Paperless Geocaching with a Garmin eTrex 20

I have been using my trusty Garmin eTrex H for geocaching for the past two and a half years, and it has served me very well. I have no qualms with Garmin at all. I cannot compare with the other leading GPS manufacturers, e.g. Magellan, Lowrance, or DeLorme as I am pretty brand loyal. I got the eTrex H entirely because it was by far the cheapest GPSr on the market and I wasn't sure if I was going to get into geocaching or not so I didn't want to fork out a lot. When I discovered it was very reliable and met my requirements, I bought a Garmin SatNav for my car too (Nuvi 205w) and that is practically faultless.

A couple of years down the line and I'm starting to grow tired of writing out or printing off cache details prior to every caching trip, especially for spontaneous moments or huge circuits. I was finding myself up half the night just writing down (and double checking!) coordinates for every cache in a loop. The device itself is also starting to wear out through over use - the buttons are wearing away! Technically I can geocache with my iPhone but I am not keen on using my iPhone for caching purposes. We don't (yet!) see eye to eye, and I find its reliability and accuracy very lacking compared to a GPS unit. Not half bad for viewing cache details though!

So I've been looking at getting a better model for geocaching as it would seem that this is a hobby I'm going to keep doing after all! I eyed up the Magellan eXplorist GC for a bit but my loyalty to Garmin steered me towards the new eTrex series (10, 20 and 30). The 10 is not much of an improvement on the H, and the 30 is pretty expensive so I went for the middle ground of the 20 and I have no regrets.

The Garmin eTrex 20 wonderfully comes with the necessary USB cable needed to load cache details straight onto the device. This could be done with the eTrex H but the cable had to be purchased separately. In the 20's case, it was the lanyard that needed purchasing separately, but I just use my old H's lanyard! It's a good size, shape and weight and has enough memory for some pretty epic caching trips. How wonderful to view cache details on the screen. It's a bit more of a handful to use, but I'm sure I will get quicker at using this device in time. Best decision of all though was to upload maps to it. UK maps don't even have to cost anything if you go to the right resource. It took an hour or so to download the entire British Isles street/terrain maps but it was totally worth it! Very useful to have an idea where you're located and where you're going. Even if you have no destination, you can navigate if you have maps to hand. I've been depending on paper maps which don't always encompass my far-flung locations!

I shall put the eTrex H away in a drawer, still loved, but now superseded by a colour-screen, map-displaying, cache-detailing model. I will look forward to using the eTrex 20 for my future caching trips and recommend it to novice and experienced cachers alike. It's no smart phone or top of the range GPS device, but it's a good compromise for someone who wants something a bit special but doesn't want to pay more than £200 for a GPSr.

Double Digit Blockbusters

When this "Double Digit Blockbusters" cache got published not too far from home, I looked at the listing and quickly came to the conclusion that as amazing as it would be to claim this cache, it would probably not be for a few years yet. The idea is fantastic - well done Chilihouse! You have to make two lines, one vertical, one horizontal on your caching calendar with dates where you have found 10 or more caches. Looking at my own calendar, my heart sank. I'm working diligently on my 366 days of caching, which is coming along very nicely indeed, but to get dozens of days of double figures seems like an impossible challenge to me. That said, I did somehow pull the 30 Days and 30 Nights of Caching challenge out of the bag.

I have decided that the best way to tackle this Double Digit challenge though is to see which column and row have the most finds so far and then just fill in the gaps. That way I should generally not have to look for too many caches on each day that needs work. Doing the vertical column will be what takes up my time - we're talking at least a year - but the horizontal is what will drain my stamina. How will I do a month of getting several caches a day? Easier if you're not in full-time work!

So here's the edit I have made of my caching calendar, providing a rough plan of how I intend to complete my grid so that I qualify.

It might be worth me trying to fill in boxes early, if possible, so that if I fail, I still have a back-up a day or so later (for example, I need to find seven caches on 7th August, but if for whatever reason I manage to find nine on 6th August, I won't have to get any on the 7th... but if I don't get my target on 6th, I've got a backup of the 7th, if you see what I mean).

Whatever, I wonder if this is an achievable target for this year or whether I will still be working on it in a year's time. I don't need to worry about working on this challenge until 5th May, if I stick to this plan, but anything's a bonus so I should get out and find loads of caches every day! Ha, if only...

Hampshire Leap Day Event

It only comes once every 4 years, which is why colouring in that elusive 29th February square in our caching calendars is a pretty special moment! Groundspeak were keen to encourage geocachers worldwide to commemorate the date with either a cache find or an attended event and aimed to hit a new record for the number of found it/attended logs on one day. Well, unsurprisingly geocaching events sprung up on 29th February all over the globe, 44 of which were in the United Kingdom. I was delighted to find that there was one such event a mere 10 miles from home so of course I logged my "will attend" and prepared myself for a grand-scale event. Wow, what a turn out! Congratulations Bernie the Geocacher for hosting and cachers of the South of England for turning up and bringing an incredible 113 signatures to the log book (accounting for an incredible 170 odd individuals!). This was apparently the best attended Leap Day event in all of Europe - a proud moment indeed. That poor pub didn't know what hit it, but it seemed to cope marvellously and somehow housed us all upstairs in the function room. But my, how stuffy it was! Good thing I had cache details to hand so I could sneak out for half an hour or so to claim a find by torchlight. The event was great fun and will not be forgotten in a hurry; such a contrast to the mini-event I attended earlier in the same month in Madeira!

Caching map of the world

It's coming along, isn't it?

Bizarre fungus in Madeira

I've seen quite a few weird and wonderful fungi in the UK and been able to identify many of them through my vast tomes of British mushrooms and toadstools but these were not able to help me with an odd fungus I saw in abundance on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

I thought this particular species of fungus quite closely resembled a walnut in shape and colour although I wasn't tempted to eat it.

I thought that it would be easy to track down the name of this fungus online, especially since it was so widespread in Madeira, but it seemed particularly elusive to track down. By looking for "Madeira fungo" on google.pt I managed to find something which appeared very similar to that which I had seen myself whilst on holiday. Locally it is known as "madre-louro" (mother bay) and its Latin name is Laurobasidium Lauri. You won't find it here in the UK, which made this particular encounter very exciting for me!