Having recently read that there are 21000 letterboxes in the Dartmoor National Park, I wondered what would happen if we attempted to flood a similar area with 20000+ geocaches.

I think that we'd have all sorts of issues with landowner permission, not to mention cache saturation complaints.

I mean letterboxers no harm and I'm not trying to stir things, I'm just wondering how come we ended up in this position, where letterboxers seem to have such freedom but we're subject to a great deal of red tape. Urban letterboxing is similar; you prepare your letterbox, place it and post it on the web site. Essentially, letterboxing is virtually the same as geocaching; the couple I've found have been ammo boxes containing log books (and stamps).

So where did we go wrong? Was it in attempting to "do the right thing", thus putting landowners on the spot and forcing them to make formal permission the norm? Is it that we have attracted too much publicity in the media? Is it because we're seen as a "high-tech treasure hunt", using the Internet; which always seems to attract suspicion? Perhaps it's because listing sites are too public whereas letterbox numbers and locations are hidden?

Is it now too late to change policy and learn from the success of letterboxing? Discuss.