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!

Geocaching events abroad!

I've never really considered going to a geocaching event abroad before but when I was looking at my nearby options for caching in Madeira, I noticed a quick half-hour event held by another tourist which was going to be on while I was there so I thought "Why not?" and logged my "Will Attend".

The event in question, Fantasia Event Madeira, was kindly arranged by Danish cacher snabelvasker and during my attendance, there was a mixture of nationalities present including one Dutch and two Portuguese. I believe more locals turned up after I'd gone. What a great idea to hold mini-events when stopping off at ports whilst cruising. Might have to make an attempt to do likewise if ever I go on a cruise.

The photo below shows us total strangers bonding over our common interest of seeking out Tupperware in the woods! I love geocaching!

Funchal Airport

So we've just been away to Madeira for a week.

Madeira is a beautiful Portuguese island west of Morocco and north of the Canary Islands. Its topography is fantastic - so mountainous! Madeira is not a popular destination of choice for people my age (24) as it is lacking in night-life and activities associated with young people. But it seems to be very popular with older holiday makers. I don't think it matters how old you are; you just have to enjoy walking!

The first thing you'll notice about Madeira, if you fly there, is the airport east of the capital, Funchal. As I've said above, the island is almost totally mountainous and so finding enough space for a flat stretch of land even to accommodate a runway has proved tricky! The location selected for the airport is literally on the coast and the runway used to be quite infamous as it was very short indeed (1,600m / 5,249ft). Following a tragic incident 1977 where a plane pretty much ran out of runway and tumbled off the end at speed, hit a bridge, crashed on the beach and burst into flames, the runway was extended by 200m / 660ft. As shown in the photo, the runway is held up on stilts and amazingly there is loads of stuff underneath the runway, including a main road and sports facilities.

We approached the airport from the east and did a sharp turn to line up with the runway without having to come too close to the mountains. Our pilot did an excellent job and touched down with no problems, and certainly didn't run out of runway! Landing at Madeira's airport is not quite the hair-raising experience that it used to be but it is still not a good one for pilots to start on, or for people who fear flying to touch down at!

Around the World in 80 Clicks

Did you just come to my blog to see if I would tell you what to bring with you to my new multi/puzzle cache? Oh, cunning!

Slower reviewing with Waymarking!

In July 2011 (i.e. half a year ago) I thought I would make a Waymark in Abu Dhabi, UAE. You can't normally publish caches abroad unless you go out there regularly, have someone local to perform maintenance or it's a an Earthcache or something, but a Waymark is not a physical container anyway so there's nothing to stop you making them anywhere in the world. This was in the days before Groundspeak conceived of their "Challenges" idea. I personally am not a big fan or follower of these challenges, although I can see the appeal. For me a challenge will always be a challenge cache (where you have to meet a requirement before going and finding a physical cache). I wish Groundspeak would recognise that these aren't puzzles or mysteries though and give them their own icon. Now that Challenge has been usurped I think something like "Quest" would have to come in.

Anyway, back to Waymarking. I'm not a huge fan of this either and I log places that I went to years ago for no real reason other than I get bored sometimes and end up searching for places I've been before. There's not the same sense of satisfaction in Waymarking. Anyway, I wanted to see how many countries I could get Waymarks in and found that one of my favourite destinations ever, the UAE, does not actually have any which I can claim, so I made one of my own with the intention of logging that! Well, why not? It's not quite as lame as logging a find on your own cache (that is something I would never do!) I created a Waymark at the race track where we went to see the Formula 1 and as I say, it's taken half a year for the powers that be to publish it! Amazing!

30 Days & 30 Nights Challenge - Complete!

Well there we go - with over five days to spare I got my 100 caches for my first challenge cache! 64 Traditionals, 20 Multis, 10 Puzzles, 2 Virtuals, 2 Letterbox Hybrids, 1 Earthcache and 1 Event later and I can stop going out and doing dozens of caches at a time. Now just back to the 365 Days challenge... Hehehe.

FTF Geocacher Pathtag

Today I received a pathtag in the post. Here in the UK, they don't seem to be all the rage like they are across the pond. They're mentioned in pretty much every issue of the world's first printed geocaching magazine, FTF Geocacher. I am an avid fan of this Texan publication even though most of the articles have a distinctive American spin on the hobby. I mean when am I going to have to beware of bears when I go caching? Our "cache 'n' dashes" are their "park 'n' grabs" though, which is simple enough to translate (although I think our phrase is catchier!)

I was quite surprised that my article would even be considered for an American-audience magazine when I was writing about my 500th find up a wind farm in rural Wales but to my delight it was there in print in Volume 1 Issue 5. Four issues later and I find that my editorial on self-coined "georienteering" has also been published. Well, orienteering is fantastic and geocachers are likely to enjoy the hobby so I thought I would use this platform to introduce more people to it. I have since submitted two more smaller bits and perhaps they will feature in the next issue? I just can't help myself! I like writing and sharing stuff, hence this blog, so even if no one else cares, I at least feel like I've managed to arrange my thoughts!

As a literal token of his appreciation, FTF Geocacher creator and editor Keith Petrus (ckpetrus) sent me a path tag in the post (sorry, mail) which is now amongst my treasured trackables collection. It's not a trackable, but it looks a bit like a little geocoin so that feels like a logical place to keep it! Thanks ckpetrus! I'm really glad you like my submissions. I shall try to rein in my enthusiasm though and let others get a word in edgeways! LOL

Two legends' graves...

It wasn't until recently that I realised that both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes books, and Victorian nurse, Florence Nightingale are both buried in Hampshire. With regards to the former, I like the little touch that there is a pipe at his grave stone. It's elementary!



Florence Nightingale is buried with her family at a small church, St. Margaret's, west of Romsey. She grew up in the area and requested that she was buried there. There is a virtual cache at the location and the listing describes how she came to be there thus:

"Florence’s relatives declined the offer of burial in Westminster Abbey, as she left directions that her funeral should be of the simplest possible kind, and that her body should be accompanied to the grave by not more than two persons. She is buried beside her father and mother. The body was borne to the grave by six of her "children" of the British Army-sergeants drawn from the several regiments of the Guards. Her desire that only two persons should follow the coffin could not be fulfilled. The funeral arrangements were kept as private as was possible; but there was a wreath of flowers from people of every kind, age and degree, and the lane and churchyard were filled with a great crowd of men, women, and children, most of them poorly dressed." What an inspirational woman!

Industry at night

I don't know how unusual this is, but I love industrial structures. Well, as said below in my Spinnaker entry, I love tall buildings. But this extends to tall structures (e.g. cranes, towers, chimneys, pylons, masts etc.) and large structures (e.g. huge ships, huge bridges, huge mountains even). I can't help but gawp at industrial structures as they are usually large and spectacular, even if a lot of people think they're an eyesore (unsurprisingly I love wind turbines!) I love Port Talbot's steelworks, the cooling towers at Didcot, the oil refinery at Fawley... Well if there's one thing that makes huge industrial structures even more appealing to me, it's seeing them at night. I was so captivated by the sight I got this evening of the cranes at the docks in Southampton that I had to try and get a photo - not easy at night; could have done with a tripod! By the way, that eerie colour of the sky was less apparent in real life, but I think it looks pretty good, actually.

30 Days & 30 Nights Challenge

It's about time I stopped setting challenges and started doing one! Well, admittedly I am working towards my 365 days of caching, but that won't be finished until June (hopefully!) but then last night I was looking at a very popular local challenge, 30 Days & 30 Nights. I was going to put it off, but I figured why not go for it now? January is half empty on the caching calendar so I'm going to have to cache a lot this month anyway. Add to that the fact that I intend to get a lot of unusual cache types soon (Letterboxes and Virtuals), and there aren't many around here I haven't done yet, then I should combine getting them with qualifying for the challenge. I made a start on the challenge after work today, getting a measly 7 out of the required 100, but hey, it's a start...

