I seem to have found with that particular program, is that it doesn't like finding satelites while the Activesync program is running - close Activesync and all is well. I fired it up at the bottom of my road to give it time to locate me and work out it's directional information, and headed for the station. It had me sorted out by the time I got there, and I walked towards the mast.

Unfortunately, even when standing right by the fence beside the mast, It still gave a reading of 19 feet from the target. I have a feeling that this might be on the platform-side of the fenced off area rather than footpath side - which would make sense as it's a very public footpath which is heavily used by students from the nearby college. That point at platform-side is way up the platform and away from heavy 'muggle' (non-geocacher) traffic. As I didn't have time to turn around and look for it up there, I intend to check again on the way home but on the other side this time.

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Also, my package from UKGeocachers arrived at work this morning! In it was a rite-on-rain logbook, a tiny pencil, a green test tube style micro-cache, and some yellow geocaching logo stickers. The lot cost me about £5 including postage was very well packaged, and sets me up for laying my first ever cache :-) I'll have to give some thought as to where to put it. My first instinct was to lay it at work - but being a place full of students I think maybe not.

Photo of our first cache constructed follows. Just got to work out where to lay it now.!

Lifson