Sharing a cup of tea trying to get to Canada – not the snappiest title but very descriptive on the mission for this trackable:
Sharing a cup of tea trying to get to Canada
… “As I have a friend going to Thailand for a caching trip, she offered to take any trackables that were looking to go that way. This is one of mine that I made to send with her. It would love to tour Thailand and area collecting lots of pictures along the way before eventually trying to get back to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to me by the end of 2023. ”…
The story so far: setting off from Canada in October 2022, the trackable was duly taken to Asia, visiting Singapore and Indonesia, before being dropped off in January 2023 in a cache close to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There it sat for some months, being discovered several times, but not picked up. Finally, in November 2023, the trackable was picked up by TAROTHRUM, a geocacher from Singapore. After another gap of two months, the trackable emerged in Weybridge, England, where we found it. (I looked at TAROTHRUM‘s geocaching activity to see where they might have taken the trackable, but with few conclusions: he/she/they have only found about 200 caches in 10 years, but dotted all over the world – Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Portugal, Greece, and Indonesia. I wonder if they are a pilot, or cabin crew, to fit in all that globetrotting?)
The trackable is now well on its way back to Canada, even if it is a little late for its target arrival date of the end of 2023. We’ll move it on soon, when we find a cache where it will fit!
During our caching trip around Weybridge, we found two trackables. Finding one trackable is quite rare, finding two very rare indeed. Also, trackables tend to be found in rural caches, rather than the urban ones in Weybridge.
Community Volunteer Trackable Tag
The first trackable was a Community Volunteer Tag. We have found at least one of these tags before – we believe they are given to noteworthy cachers on an ad hoc basis. This tag started in Poland in March 2022 and in less than 2 years has had a varied journey.
Not surprisingly its first few caches were in Poland/Germany/central Europe. It quickly arrived in the UK. Here it was taken to some iconic London landmarks, including Big Ben and Kew Gardens. It travelled to Australia (via the Philippines) and has been pictured outside the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Cricket Ground!
Returning to Europe, it toured France, Italy and Portugal, before another trip to Australia, before returning to the UK, and was placed in the Weybridge cache on Christmas Day 2023.
A well travelled trackable – good luck on your future adventures!
Like my owner, I love travelling and drinking Gin Tonics. My mission is to see nice hotels/hostels and bars and even planes and airports! ‘Nice’ doesn’t have to be ‘expensive’,of course. Any hotel, hostel, bar or plane you like and which has an interesting touch or view is well worth it. If possible, and the barkeeper allows it, take a picture with me at a bar with a bottle of Gin. Preferably with Hendrick’s or Bombay Sapphire, but that’s just my owners personal preference… Please handle me with care and take me to places around the world. My sleeping bag is my ziploc bag and I like to stay in there when staying in a cache. I know that I’m really cute; I was given to my owner as a present from his beautiful girlfriend at Easter 2010 at the Ramada Resort in Cochin/India. That is actually quite a nice hotel…
Having written its mission statement (above) the rabbit set off from Zurich Airport in May 2010, for a short trip to Gibraltar. It then toured Germany until July 2012, before another holiday in the Canary Islands. By March 2013, and it’s not clear how it happened, the rabbit ended up on the coastal path in North Wales. The next geocacher who picked it up mislaid it and it resurfaced in June 2022 (!) after a house move. It was dropped off in a cache series just south of London, where it spent the winter in a little-visited cache, before moving on to West Horsley, in Surrey, where we picked in up in December 2023.
We wondered how the rabbit had stayed so clean and neat, when it had been out travelling for 14 years, and why it had only moved 11,000 miles in that time (many trackables of a similar age would have clocked up 50,000 miles in that time). There are several reasons, we think:
The ZipLock ‘sleeping bag’ keeps it nice and dry
For 9 of those 14 years, it wasn’t moving, it was mislaid.
It’s a fairly big trackable, so it’s harder to place in a cache, meaning it spends less time actually in caches, and more time tucked in a cacher’s house/bag/car waiting for the next adventure.
Anyway, the rabbit is well and happy and will move on to more gin-related adventures … when we can find a cache big enough!
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!
This trackable set off from a spot near Loch Fyne in Scotland, in November 2019.
Its mission: I would like to return to where I was born – East Ham, London. (presumably that refers to the owner, Beachcomber75, not the trackable!)
There was near disaster after only 3 months when a log entry read … “Hi accidentally dropped this when caching” … but the next log, a month later, said …” Found it in my car will drop off soon” … After 6 months in a remote cache, it moved south to Glasgow, and by the end of 2020 it had reached southern Scotland. By mid-2022 it was still going hither and thither around Scotland, not especially heading for London, and there was then a brief trip to Stockholm. On its return, it was placed in a Travel Bug Hotel (FYI: a larger geocache intended to allow the easy swapping of trackables/travel bugs) near Edinburgh Airport and within a few days it had travelled to Auckland, New Zealand. Hmm, this ‘go to London’ thing isn’t working so well! Luckily, it was back in Scotland quite soon, and by the end of 2022 it had been dropped in Sussex (phew, England, getting closer to London now). It spent the summer of 2023 touring the south coast of England, and finally, in October 2023, was dropped off in Berkshire (the end nearer London), where we found it. The trackable is now as close to London as it has (probably) ever been, so we will devise a way of moving it closer still.