Spinnaker Tower

Living only a few miles away from Portsmouth, I think it's a bit of a crime that I haven't been up the Spinnaker Tower already, to be honest. I've certainly seen it from enough cache locations over the last few months.

I am a sucker for a skyscraper. Admittedly the Spinnaker Tower is a skyscraper in the very loosest sense of the word, but you don't get any taller in Hampshire. My true skyscraper dreams will become reality when I eventually get to visit New York and Dubai. I've been so close to the latter it almost hurts!

Football-themed cache...

I knew I was looking for a football-themed cache and the only conclusion I came to was that it was designed to look like a football. I was therefore surprised to find your bog-standard Tupperware box in a camo bag. But alas, remove the log book and what should you find but a pitch with two Lego footballers playing!

Treasured Trackables

Now I'm not massively into geocaching trackables. I enjoy finding Travel Bugs and Geocoins in caches and moving them on if possible, and if not, then just discovering them. I have to admit that I haven't found nearly as many trackables in Hampshire caches as in Welsh ones, but I don't really know why. Perhaps I was more likely to be a FTF, STF or TFT in Swansea so I would see trackables trying to get moving quickly.

Anyway, while I like to send off a Travel Bug or two once in a while - with or without a mission - I've learnt that Geocoins are more likely to go missing and so I only tend to buy coins that I want to keep hold of now. I'm not a Geocoin hoarder, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have twelve coins (well, two are tags) which I will not be parting company with. Cachers are more than welcome to discover them, however. Below is my rather pitiful collection!



1. 100 Cache Finds: to commemorate a wonderful cache I did in the United Arab Emirates at the heart of a maze in the city. It was called Amazin' Abu Dhabi.

2. 250 Cache Finds: not a particularly exciting cache itself, but I remember that I found it during my first ever geocaching event, Mollyjak Gets Her Bus Pass!

3. 500 Cache Finds: I will never forget the cache this commemorates - Wind Farm Wilderness with cheesescones and cloudspotter.

4. 1000 Cache Finds: To commemorate the 2011 Mega Event in my old home of Swansea. Fantastic in every way.

5. South Wales Geocachers Geocoin: I thought this coin was beautiful the moment I set eyes on it. I was a bit late in getting hold of one, but thankfully Matrix managed to get hold of one for me. Superb - not letting this one go, although I've seen one out on an adventure.

6. Mega Wales 2011 Geocoin: Pretty self-explanatory. Thanks to Daidragon for this one.

7. Dai Dragon's Marvin Geocoin: Again, thanks Daidragon. A stunning coin - very weighty! - with a photo of his gorgeous owl, Marvin, on the back. I've sent another version of this coin out on its travels.

8. X-Files Geocoin: Found a coin of this design in a cache down the Gower. As an X-Phile myself, I really wanted this coin! The reverse design is based on the famous "I Want To Believe" poster of Mulder's. I asked the owner where they got their coin and was directed to a German website from which I got my own copy.

9. Jeremy tag: Not letting this one go! Geocaching.com founder Jeremy Irish gave me his personal tag at Mega Wales 2011.

10. Raine tag: In conjunction with the Jeremy tag, this was given to me by Raine, another Groundspeak Lackey.

11. iPhone Geocoin: Discovered a coin like this at Mushroom Mike's Caching Foray and loved the design. Waited until I found a cheapish one on eBay and snatched one up for myself. I love the fact that instead of Apps, there are cache types! I use an iPhone for geocaching on occasion so it's particularly App.ropriate :P

12. BadgeGen Geocoin: To say that I am interested in my geocaching stats is an understatement. I regularly go back to BadgeGen to see how well I'm doing and which badge to focus on next. When I found they sold their own Geocoin (with free global postage!) I ordered one in from Canada immediately!

FTF Trophy!

Thought I would be particularly generous this time round and leave an engraved metal FTF trophy in the Half-Jasmer cache for the first finder. I am just hoping that this one doesn't go and get muggled straight away like my Cache of the Day underwater one. Absolutely gutting, especially the time and money I spent on it. I also hope there's no reason why it can't get published. I'll be off at the crack of dawn tomorrow to hide it, anyway, so all should go well!

