They really don’t represent us, do they.
I recently placed a series of caches near Belstone. Aware of the MoD “ban” I avoided placing any in the range areas, but despite the fact that a certain cache (at Knattaborough Tor, halfway along the ridge between Oke and Higher) was outside the range area, I have still had it refused.
I’m not bashing the reviewer here, as they have a thankless task sometimes, but it does seem odd that this national “ban” is now enforced with very little information, a sort of guess at the boundaries. I actually have some military maps taken from documents available online that show the range boundaries in far more detail, and also another one that shows the land owned by the MoD (basically Willsworthy).
The very few official statements regarding this issue are also confusing, some say land “used” by the MoD and others (and more likely to be true) land “owned” by the MoD. In my opinion there is a massive difference, as for example, I “use” a lot of of the moor when hiking, does that mean if I object to geocaches I can ban them all? Surely the same legal basis?
The cache in question is definitely outside of the range (the range poles here cross at least 30/40m south), but because it is close it probably won’t be listed. I think I will try opencaching and see if it gets enabled. It’s time like this I get tempted to place letterboxes!
I will try and upload the range maps or find a link.
p.s. reading the link above reminded me of the Roos Tor ban – does anyone actually know why it exists/is still in place?
