The trackable is in the form of a pseudo-ticket for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. The steam railway runs for 13.5 miles along the Kent coastline to Dungeness. The locomotives and carriages are 1/3 actual size… so its a bit of a squeeze! We travelled on the railway in June 2010 (in our pre-geocaching days).
Back in 2018, a German geocacher was so impressed by the railway, they purchased the pseudo-ticket (from presumably a gift shop), attached it to a trackable tag and sent it on its way. In reality the gecoacher placed it in a cache near Dungeness Power Station, retrieved it seconds later and took the tag to Germany.
For the next 5 years it visited many caches in a narrow-ish band between Eastern France, Belgium, Germany and Austria. It had brief visits to Finland and America, but primarily stayed in Europe.
Its mission was to return to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway and in late August 2023 the trackable finally arrived back in UK. After a month or two it was placed in one of the Binfield caches, where we picked it up. We will move it closer to Kent in a few weeks. Thank you trackable – you brought happy memories of our visit to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway!
The fourth and final trackable we found on August 11, was Ummi’s First Trackable.
Ummi’s First Trackable
Ummi, the trackable owner, set the trackable free to mark their first geocaching find back in 2009. Ummi has only found 3 other caches since then – so not a prolific cacher.
The trackable is a laminated photocopy of a geocoin. Geocoins tend to be quite heavy, and beautiful to look at – qualities a laminated piece of paper lacks. For this reason beautiful geocoins go missing, so maybe using a copy to travel the world is a good thing.
Travelling the world is Ummi’s First Trackable’s mission.
Travel to minimum 25 different countries.
After that send it to a cache in Germany/Hessen near Frankfurt am Main
The trackable started its journey near Frankfurt Airport and mainly travelled around Germany until October 2010. It was then picked up by a cacher…and the trackable’s journey stopped. The same cacher held onto it for 11 years, before placing into another German cache. Its difficult to say whether it had been ‘lost’ in those 11 years, or the ‘holder’ lost interest in geocaching (they only found 70 caches in 10 years). But after 11 years, the trackable started to move once again. It has now visited Spain (Canary Islands) and France, before arriving the UK.
We can’t promise to move it to a foreign country, but we photographed it on a picture of the Sydney Opera House as an incentive!
As we approached the Uffington White Horse on our walk along the Ridgeway, we found a trackable in one of the caches – Eyes.
Eyes
Eyes is a German Trackable, with the words of Mahatma Gandhi translated into German written on both sides. Here is the text translated back into English :
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’
In essence, this means, taking revenge does not make the world a better place.
This Trackable has travelled between caches since April 2010 and the cache we found it in was even older as it placed in 2002 – an old trackable in a much older container.
Interestingly though, it has not travelled very far – about 16000 miles, mainly in Europe. It has visited Iceland, Ireland, but mainly criss-crossed between Belgium, Holland and Germany.
One of the more interesting caches it visited was a Trackable Hotel in Germany. Most ‘Trackable Hotels’ are perhaps large plastic boxes, but the cache owner for this hotel has made it very special. Here is the cache description translated from the German.
Hotel zum Grünen Frosch GC3vq7q
As of 28.08.2022, the location of our reception has changed. Returning guests are asked to observe the new start coordinates. Currently, best access is via the designated trailhead waypoint. When you are at the reception, please dial the reservation code for FROG on your phone (like for a text message) to get the room key.
Hotel zum Grünen Frosch
Service & facilities
Hotel built in 2012, Number of floors: 2, Total number of rooms: 3, Hotel, City hotel, Business hotel, Motel, Cacher-run hotel, child-friendly hotel, Cycling/biker hotel.
Style and atmosphere of the hotel
The Hotel zum Grünen Frosch has spacious, comfortable rooms without TV, air conditioning, telephone, minibar and internet connection.
Special features of the hotel
Several rooms for coins and trackables and other trading items. Free street parking. Pets allowed, ticks unwanted.
Reception
00:00 – 24:00 Clock (local time)
Reception on weekends
00:00 – 24:00 Clock (local time)
Earliest check-in
00:00 hours
Latest check-out
24:00 hours
Free services for cachers
Parking directly at the hotel, public transport within sight. Luggage storage and travel tags for trading items.
