2017's caching in review

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

Caching al estilo español

Siempre me encanta buscar Geocaches en España, porque - no, don't worry, I won't write this post in Spanish - I may well disengage you all if I did!

So, let's start this again: I love going caching in Spain; since I started caching, we've found at least one  every time we've gone. Back then, in 2010, there were hardly any around! Just goes to show how much the times have changed... there must now be hundreds and hundreds within a two-mile radius of where we stay - and only three years have been and gone!

We always enjoy cycling up the various local paths, and so we welcomed the fact that a new linear series of caches had been published, covering a five mile stretch. Of course, we wouldn't be stupid enough to do all the caches on our doorstep in one go - so we only did a few (probably passing several    of the others) in order to save the rest until next time. If you're a real cacheaholic, then you must be thinking I'm crazy passing caches and not looking for them - what if they're archived come next year? Good point, I'll just have to hope that they're not! In all seriousness, though, perhaps the main reason for not doing them all in one go was the heat - the area was going through a particularly warm patch, and so we concluded that it wouldn't be wise to push ourselves too far.

Caches feel so much more rugged in Spain, if you know what I mean. It's as if they haven't caught up with the containers we tend to use here, for there are hardly any film canisters in sight, and most caches seem to be of a larger size. Of the four we found along this stretch of the route, there was one sneaky hide (which we chuckled at!) and the rest were generous regulars! Plus, you won't see a lizard if you turn over a rock here in the UK either - in Spain, we did see a couple in this scenario, makes caching feel a bit more exotic!

~

Our next caching trip, an early morning stroll along the beach, wasn't quite as successful and enjoyable. Gosh, there are some REALLY HARD caches in Spain!!! Of the eleven we attempted, we found one. Yes, ONE. Possibly the most unsuccessful day caching ever, for anyone, let alone for someone with nearly 1500 finds. In my defence, the caches were in a very high-muggle area. There were people all over the beach, even this early in the morning and there were people sat outside the restaurants and hotels which back on to the beach... as you can guess, it was, therefore, very stressful trying to find caches in between all this, the only possibility for their placement were palm trees, but their trunks were smooth-as-paper each time, no hidey-holes to be found. I've no idea where all these caches were or if they had been muggled, perhaps they were all archived after I loaded the PQ: but then why did we find one of them? It's all a mystery, and not the caching I enjoy, so next year I'll make sure to hit the trail each time, rather than the beach, when it comes to caching!

Hasta el año que viene,
Griff Grof

Lloret Ring

Lloret Ring, 32 caches, 8 miles, Lloret De Mar, Catalunya, Spain

Hola,

Back from a great holiday in Spain now, so time to write up on the only Geocaching series we had time to do :)

It was August 18th, an important day for us cachers - International Geocaching Day 2012. Even though it was unimaginably hot, we decided to celebrate in Spanish style, hiking in the forested mountains surrounding Lloret de Mar, about four towns south from where we were staying. Woke up bright and early to yet another warm, but this time very foggy day. The Lloret Ring seemed do-able in the heat, so it became the main focus of the day.

From the start, it was clear that most of the caches were going to be micros. But that didn't really matter, because the first few were quite well hidden. The walk was nothing short of excellent from start to end; there were some very steep hills/mountains to hike up at the start, with views of Lloret, the sea and surrounding hills and forests emerging behind us. Every cache was placed in a nice viewpoint, or by an interesting structure.. there were quite a few odd stone structures on the route - including a traditional cottage, abandoned but in perfect condition, a pillar which seemed like the "Devils Chimney" near Cheltenham, UK, and even a church - all remote within these forested mountains! I loved how there were all these interesting things to see, along with lots of hills to keep us moving in the first half of the loop. International Geocaching Day was going fantastically. 

My uncle, "el fantasma", was keen to join us on the series. We'd done a few caches with him when we last came to Spain in 2010, but a whole walk with lots of them was a completely new experience for him. He liked the way the micros were hidden too, I think quite a lot of thought and effort had gone into them. However, a few had been VANDALISED! : Lids missing, logs missing - I had no lids with me, but I did have logs so we signed those and placed them in the caches which didn't have one, meaning we could still claim those finds. My favourite of the day involved a little bit of tree climbing, too :D.

Although most of the series took you along broad sandy paths within mountain woodland, I still thought the route had a good variation in terrain, particularly on the way back down (second half, no longer hiking up mountains ;) ) I enjoyed admiring the views as we made our way back down, too.

Another thing I loved about the series was how remote we were. No civilisation to be seen, our elevation was quite high - we were really within what seemed like endless woodland, lots of different trees and nature to be seen, one of the trees we saw more frequently in these forests was Cork Oak - cut for making corks for bottles. I was also surprised on how big the ants were in Spain!

Unfortunately, as we were nearing the end of the series and walk/hike we were running out of water, and were also running tight on time. It was now midday, so the sun was at its highest point, and we didn't want to push ourselves... we only searched briefly for the last nine or so caches, and most of them resulted in DNFs (can you really blame us?) and we skipped #31 and #32 altogether to get back to car quicker... well, we did, and we enjoyed a nice, cool drink in a nearby restaurant to round off a very enjoyable morning celebrating International Geocaching Day, and getting the all-important souvenir - I missed getting it last year! 

A cracking hike and series, I recommend it if you're ever in the Costa Brava/Lloret area. Definitely a days caching that I will remember for a long time! Back in the UK now too, and the next CacheWalker event has been published - 23rd September, Dovers Hill in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. Click here for more, and log your WILL ATTEND now - GC3N6X0 

Griff Grof