The Nylon Pool is a sandbar in the Buccoo Reef, off the coast of Tobago. Despite the distance from the shore, it’s only about waist-deep. Truly mind-boggling.
Tag: memorable
Dan Q found GC8XWKX Shamrock #20
This checkin to GC8XWKX Shamrock #20 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My mum and I have been visiting Ireland on a geohashing & geocaching expedition. We’d spotted this shamrock shape but it wasn’t in our operating zone so we didn’t get a chance to hunt any of them, until today’s journey up to Knock airport saw us take a comfort break nearby, and we figured we’d come find this cache, at least.
Found this well-maintained cache with no difficulty at all: I thoroughly approve of a cache that is hidden just barely enough to not be muggled, but not so much as to inconvenience a geocacher who’s sometimes in a hurry! Nice work, FP awarded. TFTC.
Dan Q found GC9QNY4 NFCache
This checkin to GC9QNY4 NFCache reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Despite having been hidden as recently as 2022, this “feels” like an old-school cache. A non-trivial offset, a real scramble through the terrain to find it, and a generous-sized container at the other end. Back around 2010 many more caches felt like this, and in a way I miss them: being able to find a quick-and-easy traditional cache on every street corner is a quick win, but it takes some of the satisfaction out of the old days when you’d expect an extended journey and hunt.
That said, our expedition to this cache was perhaps quite a lot harder than it needed to be. There’s a few reasons for that. The first reason is that we didn’t start out until the sun was getting close to the horizon, which made searching for the first part hard and the second part – by which point we were using our phones as torches – extremely challenging. Another challenge came from that first part, which was not where it ought to be: we found it on the floor, rather than hanging as indicated, some metres away from the correct location, and having lost *both* of its NFC tags. Digging through the leaf litter eventually revealed one of the tags, and we’ve left it stacked with the board, but without being re-attached to its tree it’s going to get lost again the next time the weather turns bad. Worth a look!
The next challenge came from the encoding of the NFC tag. It’s possible to encode an NFC tag so that it says “this is text”, but the CO has encoded it to say “this is a URL”. As a result, my phone insisted in trying to open the coordinates as a URL (stripping all space characters from it as it did so), leaving me to reverse-engineer it back to coordinates. And then remembering how to convert my GPSr from DDM mode to Decimal so I could enter the coordinates in the right format. But I managed eventually. And wow: the CO wasn’t kidding when they said this was on the opposite side of town!
My mum and I rushed across to the new location. Thankfully our first guess as to the place where we’d be able to park our car was correct, and we pressed on into the woods in the fading light, tripping over branches and sploshing through streams as we tried to find out way by our phone torches alone. Getting close, we spiralled out, hunting for the cache. Eventually, not helped by the hint (there are so many candidates!), and fearing our expedition at an untimely end, we hit the old logs, and found that the photo in log GL1A022W8 by macadonis to be extremely helpful: even in the low light, we could see a hinted object and – after a little debate about which way we should be facing it – soon had the cache in hand. Hurrah!
We signed the (proper size) log book and returned it as we found it. Thanks for a wonderful adventure; FP awarded for the effort that’s gone in to making a cache that simultaneously felt both “modern” (with NFC tags) and “old school” (with the high effort-to-reward ratio, the challenging terrain, and the difficult hides). If stage 1 could be re-attached to its host and perhaps re-programmed to expose text, rather than URL, data, this cache could go from great to spectacular. TFTC!
Dan Q found GCA0R10 Leabharlann 📚
This checkin to GCA0R10 Leabharlann 📚 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF for my mother and I as we passed through Claremorris. Excellent hiding place for the area and a great condition of cache, FP awarded. SL, TFTC.
Guinness in the Bath
It’s been a long day of driving around Ireland, scrambling through forests, navigating to a hashpoint, exploring a medieval castle, dodging the rain, finding a series of geocaches, getting lost up a hill in the dark, and generally having a kickass time with one of my very favourite people on this earth: my mum.
And now it’s time for a long soak in a hot bath with a pint of the black stuff and my RSS reader for company. A perfect finish.
Dan Q found GC6VYGY Absolute Beginners
This checkin to GC6VYGY Absolute Beginners reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My mother and I are visiting Ireland (from Lancashire, UK and Oxfordshire, UK, respectively) on a mission to find geohashpoints in previously-unexplored graticules, and find a few carefully-selected geocaches along the way. Today we were our near Kilsheelan, down the Suir Valley, making a successful expedition for the 2024-11-24 52 -7 geohashpoint which turned out to be deep within a forest on the hills over the River Suir. Flushed with success, we had our lunch, visited Cahir Castle (and found its nearest geocache), and then made our way over here to attempt this circuit of caches.
We knew we were starting late and were risking the mercy of the setting sun, but we figured that powerwalking and quick finds might see us through. We parked right next to this first cache, found it (it doesn’t have a logbook, by the way!), retrieved the first number, and marched on. Could we do it? Time would tell!
(FP awarded on behalf of the series, which was excellent)
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-24 52 -7
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-24 52 -7 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Forest in the Suir Valley, South of Kilsheelan, Ireland.
Participants
- Dan Q
- his mother
Plans
Day three of our geohashing-focussed holiday in Ireland, and the other hashpoints near us look likely to be inaccessible to owing to flooding, but this one’s in a hillside forest. Should be easy, right?
Expedition
It took us around an hour and a half to drive from our accomodation out to Kilsheelan, from which we’d planned to cross the bridge and ascend the hill into the forest where the hashpoint could be found.
We’d originally anticipated that we’d tackle the trail of geocaches alongside the River Suir afterwards, but looking down from the bridge made it clear that this was not going to be possible: the riverside path was completely underwater where the river had broken its banks.