Location of the hotel, surroundings and attractions
The hotel is conveniently located on the outskirts of Ludwigsburg, just 1 km from the Ludwigsburg-Süd exit of the A81. A bus stop is within sight in front of the house. An extensive visit to the baroque city of Ludwigsburg is just as recommended as an excursion to the nearby caches. In the vicinity you will find a green area for walking and a skating facility.
The following picture gives some idea about this wonderful Trackable Hotel.
Why Muk-Kuh? Well, Muh-Kuh was originally a small cow (moo? cow?) until at least 2017 but it now is a small Asian Superman figure – Samurai meets Superman maybe.
The original Muh-Kuh
It has been around since October 2010, and has travelled over 11,000 miles since then. Just one of the fifty trackables owned by Cirque du Freak, from Germany, this one has no stated mission. So what it has done has been to have a jolly good roam around Europe, starting in the Canary Islands, then moving to Italy, Majorca, Spain, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, then Belgium – I may have missed a few countries there! It was picked up by one cacher in May 2023 in Belgium, and was then dropped off in Sussex, England, by someone else … not exactly sure how that worked, but it did. It ended up in the hands of local (to us) cachers EL-JO, who took it round for a bit, then dropped in in a cache near Barbury Castle Iron Age fort on the Ridgeway long distance path. We’ve carried it further on along that path and will no doubt drop it off somewhere on our way to continue its perambulations.
Good luck to Muk-Kuh, whatever creature you are, and have fun travelling!
When is coin not a coin ? When it is a plastic insect !
During our geocaching trip on the Hog’s Back near Guildford we discovered makiHN’s and Nikolausi_1’s Wandermulti Coin. A trackable geocoin which set off on its travels in Germany way back in February 2012. The coin should have looked like this :
But, somewhen after February 2019, the coin became detached from its plastic wallet and lost. However, the coin got replaced by a plastic insect and continued its travels !
Surprisingly for a trackable/geocoin over 11 years old, it hasn’t really travelled that far. Mainly in Europe, extensively in Germany and Poland, but not Italy. Spain, France and Portugal have been visited often, but no visits yet to Scandinavia. The geocoin insect only arrived in the UK 6 months ago and was placed in the cache in which we found it. In those 6 months there had only been 2 other finders (in fairness the cache was well protected by brambles – which acts as a great deterrent).
We will move the insect on soon so that it can explore the UK more widely.
As we completed the series of caches around Riseley we found a trackable in the last cache (placed minutes earlier by the cachers we had met on route, Penwood Plodders).
Trackable : Smiley-Anhänger
This trackable has been on the move since October 2011. Barely 3 months into its caching adventures it went missing and a replacement trackable has been moving from cache to cache since then.
Its initial mission was to visit the East Frisian Islands and then return to the Hanover area of Germany.
The East Frisian Islands are a small chain of 12 islands to the North of Germany. 7 are inhabited with a total population of about 16000.
The trackable reached there in 2017, and arrived in Hanover in 2019. Besides travelling around Germany the trackable has visited the Arctic Circle (well North of Tromso), as well as the Seattle region of America, and several European nations. It has spent most of its time in the UK, mainly in London and Edinburgh. It has travelled to a large number of caches near to us, so we may need to take it some distance away to start a fresh journey.
This happy smiley trackable deserves to bring happiness to lots of cachers!
Some trackables are carefully constructed, others are beautiful to look at.
3_Maxine II is neither.
It is a simple dog tag, with a metal cord and a bottle top.
The bottle top is significant as the owner has requested that tops from gin bottles or gin mixer bottles are added to the metal cord.
The trackable has been travelling since January 2018, and considering the ‘gin’ connection it has travelled to countries with strong ‘beer’ connections !
It started its journey in Belgium, and has visited both Germany and Austria. It has visited France too, and crossed the Atlantic to America (the highlight cache of interest was at the Washington Cemetery close to the White House). It arrived in the UK at the end of 2019, where it was placed in a puzzle cache near to Epsom racecourse where we found it.
