A week of sun in Turkey

After a long winter in Sweden (OK so I spent more than a month of it in New Zealand) it felt as though some sun was in order.

A quick look through what was on offer and Turkey became the country of choice. I have been in Istanbul a couple of times on business, but this was for sun and Alanya was what was on offer.
For what ever reason known best to the charter company we arrived at the hotel at 3am so breakfast was a little later than usual. As I was with my partner, shopping for presents for the grandchildren was number one item on the agenda.

Luckily there was a cache in town that was easily found. Alanya – Lights in Mehmet Sükrü Ulusoy CaddesiIt was at a restaurant. The cache owners were Danes but the cache was maintained by a guy at the restaurant who pointed out where the cache was as soon as he saw my GPS. It’s the first cache that I have found in a cardboard shoebox! The guardians of the cache were a couple of tame baby rabbits and a pair of Nike trainers.

One thing that struck us was the huge number of what looked like petrol drums on the roofs of just about every building.

Water heaters and chimney

There is an abundance of sun here and it is used to provide hot/warm water for the apartments. The “little house” on the top of the buidling was clearly the chimney but I don’t know if it was for a fireplace in the apartment or just ventilation.

The day after we decided to walk up to the castle at the top of the peninsular that divides the two main beaches. It’s only 240 meters high and the 3.5 km walk was a pleasant one, partly on the road but also on small steep paths. After an intial failure at the first cache Suleymaniye ve Ehmedek we went into the Culture House just a few meters away then came out and looked for the cache again. This time it was quickly found so we continued on up to the castle. Wow! Fantastic views from the top of course. What was most impressive was the little spit of land that stuck out and had housed a monastery or some similar kind of building some hundreds of years ago.

Kleopatra Beach from the castle at Alanya

Peninsular at Alanya

Peninsular at Alanya

We attempted to find Darphane but gave up after 30 minutes of searching. The views were worth the little detour though.

Monastery ruins on peninsular

We took the road down to the harbour and stopped for a well earned beer at the micro brewery at Red Tower as it was nearly 30C in the shade and of course there was none. Refreshed, we walked over to the old Red Tower where the guardian of that cache let us pass so that we could find Kizil Kule. I found out later that tortoises are a common sight in the wild as they thrive in the climate.

Wild tortoise

Although there were no caches to be found that day we took a trip into the Taurus Mountains. They are rugged and full of small villages. I won’t go into all the tourist details but I could understand the pace of life.

Life in the countryside fast lane

A couple of days later we found two more caches close by. They were Damlatas Magarisi – an earthcache and Vega Star Holiday.

Damlatas Magarisi is a small “drop stone” cave found by the locals by accident when they were blasting for a new quarry. Once the cave was found it was bricked up for some years until an enterprising guy realised that he could make some money by exploiting it’s “medically proved” healing powers. Apparently, it was the base upon which Alanya’s tourist industry was formed. The cave was interesting and warranted a visit for the 4.50 Turkish lire (15 SEK/2 EUR) that the entry ticket cost.

Main chamger of Damlatas Magarisi

Stalagtites & stalagmites in Damlatas Magarisi

It was good be able to tick off geocaching country number twenty nine and the tenth country in which I have found an earthcache. Let’s see what the next adventure will be!

Half day in Hofors

As I am now in Turkey I will add the photos when I get home.

Halfway through Friday a mail turned up in my mailbox. Geocaching in Hofors on Sunday? As I had nothing else planned, of course the answer was yes. So at the leisurely hour of 10 am Slas, Madchicken67 and Ironhawk67 congregated at the car park outside Slas apartment then drove over to Hofors for a half day of caching.

Although Hofors is less than half an hours drive from work there are very few caches there that I have found. Actually when I come to think about it, when I last visited Hofors I had found all the caches that were there at the time and even placed one of my own. Massey Arch Hammer which means we are talking about 2009!

The day started off with a quick find at Kornskruven then a pleasant series of caches around Hammardammen and a well crafted final mystery cache that gave the series a favourite point from me. Even though the weather has been pretty warm for a couple of weeks there was still plenty of ice on the lake, not that I would have dared go out on it. It would also have been interesting to find out more about what looked like a hydroelectric power station on the canal but it seemed to be in private ownership judging by the big “Stopp” private signs.