Half-Jasmer ammo can contents

Just received permission from the Woodland Trust to place my cache in their land! Now this is where I can start getting excited - I've found a suitable (I hope) spot for my huge ammo can, and today I got myself several "stocking fillers" for the finders, to lure them into taking on the challenge. Just need to get myself a big Geocaching sticker and perhaps a trophy for FTF, then I can sneak out at the crack of dawn and place it!

Half-Jasmer ready to go!

Yesterday I made the mad decision to go caching fifty miles away (as the crow flies, so actually further). Why? One cache. The First King of England, Bath is my nearest cache to home which was placed in December 2002. A gaping hole in my Jasmer table, December 2002 needed colouring in. Now all that remains is all of 2000 and most of 2001. Technically this is all still possible to colour in, but most of these are not in this country let alone near Hampshire. But the reason why I wanted to do my Jasmer all the way back to January 2002 is because I have grand plans to make a challenge cache using a very large ammo can as the reward and I thought I ought not to be a hypocrite.

To be totally honest, it's been great fun doing my Jasmer - it's taken me to some fascinating places and most of the caches have been very good ones (hence why they have survived so long).

My plan is for cachers who want to claim this "Half-Jasmer Challenge" to find at least one cache from every month from January 2002 to December 2006 inclusive (60 months). It's a tough challenge, but I have found examples of caches from every required month in and around Hampshire for my challengers to go after, should they need inspiration.

Here's a map showing such examples of possible cache locations:

So the only thing standing in my way now is finding somewhere to actually put this cache!

Blue belt!

Well it has taken a while but I've at long last earned my BadgeGen blue belt in Geocaching! If GSAK is a geocacher's stat heaven, then BadgeGen is their raison d'etre. It's just a very colourful checklist and every new badge earned feels like a little victory to simple people like myself! Here is our checklist/trophy room.

So with the publication of my 20th cache hide, I have now met the requirements for the blue belt in geocaching: 1000+ finds, 20+ hides, 3+ events attended.

These belts grade in the same way karate/judo belts do (white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, red, brown, black) minus the purple and red. To go up another level and get my brown belt, I will first of all need to find 2000 caches, so perhaps I won't be earning this for a few months yet!

Growing fungi

Thank you Lil and Fay - my fungi are growing in number and look excellent by my bed. :D

Seven snails sleeping

I think most geocachers have come across a cache with a snail asleep on it, but imagine my surprise when I found a film canister with seven snoozing peacefully. Well technically there were only four on the cache, and the other three were on top of those four!

The quintessential toadstool

I remember when I thought that toadstools that were bright red with white spots were just fabrication invented for children's illustrations and cartoons. Then I discovered the highly toxic fly agaric. I seem to see it all the time now (well, it's very conspicuous!) but it's amazing just how many different types of fungi we walk past all the time, even if we don't go traipsing through strange woodlands on a regular basis.

Stonehenge / Woodhenge

I decided to pay a visit to the internationally famous Stonehenge in Wiltshire today and get a virtual cache there while I was at it. Now loads of people have heard of Stonehenge, but how much do you know about Woodhenge? If you're like me, the answer will be "very little"! There was a virtual cache there too though so I decided to learn about that site as well. Obviously the wood has had years to rot away (4000 approximately - some of it even pre-dates Stonehenge) but the site has been rebuilt with concrete posts instead. It's not quite as jaw-dropping as Stonehenge, but it's still worth a visit.

The cache listing for Woodhenge tells us a little about the history of this place: "Unlike Stonehenge, there was no central [altar] stone although this particular circle had a much more macabre centrepiece. One and a half metres from the actual centre, the skeleton of a child of about three years of age was exhumed from the chalk, its skull cleaved open in what was almost [certainly] a predetermined act. This, according to experts, is one of the very few pieces of evidence of human sacrifice in prehistoric Britain."

To make the visit more atmospheric, I saw both Stonehenge and Woodhenge in quite thick fog.