Hello!
Firstly, apologies for the lack of posts on my blog this year. I haven't been caching much, so there hasn't been much to write about!
However, I decided it was still worth writing my annual 'In Review' blog post.
In August, we went on holiday to Italy, and found some fantastic caches. These included some Earthcaches in Rome, including in tourist hot-spots like the Trevi Fountain; the Earthcache within Vatican City was also great. I'm not really a fan of urban caching, but I do enjoy finding Virtuals/Earthcaches/Webcams in cities.
The main highlight of the holiday was our stay further south. Our visit to Pompeii was particularly notable. I was pleased to see that there were several caches within the ruins; the first one I found was inside the Theatre of Pompeii. It was tucked away inside the theatre itself - I have no idea how it's still there with so many muggles around! We also found a cache within the Amphitheatre of Pompeii, which is the oldest surviving Roman amphitheatre in the world. It was brilliant to find these great caches in such a beautiful and historic location.
A few days later, I had a surprise FTF! It wasn't planned at all. We were in the area, and I checked the Geocaching app to see whether there were any caches nearby. There was one a few hundred feet away called Pictum Ferratum. After searching for a few minutes, I decided to check the recent logs to see whether the last finder had logged a DNF. I was shocked to see that it had never been logged before - despite being published in 2015! We kept searching and eventually I spotted it. The log was indeed blank - I couldn't believe that I was FTF on a foreign cache so long after its publication. This, in addition to the fact that it was in a breathtaking location, made it a very memorable and special find.
In the months that followed, I completed several series' and found a few more special caches.
The CacheWalker Twixmas Bash is always a highlight for me. This year's event (held today) was organised by Hogshunters, and they did a fantastic job. The walk was very enjoyable, with some good new caches to find along the way (see GC7FYQ0). The event itself was great as always - it was nice to continue geochatting and putting faces to names. Two reviewers were in attendance, and they kindly handed out some special trackable tags to all the attendees. Perfect to use for our CacheWalker TB race! It was also nice to receive a gift from our hosts - CacheWalker pens! Overall, it was a throughly enjoyable day - big thanks to Hogshunters for organising CacheWalker's ninth Twixmas/Twinew event!
Last month, I was re-elected as a GAGB committee member. Thank you to everyone who voted for me! I will continue to oversee the GAGB's website and social media channels.
Having considered all the caches I've found in 2017, one more has been now been added to my 'Cache of the Year' bookmark list: Pictum Ferratum. Why? It's in a stunning location, with breathtaking views, and the unexpected FTF made it particularly memorable.
In sum, I haven't found many caches this year, but I've been on some nice walks and found some quality caches. And that's what geocaching is all about.
Happy New Year and all the best for 2018.
Griff Grof