We found the Merit Badge trackable in England’s oldest geocache, View from Coombe Hill, while walking the Ridgeway Long Distance Path.
The Merit Badge trackable set off from a geocaching event run by the owners, THEINCREDIBLE4, near Denver, Colorado, in spring 2016. The mission for the trackable was:
… “THIS TB HAS ONE GOAL …. TO GET BACK TO DENVER COLORADO When we travel as a family we drop TB’s as we go with one goal, and that is to return home. Our kids want to see their TB’s again and then make new ones for the next trip we take. Thank you and happy Caching. TheIncredible4 “ …
The trackable has now notched up 28000 miles, mostly not very close to home … Up until July 2016 it travelled around the western USA – California, Nevada, Salt Lake City. After a 2-year pause it was back in Denver for Christmas 2018. After being dropped off at a New Year 2019 caching event, it went to Hawaii in February 2019, then back to Barcelona a few weeks later – 8,500 miles travelled in 10 days!.
The travels of a geocaching trackable!
Things went quiet again for almost 3 years through the pandemic, then the trackable was on the move again, this time to London for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2022. After a quick tour of the city, with lots of trackable selfies, it was off to Finland in August 2022. Apart from a short holiday in Nepal and Vietnam (another 8,000 miles added there), it stayed in Finland till August 2023, then travelled to Copenhagen on its way to England. It arrived there in September 2023, was picked up by explorer_olway (who walked the Ridgeway just ahead of us) and who dropped off the trackable there for us to find. Well travelled!
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!
… “ This is Frosty The Snowman – he was given to me as a Christmas Present in Dec 2022. I would like to see how far he can travel around the world, but to start with as I love skiing lets see how many ski resorts he can visit (it doesn’t matter if he visits in summer or winter). Can he reach Zell Am See, Igls, Hinterglem or St Johann in Austria, or can he get to ski resports in Italy, Germany or Andorra….Maybe he can find his way further afield to Breckenridge in Colorado?? These are all places I have had the pleasure of skiing in over the last 18 years. I would love to see photos of its travels. “ …
That’s a comprehensive mission statement from the cache owner, LR1976. It’s nearly a year since Frosty was released, two days after Christmas 2022. In the meantime, he has travelled about 500 miles, but only in Southern England, and has probably got no closer to a ski resort then the (now demolished) artificial ski run in Bracknell. He has been up and down a few hills, many of them along the Ridgeway, where we found him, but not one was snow covered.
Editor’s note: we think we need to find a way to move Frosty closer to his goal!
On our geocaching trip in St Ives we found a trackable, Travel Heart.
We are one of the first people to have seen, or moved, the trackable.
It was placed in a cache in Copenhagen in November 2022. Its mission ? To travel the 42km to Malmo ! The shortest distance is across the Oresund Bridge, but of course being a trackable it is taking the long way round! It was picked up from the Copenhagen cache in January 2023. And then the cacher didn’t find another cache for 6 months. The next cache they found was the St Ives cache, which we found a day after them!
So we took the trackable, decided that the Western Edge of Cornwall is not the right direction for Malmo and will take it with us on our walk along the Ridgeway (on the North East outskirts of London).
We were in Cornwall on a guided walking holiday. We had visited many of the bays, coves and villages that Cornwall is famous for, but not done any geocaching. We have tried over the years to geocache on a guided walk, but it is near-impossible – so we now don’t try.
Our base for the week was St Ives, and on the ‘rest day’ from guided walking we set about finding some of the caches in St Ives.
We had 3 church micros (all multis), another multi based on the lifeboat station, a virtual cache where we had to email some answers to a couple of questions, a 5 stage adventure lab, an earthcache and two standard caches. We were in for quite a day!
Most of the caches were attempting were close to the seafront and we decided to start at the Eastern end (closer to our hotel) and head West. As it turned out, this was a big mistake as all but one of the muti-caches sent us in an Eastward direction retracing our steps. St Ives has many bays and beaches with the town centre about 20-30 feet higher. We descended from the hotel via some steep pavements, and some granite steps (which we would see a lot of later) and walked Eastwards to our first cache. At the far end of the town beach, the promenade zigzags up and away from the town. Having descended a lot of height from the hotel, we were disappointed we had to climb so quickly afterwards.
First cache of the day
The cache, one of only two standard caches we were to find all day, was tucked in a bush in the tight bend of a zigzag. A fairly easy find, and as we signed the log on a nearby seat – a robin came and checked what we were doing. The cache was big enough to leave the trackable Muh-Kuh. Good luck on your future journey.
We walked back down the zigzag path, and arrived the beach promenade. We had only been about 15 minutes at the cache site, and in those 15 minutes the beach had ‘woken up’ . There was more hustle and bustle about the beachside emporia, the smell of all-day breakfasts permeated the air. Children were running to the beach.
St Ives Station brings ¾ million people a year to the town and the station was the first part of the adventure lab. All we had to do was find when the station was opened (and it was over 150 years ago!). Part 1 of the ad lab complete we returned to the set of granite steps we walked down earlier.
Can you see the sparkly granite ?
These steps link the beach to the main town centre, and were quite busy. An earthcache had been set based on the granite in the steps and surrounding walls. We had to measure granite stones, compare granularity, and explain any differences in granularity all while families were struggling down the steps with buckets, spades and other beach paraphernalia.
How many clock faces ?
We walked on to the first of the Church Micro Multis. Like many such caches we had to count objects, write down dates to derive coordinates. One of the more interesting questions was ‘how many faces does the church clock have’. Is the answer four (a face on each side) or one ? Or neither!
We sat in a small garden of remembrance, calculated coordinates and realised we had to head East… back to the Granite Steps. We were looking for a magnetic cache. At GZ there was only one metal object – a rather smelly drippy drainpipe. We both shoved our hands up, in, and around the drainpipe to no avail. Remember this was next to the Granite Steps, where people are busily going up and down.
Then we remembered – geocaching coordinates are great in 2 dimensions, but NOT in 3. If we climbed the steps our coordinates would still be same, just higher. Here indeed there were more metallic objects, and after a few minutes the cache was found. It took us a lot longer to remove the rancid drainpipe smell from our hands.
Dotted along the seafront, are various plaques giving details of various tragedies at sea. On a hot benign day in June, it is hard to imagine – but on a wild winter’s night the sea needs a lot more respect.
St Ives Lifeboat Station – the start point for 3 geocaches!
This was evident at the Lifeboat station – where various plaques told us of previous rescues. It was here, that three geocaches collided. We had another ad lab question, a virtual cache question to answer, and some numbers to collect for another multi. It was possible to stand in one position and find all the answers. Having completed the virtual and ad lab, we calculated the coordinates for the multi. Back in the Easterly direction – far beyond the Granite Steps we had already spent too much time at. We decided to park this cache, until the end of the day, when we were heading back to the hotel.
We were entering the tourist/working quarter of St Ives bay. Holidaymakers were out in force, buying coffees, ice creams. There was a constant throb of diesel engines in the bay. We were grateful we didn’t have a physical cache in this stretch, as it was very busy. It was also very busy outside the Sloop Inn where we answered another ad lab question. The Sloop Inn has a webcam, which rotates between the lifeboat station, its own serving tables, the pavement, the sea front and the town quay (Smeaton’s Quay)
St Leonards Church
Our next ad lab question was at St Leonards Chapel, at the entrance to Smeaton’s Quay. St Leonards is also known as the fisherman’s church. The ad lab question was quickly answered, as was collecting some numbers for our second church micro. Unusually for us, the final was in a westward direction so at least we didn’t have to backtrack along the busy seafront. We did though walk the length of Smeaton’s Quay, as there was a small, standard cache hidden at the far end. This took us a but too long to find, as the coordinates were a little off, and the hint didn’t provide an obvious clue. The end of the quay was quite busy, so we ambled around, casually looking at potential hosts, as well as admiring the boats in the bay. Eventually we stumbled across the host and discovered the cache wasn’t even hidden – just lying in broad daylight. We decided to replace as per the hint.
We headed West, passing through a maze of old-town houses and cottages. This is where St Ives fishermen lived many years ago (and may do so now).
It is also the artists quarter, and many of the small shops were selling paintings, pottery and the like. St Ives had an artist’s movement in the first part of the 20th Century and today boasts the Tate St Ives gallery. On our walk around town we saw a Barbara Hepworth statue, and artists of tomorrow learning their craft.
After traversing the old town we arrived at a small cove. Above the cove, hidden in the rocks was the St Leonards Church cache. A surprisingly tricky find. We sat on the rocks and had lunch watching swimmers, and snorkellers in the bay below.
Two more of St Ives’ bays
Rising beyond the bay is a small hill. Atop the hill is yet another church – and of course its associate Church micro cache. On the way there, we found our last ‘standard cache’ of the day, well hidden on a slightly-too-steep-a-slope for comfort. One slip of the wet grass… and it needed good shoes to prevent some sliding towards the sea. It was here, as were checking our best means of approach to this cache, we saw one of our walking leaders of the week, we had a chat… and then continued our search. Well hidden, and our reward was a heart-shaped trackable.
The last Church of the Day, high on a hill
Our searching of the last church micro cache was hampered as a couple were ‘canoodling’ right next to where we wanted to search. We found a seat, had a quick coffee, and waited.. The couple had moved on, and we found the cache quite easily. (It would have been more appropriate if the had found the heart trackable in this cache of course!).
So our westward journey was complete, all we had to do was wander back along the seafront, through the throng of tourists, passing the granite steps, heading almost back to where we found our first cache of the day, to locate the ‘Lifeboat multi’ we had parked from earlier. Hidden in a bush, behind a seat, it didn’t take too much rummaging to find.
An interesting fact… but why did they do it ?
So a great day’s caching several multis, an earth cache, a virtual, some standard caches and a 5 stage ad lab. And given the number of times we passed the Granite Steps… we know that like the back of our hand!
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