Half a century of geocaching

I noticed that I have now passed the half century milestone and found over 50 geocaches since I started back in June last year.  For those not familiar with the concept of Geocaching - Wikipedia describes it as "an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world." Astonishingly there are some 1,689,466 geocaches worldwide according to the activity's home - www.geocaching.com

As with so many things, once you start you discover all sorts of benefits that you never imagined before.  Seeking to locate the caches is providing a wonderful incentive to get out and go for walks in the area and I'm discovering lots of parts of Winchester and surrounding countryside that I'd never explored before.  Looking to see if there are any caches nearby can also lead you to some surprising discoveries - such as the cache at the site of the old quarry at Leigh Delamare (East bound) services that I was introduced to the other week.

I recently paid the modest fee to become  "premium member" and hence access to lots of lovely statistics.

Here are my figures for the number of finds each month....

I've not found any really hard caches yet (though I have to say I've struggled to locate some of the ones I have found).

Most have been close to home but I've found a few further afield....

 ... and this accounts for the further afield ones....



My target for 2012 is to locate all of the caches within 5 miles of my house - as of today there are a total of 161 with 126 still to find.   Given the recent flurry of new ones that have been created in this area however it may prove a bit of a moving target so we shall have to see how we do but I'm looking forward to continuing to explore new parts of the lovely countryside round Winchester in the process.

"Let's do it"

Yesterday evening Carol and I paid our first visit to The Anvil in Basingstoke.  We were there to see Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag's show "Let's Do it".

It was a great evening of music, song and dance.  Elegant and impressive dances from Anton & Erin and their supporting dancers were interspersed with music from the orchestra and songs from Lance Ellington (one of the singers from Strictly).  As well as their intrinsic entertainment value these gaps provided the time for Erin to change her way through a bewildering array of dresses.

During the second half there was a Question and Answer session - the audience having been invited to write questions down and post them into a box in the Foyer during the interval.   In response to the selected questions we got toning advice from the 2011 "Rear of the Year", insights into favourite dances and dancers, a discussion on shoes, and some reflections on Riverdance.  All delivered in an engaging and fun way.