The puzzle cache had been found a few times in the last 20 months, but the trackable hadn’t been moved on.
We took it, discovered its history and its mission… to reach the Mendips (ideally Cheddar Gorge) in South West England.
After its 20 months of inactivity, we will take it around a few caches and move it a little closer to its goal (adding a gin mixer top to it as well!)
The last of the three trackables we found on our caching trip around Dorney Lake was the oldest, ‘Medweds Wandercache-Coin’. It has a clearly stated mission, which it has been following for some time:
…” This coin should only visit multicaches in Germany that require a longer hike. The Sweden-Coin 2011 shows the outline of Sweden along with the relief and the three largest cities in the country. On the back, in addition to the Swedish flag, the crown, Dala horse, Viking ship and elk are depicted. The north of Europe is my preferred holiday region, and geocaching can be combined with longer hiking and trekking tours, especially on Swedish hiking trails, so I have chosen this coin to visit hiking caches. “ …
It set out – before we had started geocaching – at the very end of 2011, when it was placed in a cache near Koblenz. Its first cache was a very special and appropriate one, ‘Lahnwanderweg – Das Wandern ist des Cachers Lust’ (‘Lahnwanderweg – hiking is the cacher’s delight’); this is a multicache with approximatately 15 stages spread over 65 kilometres (gulp!) That’s just part of the Lahnwanderweg hiking trail, which runs to almost 300 kilometres in all.
It travelled around Germany for some years, then made a short trip to Bergen, Norway, in August 2019. By the end of 2019 it had reached England, where it has been ever since. Since setting off, it has travelled 29,000 kilometres (18,000 miles). That is a long, long way! We’re not yet sure how we can help the trackable’s mission; we think we will try to place it in a multicache somewhere near one of England’s national trails.
During our visit to Cerne Abbas, in the last cache of the day we found a trackable – this beautiful gecko geocoin.
Sadly the original has been lost, which according to pictures on http://www.geocachimg.com has far brighter imagery.
Its mission is to travel the world and since 2010 when it was released it certainly has done that!
Lots of European countries have been visited : Germany, Belgium, France, Holland, Poland, Austria and Italy. It has also crossed the Atlantic visiting not surprisingly America, but also Bermuda, Haiti, Saint Martin and Columbia. Back in 2018 the geocoin briefly visited London, before returning to the Europe. It returned to UK in June 2019 and visited a few caches on the South Coast, notably HMS Victory in Portsmouth, before being placed in the Cerne Abbas cache in January 2020.
The Church Micro multi had only had a few visits after January prior to the UK lockdown, and even fewer after, so the trackable remained in Cerne Abbas until we retrieved about 8 months after it was placed.
We will move on soon..but can’t guarantee a new country!
The second trackable we found on our trip around Lightwater was a cheeky looking Lego character, Sir Legalot. Even his name made us smile!
Sir Legalot
Like his probable ‘namesake’, Sir Legalot was on a quest.
To reach Legoland in Denmark before two other trackables : R2-LeGo and Leghost.
The quest started way back in May 2005 from San Jose on the far Western Side of America. After visiting a few caches there it arrived in Australia…missing out Denmark completely!
After visiting a few Sydney caches, Sir Legalot was transported into Europe, notably visting the Netherlands and Germany (then more caches in Australia and America before returning to Europe and visiting Legoland in Germany).
Several caches later, Sir Legalot completed his quest and reached Legoland in Denmark. Its not clear whether Sir Legalot won the race, but the journey was completed in 2012 – seven years after the adventure started.
Where to next ? Many European countries were visited, including Austria and Switzerland, but in September 2019 it arrived in the UK for the first time. It was placed in the Lightwater cache where we found it a few weeks later. Lightwater is about 15 miles from Legoland UK in Windsor, so we will endeavour to place it nearer to this location.
Many trackables seem to have a short life before getting lost, but Sir Legalot has travelled the world for over 14 years, and accumulated nearly 80,000 miles. Well done!
sandhurstgeocachers 