Hi from the Herts/Essex borders and Suffolk

[StripyJules]

Hello all...

I'm a newcomer to caching with my first find in January this year and I quickly became hooked. I live in Hertfordshire with my dog but spend a lot of time up in Suffolk with my partner, caching from there.

It's very much "cache-on-a-budget" for me so I'm using an app on my Android phone rather than a dedicated GPSr; it's not the most accurate instrument and I've had my fair share of frustrating fossickings but on the whole I manage to enjoy myself :) .

Caching has already introduced me to footpaths and byways close to home I never knew were there (or had driven past and vaguely wondered how to get to) and encouraged me to get more adventurous in my trips out (I famously have no sense of direction, so having an arrow to follow is a major boon).

There's also been great fun enjoying the ingenuity of some caches we've seen and solved (still two Bassetts to do!). On the minus side, an amount of nettle stings and one cache involving an electric fence that still rankles even though we solved it, and flipping IVY (grrrr); but one lives and learns.

Am now looking forward to a summer (if we get one) of caching trips...

[*geocass*]

Hi StripyJules and Welcome! :)

We are from Essex too. We often venture into Suffolk as well. We used to walk the same footpaths near home every weekend and got very bored of it. We're so glad that we found Geocaching as it gets us out and about and we can go for walks knowing that we can just keep going from cache to cache in a circle until we end up back at the car! We still need to venture further afield and get the famous Bassetts caches that we've heard so much about.

Have you see then Essex Cachers Facebook group? http://www.facebook.com/groups/250536577309/ There are cachers from Essex, Herts, and Suffolk on there and there are daily discussions so it's a very active group.

Happy caching, maybe we'll bump into you one day whilst out on the trail!

Cass

[Bear and Ragged]

Welcome!

You soon learn what VIL in an encrypted hint means, without having to decrypt it. :lol:

[StripyJules]

Thanks for the heads-up on the Facebook group! I'll look into that.

Self and partner have hit some kind of caching "Wall" I think. Five DNFs in a row, four in one day and for me that's after four DNFs in one day the previous weekend.

Some of these are difficulty one! It's not like we're doing hard ones to deliberately wind ourselves up.

It's all going a bit pear shaped; suddenly we just can't find any! I know phone apps aren't the most accurate instruments but we haven't had such a blank spell before.

Worried! :blink:

[Bill D (wwh)]

It's all going a bit pear shaped; suddenly we just can't find any! I know phone apps aren't the most accurate instruments but we haven't had such a blank spell before.

Worried! :blink:

Never assume that the cache placer's co-ords are spot on - they might have been using a phone app too! :p

[StripyJules]

Oh, we're quite prepared to search an area around the published GZs, and are learning what the limitations of the phone app are, accuracy wise... But lately we've been having all sorts of other issues. Maybe with experience you overcome these but at the moment it's tough.

You know how they say "Think where YOU would hide a cache"? Well some of the caches we've found (and probably also some we still haven't) we would never have put where they were (and probably are); we simply wouldn't have the nerve, and/or would have more common sense... And we're having issues with ambiguous clues, too, and me personally (I have some mobility issues) with cache description pages not telling the whole story, which has a couple of times meant that I've made it to the GZ but not been physically able to retrieve the cache and sign the log, though I've found the thing.

Up until the last ten days or so we've been really enjoying the caching experience but lately we've really got discouraged :( . Our DNF from yesterday was repeated tonight too!

[Bear and Ragged]

Some of the best log are for DNF's!

I was once composing a DNF log in my head, while still at the cache site, with lots of reasons as to why I couldn't find the cache... When I saw it. :eek:

Had to settle for a rather boring Found It log!

:lol: