The GAGB is delighted to announce permission to place geocaches in the New Forest. After negotiations just short of a full year, the New Forest Forestry Commission has agreed an annual permission which will allow up to 100 physical caches within the New Forest boundaries.

A number of common sense rules must be applied to any cache placed in the New Forest. In general, these rules are the usual GAGB guidelines and New Forest by-laws. In addition, caches must be Tupperware and a maximum of 3L in size.

In addition, the cache placer must accept the terms of the agreement and each cache page must link to the full agreement on the GAGB website with a statement of the nature:
“This cache is located within the New Forest. The rules specified here https://www.gagb.org.uk/agreement_view.php?p=1 must be applied by any cacher hunting this cache and by hunting this cache you have accepted these conditions. These rules have been applied in the placement of this cache and the cache owner remains responsible for the cache as specified”.

This permission was achieved after working through a number of difficult issues, some related to the particularly sensitive nature of the New Forest area, and some which required the development of mutual understanding. We are pleased to say that this process yielded not only the permission but a good mutual understanding and trust.

The terms of the Agreement have taken considerable work by all parties and we recognise that they may not be to everyone’s liking. However, these were the best solution to the issues raised and must be applied if you wish to go caching in the New Forest. It is essential that these rules are applied to ensure annual renewal of the permission and we request the cooperation of all cachers to achieve this.


In order to celebrate the New Forest permission, GAGB has placed the first cache in the New Forest with formal permission. This will go live shortly.


Through the efforts of Teasel, GAGB now has an Agreements Database which will be used to record agreements and which also tracks the numbers of caches within specified boundaries. This can be found here https://www.gagb.org.uk/land-agreements.php Well done, Ian, cool programming!


Thanks to the entire committee, Lactodorum and Eckington for discussions which developed the ideas in this agreement and in particular to Sarah Tate for supporting face to face meetings.