Reply To: Why so few dartmoor trails?

#2024
Avatar photodartymoor
Participant

Well, it’s explained clearly. The CO asked me to point this out;

[i]”Hobo and Miss
Sorry you didn’t enjoy the trail. If the gorse bushes weren’t there, there would be nowhere to hide the caches, my previous walk in the area was very much enjoyed by many letterboxers and has raised hundreds of pounds for the charity I support, the same letterboxers have also purchased my new charity walk in the Wheal Betsy area, when I take the walk in after the 6 months I shall be putting out another geocaching walk like this, may I suggest you steer clear of it due to even more gorse bushes in that area.”[/i]

And honestly, why the sniffiness? From several people here, not just H&M.

Yes, geocaching IS about the numbers, so is letterboxing (100 club, badges for higher numbers to show off your experience), so is walking in itself (miles, not hours – how we do like to keep score). We’ve had this discussion several times and it is human nature. Even the owner of this site won’t list you in his rankings until you’ve done over a thousand (and he’s even quite tardy in this, hint!).

I respect those who, like reb10, enjoy a walk with or without caches. I like walks AND caches, and if they’re close together, great – best of both worlds – to the extent that there are still so many unfound caches within my reach, I rarely go for a long walk without a cache plan in place.

But it seems that respect isn’t always two-way. Don’t look down on those who enjoy a series with hides close together, or those who seek out short circuits because they’re inexperienced, have young families, aren’t fit enough for a long walk, don’t have time – whatever. They’re still doing something a lot better than sitting on their arse in front of the tv letting their brains rot.

Closely spaced trails are very obvious on the map, so just stay clear if you don’t like ’em. Don’t do them and then moan about it, it’s disrespectful of those who take the time to place caches at all and makes it less likely they’ll bother at all.

Dave will remember some comments made by others about my first series. I damned near gave up caching altogether because of them. Dave himself made a point of being complimentary and supportive, and others too. I now know, with more experience, that those comments were unwarranted and actually quite spiteful, so I do get pissed off when people are unduly critical. Fortunately, this is rare in caching.