Lunch was eaten at the local pizzeria just across the road from Lucas Electric. I had solved the mystery ages ago but there was some dispute amongst us as to whether the solution gave a “green tick” in the geochecker or not. I can’t remember but all I know is that my GPS homed in on to the cache whilst the others were inspecting a building twenty meters or so away.

A cache that was in an interesting spot was Lillgösken. Here we found a series of small canals and waterways from the lake Lillgösken out towards the mines and other ironmaking ruins downstream of the lake.

The disappointment of the day was not being able to find Nyängs anrikningsverk. This is a place that could benefit from more study.

As this was only a short day out Slas and I gave up after Kraftverksdammen leaving
MC72 and IH67 to continue finding caches in the Torsåker area.

Ten years after – addendum.

Zero degrees and horizontal sleet is what faced us on Saturday morning as we drove down to Uppsala. The main mission of the day, for my partner at least, was to find a pair of shoes for her daughter’s wedding. My mission for the day was twofold; maintain a few of my Upptåg series caches and find two specific caches, more of which later.

A couple of my Upptåg caches had got cache creep. The whole series of caches uses film canisters attached magnetically to gantries at the stations. The ones in Skyttorp and Örbyhus had wandered upwards about 5 meters! Either there are some very tall cachers or those who think that T1 or T1.5 means climbing up a pole. Of course, it didn’t have to be a cacher that had moved the caches. It could have been the local muggles with little better to do. Anyway, they have now been brought down where I intended them to be and the ones with the wet or full logbooks have been attended to.

The other, and perhaps more fun mission was for me to find Challenge – 3 olika cacher av 15 Utläggare, not specifically because I could but because the cache was placed on January 17 (2013) and that was the final date I needed for me to get a full “Placed by date” chart. It’s something that has eluded me for a couple of years! Before I went to New Zealand on holiday this year I had two empty dates and had found two appropriate caches that would allow me to complete the grid. However, I got a DNF on the cache from January 17 and it’s been irritating me since then.

A couple of weeks ago on my trip to Uppsala with Madchicken72, Slas and Ironhawk67 I didn’t have time to work out if I could find this specific challenge cache, even though I logged a few others, but when I started to see if I could meet the requirements I noted the date it was published . Woohoo! Just what I needed.

So thanks to the cachers listed on the screen shots below for placing such a diversity of caches that I could find this Challenge cache and kill two birds with one stone.

Part one of the list for 3 different caches by 15 placers

Part two of the list for 3 different caches by 15 placers

Of course, the cache I went for afterwards was Challenge #128 – Full Finds by Placed Date Chart The most gratifying part about finding these two caches was that it nicely rounded off my 10 year anniversary of geocaching. It only took me ten years to the day to completely fill in the Placed by date chart. Nice.

Completed “Placed by date” chart

Ten Years After

No, I’m not going to start talking about Stonedhenged or Cricklewood Green but about the ten years that I have been geocaching. It started with me wanting to buy a GPS receiver but not really knowing why I wanted one. I spent a few weeks hunting down a suitable unit and in the process read about geocaching. When my Garmin eTrex Legend arrived in the post from England I immediately registered with www.geocaching.com and discovered that there were very few geocaches in the Gävle area. There were about ten caches within 50km from home. Today there are nearly 800 active caches in the same area!

Anyway, it took me a couple of days of playing around with the unit before I made my first trek off into the wilds. Well, in reality it was a walk of a few hundred meters from Gävle Bro which is a rest area, restaurant and filling station on the E4 on the outskirts of Gävle proper.

The cache was Gavle-bro by Piggen and it is still active! It was placed on April 4th 2003, just nine days before I found it. I was the second to find it, one day after a cacher called Piggepunk, who has found a total of six caches and doesn’t seem to have been active since April 10th 2009 (exactly six years to the day after I started caching). I sometimes think that a FTF on my first ever cache find would have been fantastic, but STF is what I got and can’t be changed.

Since then I have continued to maintain an interest in geocaching that has been at a relatively good level and is the first hobby/sport/pastime that has kept my interest for so long!

Now, ten years after, I have found nearly 4000 caches, and yes I know, there are those who have found that many in a fraction of that time, and have found all 81 possible combinations of difficulty and terrain, and found a cache on every day of the year, and for every month they have been placed since the start of geocaching, not to mention being an extreme, extreme cacher. Hmm, do they have a life that includes anything else?

