The aftermath & the wallet

Thursday morning arrived and I knew the 14 mile walk was not an option. So as a slight compromise I went and spent some money!

I dearly love my first GPS; a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx which I've had since I started Geocaching in May. It's rugged, it's scratched, it's reliable, it's dirty, it's waterproof and above all it's my first! It's been regularly updated with the free online maps (via talkytoaster) and it's genuinely been worth it's small weight in gold but as I've progressed in caching I've come to need more; when I've been out solo it's been a logistical nightmare carrying maps I've printed out especially for the day, any additonal route notes or puzzles and even lists of the caches I'm doing so I can take notes to remind me of each cache to aid me in doing my online logs.

I've been looking, on and off, for a few months now but last Sunday (the paperwork!) and a nicely timed Christmas bonus made me look again. Patrick has a Garmin Oregon 450 and this was the exact model I'd been looking at for a while. Questions and answers went back and forth about likes/dislikes, value for money and the professional maps vs the free maps. In the end I decided to double-treat myself and got one with the entire GB Ordnance Survey loaded, which practically doubles the cost.

I justified this to myself by thinking of my adventure doing the Yorkshire Dales Way. I won't need to carry ~£60 worth of non-waterproof folded maps saving weight and hassle.

Well that's my excuse anyway.

Home, a quick unbox and play, and then out for a small walk to stretch my legs (seizing up from the day before) and also to test my new GPS.

I did a quick two miles and 'discovered' Hannah's nearby series. I'd helped her place all these a couple of months ago (see blog) but it seemed reasonable now to re-do the walk, check they were all OK, sign them and then log them as finds.

The new GPS is really good; the compass and speed of updates is much better than the old one, but there are a few features I miss. They're there, but hidden away, so I suppose it's just a case of getting used to the new one. However the biggest bonus is the paperless caching - you can type notes in it as you wander, you can view the webpages, logs and hints on-the-go and all without needing a phone signal. My iPhone can stay tucked in my safe and dry pocket instead of being dragged out everytime I get really really stuck on a cache and need to consult the hint or old logs for clues.

But I do still love my old one and feel sorry for it. I have tech-sentimentality.

Wildlife

On Sunday, once the rain had abated, we popped out to plant Hannah's new series. We'd done an exploratory walk a couple of weeks previously and had made approximate location plans for each cache so that they wouldn't fall foul of each other regarding the 0.1 mile apart rule and also wouldn't infringe on my 'reserved' spot for another mystery cache. (It's not really reserved but Hannah was kind enough to let me keep it as I'd planned it a month before. More news on this cache in a couple of weeks hopefully.)

We wandered around a very sodden landscape looking carefully for the best locations and taking multiple averaged GPS readings which we then manually averaged in order to be able to publish the best coordinates possible.

The fifth cache is a clever, yet easy little puzzle using wildlife carvings on posts alongside the River Rother between Catcliffe and Treeton and adds some interest to a part of the walk where you have to backtrack on yourself.

We published them at 8pm last night, they were live by 9pm, and there's already been two finds of each cache today by midday!

I'm very proud of her and in one fell swoop she's equalled my total number of cache ownerships!

(Series Final cache is here: Geocaching - Wildlife Final)