I’m afraid I would have to disagree with many of your comments here, Dave, but then I would say that, as I am clearly a repeat offender in your eyes.
Firstly, I would not say that labelled and identified caches are in the majority anywhere you go. You may have been lucky in your trip, but containers with nothing but a log-book inside are far from rare, and I don’t think Dartmoor should be singled out in this regard.
Also, I think the labelling is unnecessary anyway for a number of reasons: what an accidental finder does with your unlabelled geocache has, I suspect, more to do with their psychology and opinions than with the packaging of the box. On Dartmoor as well, I think that most cachers from here or elsewhere, and letterboxers too for that matter, will know when they have found what they are looking for. As long as somewhere the cache has its name on it, such as on the logbook, that should suffice.
Finally, Dartmoor’s geocaches are indeed often just a container with a log book stuck under a rock, and I wouldn’t disagree with that, as that’s exactly what nearly all of mine are. However, I am just glad that some people have taken the time and effort to place caches around this beautiful location which I can then go and find. I think it matters rather less whether those caches have an official green sticker on them.
And finally, I’m not going to line their pockets by buying their official stickers anyway. Setting caches is expensive enough as it is.