I guess that one of the characteristics of a cacher is the “nerd” factor. I enjoy statistics. How many boroughs in Sweden have I found caches? Can I find caches in them all? Can I fill the D/T matrix? I have only three to go. How many countries have I found caches in or will I find the last two caches for the Jasmer challenge? So here we go, some screenshots from GSAK which as many geocachers will know is a really great tool to keep track of caches. The wealth of support from “clever, intelligent and good looking” geocachers is amazing. There are some fantastic macros that generate the statistics that I enjoy reading and are shown below.

Here are a few milestones:
78 of the 81 D/T combinations.

Three D/T combinations to go

Finds on all found dates of the year

A full 366 day find chart

Finds on all but one of the placed dates of the year

Just one date left to find

Finds on all but two of the placed months of the year (Jasmer Challenge)

Two months to go

A spontaneous thought on which is my all time favourite cache brings me to The 2 Towers I saw now that this was my 300th find two years after starting geocaching.

I wanted to celebrate my ten years of caching by placing a couple of caches. I willingly admit that I asked a caching team on the other side of the world if I could copy a couple of their caches as I found them fun and challenging. Unfortunately the rules for cache placement have changed and it wasn’t possible for the present reviwer in Sweden to accept them. For those of you who want to know what you will miss here are the two original caches.
New Zealand D/T Bingo 1 Line Challenge (Auckland)
New Zealand D/T Bingo 3 Line Challenge (Auckland)

So now I have to decide what I am going to do with the two caches that are located out in the Hemlingby naturreserve.

So my first ten years as a geocacher have seen many changes in the pastime/hobby/sport/obsession. Some of them are for the better and some are for the worse. I imagine that the next ten years will see even bigger changes. I’m looking forward to looking back on twenty years of geocaching. Now I have to get out and find some caches to finish off my various targets. The one I am looking forward to most is the completion of the Jasmer challenge. I will have to start saving so I can afford a long trip to either USA(Utah) or Australia. Is it worth it for some tupperware and a tick on a list. Keep following my blog and you will see.

April Fools Day Magical Mystery Tour

I blame it all on SR88 but he’s not to know it. During the Earth hour event on the 23rd March I was talking to SR88 and Jetoma among others and they told me about the caching trip that they had made to Uppsala and a couple of really great caches that were worth visiting. Of course, with it being these two guys, aided and abetted by Jaol84, I knew that they weren’t talking about D1/T1 caches, oh no!

We were talking about:
On the mountain
Brutal Betong Extreme
XMAS2012U – 23 Julfirandet

As the rest of our little group were there as well – Slas, Madchicken72 and Ironhawk67 we decided to visit Uppsala on Easter Monday which just happened to be April Fools Day. We needed a name for the Team so taking the initials from our nicks in alaphabetical order gave us Team DIMS. I don’t know exactly what there is about the name but it doesn’t sound quite right.

Anyway, as is our want we met outside Slas’ place where he had encouraged !mrc! to join in the fun. So off we went south towards Uppsala. I had read about an interesting cache called Not for cowards in Husby. As it was only a few kilometers off the E4 we made the detour where stage 1 went like a dance, even if we had no idea what we were supposed to make of the clues we obtained. Mulling over the information since then has given a couple of leads but if you are reading this vw bus a hint would be fine, thank you.

The tour then continued on down the E4 and then in a big loop through Storvreta and onto back roads crossing road 288 near Rimbo and on to the “X” series of mystery caches placed by Team Ese. All but Mönster which seems to be a mystery where luck seems to play a large part of the solution were solved and found.

We had previously had great fun in the “pheasant farm” but afterwards I was a bit dubious about letting Madchicken72 and Ironhawk67 back into the car as they were cackling and smelt like their relatives after roosting in the loft of the farm for a while. I suspect that they picked up avian influensa as their behaviour after the visit changed considerably.

Our first stop in Uppsala took us to what looked like the site of the next episode of “Arga snickare”. I just can’t believe that anyone could start a renovation project on a house like this.

