Groundbreaking Guidelines

[Jacaru]

Firstly I want to say that this is not a thread attacking our reviewers who do a damned good job of reviewing caches in this country, a job that I wouldn’t want for all the coffee in Costa’s. They are in a difficult position of being damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Neither is it an attack on the GAGB for whom I also have a lot of respect


With all the recent debate going on regarding the disabling of the KT series, especially on Geocaching Midlands (GeM) I thought that it may be prudent to bring to issue to the GAGB forum

For anyone who doesn’t know, the KT series is a trail of over 100 caches along a canal in the North West of England. It is a series that is relatively new and has already gained a fair few favourite points. However, someone decided to report the series to the reviewers as they feel that the caches are buried. I can’t comment on this myself as I have not done the trail, only on what I have read. It appears that tubes are stuck in to the ground and they themselves contain the actual cache. Quite rightly, under the present guidelines one of our reviewers temporarily disabled the caches whilst they investigate

A few days later, again on GeM, another member reported that his cache had been TD’d as that had also been reported to a reviewer for being in the ground, this cache was a solar light with the cache inside it.

]If every cache that was staked in to the ground was reported, there would be a lot of blank spaces throughout the country. I would think that most of you reading this have found at least one cache fixed in to place like this in your caching lifetime

Many cachers have spent good money at geocaching outlets in this country on caches that have to be staked. Fake grass, toadstools, birds etc. etc. Why would these be for sale if they couldn’t be used?

If we want to take things to the extreme regarding the breaking the ground guideline, then surely camping events shouldn’t be allowed to take place!!! Tent pegs, flag poles and banners come to mind.

The GAGB have also come in for a lot of stick over the last few months on various forums and Facebook pages for being out of touch with the UK population of cachers and for not representing their needs.

This would be an ideal opportunity for the GAGB to do something that would get you a lot of support.

]I would ask that you, the committee, negotiate with Groundspeak on behalf of our community to rethink, reword and revise their policy on ground breaking. Obviously no one wants to go out there burying caches, but to stop people staking stuff in to the ground is going to stop a lot of innovative caches being placed.

Thankyou.