Dartymoor – thanks for this post, some very interesting points.
In my own defence the 1,000 limit was purely there to limit the mammoth task of pulling these statistics together and the tardiness is due to exactly the same reason – just a lack of time.
I love statistics and numbers and ranking lists etc and have no problem with any of that at all. However, I do have a problem with the quality of many caches that are currently being placed and also their location. As soon as you concentrate on the quantity then the quality takes a nosedive. In my opinion one good cache is worth 10 rubbish ones and the vast majority of cachers would agree – you need only to look at the logs of a decent cache and the number of fav points it gets. Power trail caches get virtually no fav points (I analysed this on HALO) and it tends only to be the last cache in a series that gets any points.
You mention your first series. I thought at the time (and I still think) that this was an excellent series with some good hides, and if I remember correctly, several home made caches that you had put considerably effort into. I hope you won’t be upset if I say that I prefer this first series of caches to your recent series. I really enjoyed the latest walk but I would have enjoyed it just as much if there had been only 12 caches and would have enjoyed the series more if the caches had been more difficult to find and more varied. I know others will not agree as they only count the number, but I hope you see the point I am trying to make.
I really am planning a trail for you, it will be called Dart’moor’s Dozen and will have only 12 caches over a 6 mile walk. Hopefully the caches will all be interesting and different to each other and will definitely not be trivial finds. Hopefully it will get you out on to the real moor, which I don’t think you get on to very often, but will not be remote. But I’m not going to rush these out tomorrow, they need thinking about and planning.