House for sale in need of renovation

Not my idea of a dream kitchen

The day progressed well and we picked up another handful of mystery caches and a couple of challenges before eating a huge pizza or kebab in the exotic location of Gottsunda where we felt we were in another country. It was a slight tactical mistake as we then continued on over to the south west of Uppsala where Slas and I spent a fun hour abseilling down the “Preachers chair” known to geocachers as XMAS2012U – 23 Julfirandet

Our target for the day was the cache On the mountain which we decided to do after dark, not that it really makes a difference as it is dark underground all the time. To pass the time we hunted down a few traditional caches with high favourite points that included Baksidan, Dirty Dancing and XMAS2011U 14 Rörigt.

So what is so special about “On the mountain”? Well firstly the mystery itself is diabolical and demanded many hours of researching and the frustrating use of tools that crashed except if used with Windows 7. I won’t say any more, but I really enjoyed some of the side tracks that I ended up on. The cache itself was located underground and I love old cold war installations in Sweden, of which there are hundreds all over the country. Most are now being filled in so it’s a case of getting to them before they disappear.

In this case it seems that we were in a storage facility for the Swedish Government’s archive, or perhaps one of them. Who knows! Obviously it was empty and in the process of being decomissioned but was a great playgrond for the cache.

I would have loved to see what was on the other side

In good condition

Keys needed to operate

We didn’t hear anything but the Tannoys were huge

Plenty of little dors to open

To end the day we decided to visit Imse vimse spindell. Ironhawk67 wanted us to get there on road 288 but Madchiecken72 wanted us to take the Google route otherwise known as “how the crows flies” (another relative). We parked our cars in the middle of the field we ended up in and walked the rest of the way to the cache.

A great way to end the day wich resulted in finding 5 traditionals and twenty two mysterys. I was most pleased with finding XMAS2011U – 23 Julfirandet as it filled in an empty cell in the D/T matrix, so I now only have three emty cells to fill and it doesn’t seem impossible any longer. Maybe this will be the year I will do it.

Earth Hour Gävle

Earth Hour events have been held in Gävle on and off since 2008 or 2009. This year the host was Jetoma and the location was Äppelbo wind shelter on the 5km track in the Hemlingby leisure area. As I live close by I am a frequent visitor and have placed a few caches in the area. In fact my Letterbox/hybrid cache Hemlingby Trail #2 – Äpplebo is just a stones throw away from where the event was held.

Looking at the number of persons who had said they would attend the event it wasn’t going to be crowded. Judge my surprise when I arrived at the closest parking spot to find it was full! There were at least double the number of persons there that had said they would come and there was even a group from Västerås including Jimmy P who I met out on the Broddo Trail about a year ago when there was hardly any snow and the temperatures were around 15C!

Earth hour cachers warming themselve by the fire

This year was different in that there was plenty of snow and it was about -7C. Walking towards the event location I was met by a number of lights along the path and a fire at the wind shelter that was warming a big group of cachers. Some I recognised and soon new faces were being added to known nicks and even new names and faces were met.

SR88 blinded by the flash on the camera.

I was able to drop off three geocoins I have being carrying around since I picked them up in New Zealand in January. Now they are free to go on their travels in the hands of other geocachers who perhaps travel more than I do.

As I am trying to complete my D/T matrix this year it was great to be able to to chat with SR88, Jetoma and Jaol84 about some of the T5 caches that I need to find. They are half my age (what a give away) and really enjoy the more physically challenging caches. Some really good tips were given so I can see Slas, Madchicken 67 and Ironhawk72 spending a day in the Easter break on an adventure similar to the one we had a few weeks ago. (Bomber och Granater #1 & #2)

First Germany

I have two months remaining for me to be able to complete the Jasmer challenge and those final two caches are “reasonably” close to home, if I count Europe as being close.

The July 2000 cache GC40 Geocache is in Belgium, between Brussels and Luxemburg and the October 2000 cache GC77 First Germany is south of Berlin or at least it was.

I have just booked my flights to both Brussels and Berlin.

Ticket booked

I decided then to see what other caches were close to First Germany as that was my first trip. I was devastated to find that the cache was archived just four days ago!

Cache archived just four days ago

That leaves me with a couple of options. If I want to fill in the final month of the Jasmer challenge, assuming of course GC40 Geocache isn’t archived before I get there in July, I have to travel to either USA or Australia.

It will have to be USA or Australia to complete the Jasmer challenge!

So now I have to really think about the value of that last cache. If I do go for it I may need to take a long holiday to make the trip worth while. The opportunites open themselves to my imagination.