For my last day in the Lakes I parked up near Grassmere and walked on the other side of Grassmere Lake to where I was on Monday. Although most of the day was overcast there were some splashes of sun and even a short sunset, but that was when I was in the car heading back.
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I also saw a very well kept “VR” post box along my walk.
Grassmere Lake – Walking and Geocaching Read More »
It was a dark and grey day today so I went walking locally using geocaches as my guide. Score for the day was five and it took me on an interesting walk around Bowness.
The Sherriff’s Walk
It was named after G. H. Pattinson who originally presented this land to the public, he was a former ‘High Sherriff of Cumbria’.
Bowness
An interesting name for a shop – click on the above image for a larger version
The remains of the Windermere Steamer The Swift. When the boat could not be preserved some parts were saved and now the are a feature at a shopping parade in the town.
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A couple of weeks ago, on a trip, I had a problem with my Aplkit Kraku ultra-light stove. When I got home I tested the stove again with a different gas bottle but the join was still leaking. It turned out that over time and use the seal washer had compressed and so was leaking. When I emailed Alpkit and explained the problem they quickly supplied a replacement and a spare washer. I have had the stove a couple of years and use it a lot – Alpkit’s customer service cannot be beaten.
Alpkit ultra-light titanium, pot/mug, stove and folding spoon – the recycled Coke bottle holds enough water for a mug of tea.
Out walking and geocaching on a sunny, late autumn Sunday morning.
Here are details of my lightweight cooking gear and the pouch of supplies in the photo.
Thank you Alpkit – great customer service Read More »
I recently bought a Garmin etrex 10 satnav for geocaching.
It was a fine autumn morning, a good chance to get out and test the new GPS. I bought the Garmin etrex 10 to supplement my iPhone 6S when geocaching. I expect it be a useful tool when backpacking and hiking.
This summer I have been struggling to find geocaches, as the GPS and Groundspeak app on the iPhone has not been accurate enough. Many people complement their smartphone with a dedicated satnav as they are more accurate. I did not want to spend too much and the Garmin etrex 10 from Blacks looked ideal.
It is a simple, compact, rugged design, with a clear screen and has software installed for “paperless geocaching”. I particularly liked the fact it uses two AA batteries – one less item to charge when camping.
It was easy to transfer geocaching GPX files to the Garmin from my PC. It was also straight forward to manually input a latitude and longitude and navigate to it – so even if I have not uploaded a geocache list to the GPS, I can look up the co-ordinates on the web and then key them in.
The etrex 10 came with a very simple world map installed on it. Another trip to the internet and I found out how to replace that with a better (but still quite simple) map. See the following links:
First you need Garmin’s Basecamp software to access the GPS – https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/shop/downloads/basecamp
I got the replacement maps from here – http://www.gmaptool.eu/en/content/europe
Before I did anything I connected the GPS to my laptop and backed up the installed software. If something went wrong I needed to be able to restore my newly purchased device. (A simple copy and paste backed things up.)
The storage is limited on the Garmin etrex 10, the Basecamp software gives the option to install selected sections of the larger maps. I balanced the installed map sections against the geocaching data.
Note – For the transferred map to display on the etrex 10, you must delete the base map, gmapbmap and rename the new map to gmapbmap.img.
Yes it did. The iPhone 6S showed the cache was 4m away, the Garmin said 1m and it was right. The replacement maps were useful using Memory Map with 25k OS maps on my smartphone was essential for accurate navigation.
I configured the dashboard on the etrex 10 to display a pointer, to point at the Geocache location. This is far more accurate than the pointer in the Groundspeak app. Often when the app is being used to navigate to a cache it can be 180 degrees wrong! I then have to wander around for a while for it sorts the location out. The Garmin pointed right at the cache.
Overall the test today proved the Garmin etrex 10 to be a worthwhile purchase for Geocaching.
Paperless Geocaching Garmin etrex 10 Read More »
Silverhill is just across the road from the campsite, a good place to spend the day walking and it is full of geocaches! This was one of the reasons I came to this site.
I packed my brew kit, lunch and put Terry Pratchett’s, Making Money audiobook on my iPod and set off.
This grew by my tent door overnight!
“Testing for Gas”
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Silverhill
Lunch stop
Geocaching – Silverhill – A good day for snails Read More »
Silverhill Nottinghamshire click on the above image for a larger version
Silverhill Nottinghamshire Read More »
I had to be out early this morning as Octagon are swapping out, and replacing a server this weekend. This part of the project only took a couple of hours, as I had the MX-5, I took a detour on the way home.
There was a geocache near here
