Some time ago I was asked to put together a monthly article on UK caching for Today’s Cacher and so without further delay here’s the first one -- well, they do say life begins at 40!

Every so often I ask myself three questions (mainly to remind myself that I’m still alive)! But these questions also help me to evaluate where I am, and to look ahead to where I might be going in the future. I think they’ll also serve as an introduction so here goes:

Who Am I?
My name is Gary Rogers (aka inukshuk)

Where am I?
I live in the UK in a village called Billinge in between the two better-known cities of Manchester and Liverpool.

What am I?
I’m 40 years old (today!) A good day to ask the questions I guess! I’m married to Wendy and we have two children; Holly, age 13, and Lee, age 9. I’m in the fortunate position of having time on my hands and being able to choose where life will take me next (read: unemployed!). I’m also the owner/editor of Geocaching Today, the UK’s online geocaching magazine (come and visit and sign our log).

It was August 2003. I had a week’s holiday (yes I was working at the time) approaching and we’d decided as a family that it would be nice to visit Anglesey – a small island off the coast of North Wales, about 70 miles from where we live. So having nice fast web access at work I opened Google and typed in “Anglesey” and “activities” and somewhere in the list of results was a link to Newborough Forest cache (sadly now archived). I clicked on the link and opened the page and at first I wasn’t much wiser! The page itself didn’t tell me what caching was but I gathered from the information given that I needed to get to a certain point and perhaps find something hidden there – fantastic fun for kids, I thought.

I asked around our small office but even the only person in there who actually owned a GPSr at the time had never heard of geocaching! A little more browsing soon shed light on the matter and I discovered geocaching.com, where to my delight I found I could register and see if there were more caches close to home.

The weekend came, and by now I’d found out that our nearest cache was only one mile from home. We can actually see Billinge Lump from the upstairs window. Although we didn’t yet have a GPSr, with the help of the clue and a little local knowledge, we reckoned on being able to find the cache (which was at the time a traditional Tupperware type) anyway, as it was hidden in one of only two or three small groups of trees close to the hill. Sure enough, the kids found the cache and when they realized that they could swap something and leave a note in the book, the expressions of happiness on their faces was priceless with the corollary that a geocaching trip to Anglesey and a brand new yellow eTrex was now quite definitely on the agenda for the week to come!

Eighteen months, 160 (or so) caches and an online magazine later, we still enjoy caching.

“Only 160 caches,” you might say and yes compared to some, even in the UK, its not many but its still an average of more than two a week! Your long-term average cache per week rate might surprise you too!

In the coming months I’ll try to relate some of the significant events in UK caching and maybe say a little about what I’ve been up to recently. Here’s the story for March so far ...

The White Family made it to the 500 find mark this month and in a country where you can still count the number of 1000+ plus cachers on one hand, and still have change left, getting to 500 is quite an achievement! Two Scottish cachers, Pooter and Firth of Forth have been competing with each other to reach this landmark since the New Year. In the end Pooter got there first but by less than an hour!

It's quite rare to hear about caching on radio or TV here in the UK so when Simply Paul managed to secure a five-minute video diary slot on mainstream TV, the whole UK caching community sat up and took notice. Now there’s even an official BBC cache, and here’s a link to the news story.

M1EYO made it to 1100 – a fantastic total which firmly secures him in second place behind Seasider as one of the most prolific UK cachers and hot on their heels is Pharisee who made it to 900 today (March 19th). My wife thinks I’m addicted, what would she think if she was married to one of these geoholics!

The media coverage mentioned earlier sparked a new wave of interest in caching in the UK evidenced by many new forum members and quite a flurry of new caches. I got quite a taste for FTFs in the last few weeks and managed to bag some nice ones, notably at Lighthouse Webcam at Leasowe on the Wirrall peninsula (our first webcam cache find) and at Lizzardpower#3 a great puzzle cache on the outskirts of Manchester. See if you can solve the puzzle!

So as the spring thaw continues and the summer caching season approaches, I hope I’ll be able to bring you more caching news from the UK in the months to come!

Bye for now
Inukshuk