We pressed on up and into the forest. It’s mostly a managed pine forest, surrounded by pockets of native deciduous trees. The trails are, for the most part, wide enough for the forestry vehicles to traverse, and – apart from the points at which streams has escaped their culverts and flooded the path – it was mostly dry and easy walking.
The maps indicated the the fastest route to where the hashpoint could be found would have been along a road, but we opted to climb to an altitude of about 150m to take a forest trail parallel to the road, instead, and it was certainly a more-welcome view.
Getting closer to the cache, we found a trail leading down and began to approach it. We seemed to be endlessly stuck at around 370 metres away as our track wound back and forth with the contours of the hill, but eventually we began to approach it. I was momentarily panicked when we disovered an area of new plantation, surrounded by a 3-metre tall wire fence, because it looked as though the hashpoint might turn out to be inside it and therefore inaccessible, but as we continued to walk we discovered to our delight that it would, instead, be in one of the mature parts of the managed forest instead.
We broke off the track with around 50 metres to go and began to hack our way through the slippery mud and tangled undergrowth.
Before long, we came across a stream, converted into a torrent by the floodwater and the mountaintop’s melting snow!
After scouting for the narrowest point (and giving up on attempting to construct a bridge) I leapt across, and then reached back to help my mother do the same.
Now we were able to pick our way around decaying wood and slippery leaves to finally get to the hashpoint. We arrived at 11:20.
Retracing our steps to the path and continuing our descent, we returned via the road to the bridge we’d crossed at. We enjoyed a spectacular view of Slievenamon to the North, a mountain that towers over the valley. Returning to Kilsheelan, we had a great lunch at Nagle’s Bar, then continued on our day’s adventures: taking in some history at Cahir Castle (and finding a nearby geocache), dodging the rain at coffee shop Keep Coffee, and then taking on a challenging series of caches on the Millennium Loop of Glengarra Woods, where we almost found ourselves stranded by the setting sun, short on batteries for either GPS, phone, or torch use, and having to carefully pick our way back to the car before a long dark drive over the winding Kilmallock road to get back to home, beer, and baths.
A wonderful adventure that’s left me heavy of foot and light of spirit.
Tracklog
Full journey
(includes the driving sections and our other expeditions, including some lunch, touring a castle, and geocaching a valley)
Download full journey tracklog.
Walking
(just the bit from where we parked up into the forest, to the hashpoint, and down again; minus a bit at the start where I forgot to turn my backup GPSr on)
Download walking segment tracklog.
Dan Q found GC9DV9P GST 64 – Lift me up buttercup
This checkin to GC9DV9P GST 64 - Lift me up buttercup reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
We almost gave up trying to find the hint object before spotting something that once had the colour of a buttercup but has since enjoyed some extra camouflage! Retrieving the cache was a bit challenging for my fat hands but my mum managed to help. FP awarded for this more-imaginative hiding place! TFTC.
Loughrea Unlocked
I’m on the map! No matter what else my mother and I achieve this week, my name will forever be recorded as the unlocker of the Loughrea graticule in Ireland: https://geohashing.site/geohashing/Ireland
Dan Q found GC2BY40 Pallas Castle
This checkin to GC2BY40 Pallas Castle reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My mother and I are visiting the area in search of virgin graticules for geohashing purposes. This morning we set out for the 2024-11-22 53 -8 geohashpoint and found it down in a disused pasture down in the valley, then we decided to celebrate by seeing if there were any nearby geocaches to find, too!
Bring the only cache in the area (!) and at a castle (who doesn’t love a castle?) we figured it’d be worth a go. By the time we’d found a bridge over the river and walked up the winding road up the hill, we were ready for our lunch, so we explored the castle grounds while we ate our sandwiches. Now, re-energised, we were ready to find the cache!
We quickly found the tree from the description, but 5 to 10 minutes hunting didn’t reveal the cache’s hiding place. We checked the hint, but it didn’t help: none of the things around here are what the hint describes, for a strict definition of the word! So we started checking the old logs. Somebody mentioned finding the cache around 7 metres from the coordinates, and that was helpful: we followed the nearby wall about that distance and quickly spotted a solid hiding place. We had to clear a bit of leaf litter to get to the cache, but soon we had it and were signing the logbook.
Thanks for bringing us to this excellent location. FP awarded. Greetings from Lancashire and Oxfordshire, UK!
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-22 53 -8
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-22 53 -8 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Field East of Abbey, Ireland.
Participants
- Dan Q
- his mum
Plans
When my mother proposed that we take a holiday together somewhere, and that I could choose the destination, I started by looking at the Geohashing Expeditions Map.
Where, I wondered, could I find a cluster of mostly-land graticules (“square” degree of latitude and longitude) in which nobody had ever logged a successful expedition? I’ve been geohashing for ten years now and I’ve never yet scored a “Graticule Unlocked” achievement for being the first to reach any hashpoint in a given graticule.
So this week, we’re holidaying on the West coast of Ireland, doing a variety of activities that take our fancy and, hopefully, finding a geohashpoint or two in previously-unexplored graticules!
Looking at the nearby hashpoints, we decided that this was our best bet. An hour and a half’s drive from our accomodation to a village near the hashpoint and we might be able to make the rest of the way on foot.
Expedition
My mother’s never been hashing before, but unlike most people I’ve told about the hobby she didn’t turn her nose up at the idea so she was happy to accompany me on this unusual adventure.
We drove to Abbey, which turns out to be a delightful village, and parked outside the community centre (where my mother was able to use the bathroom).
Then we switched to foot, walking along the banks of the stream and following the road to the East, towards the field where we’d hoped to find the hashpoint.
A quick survey around the outskirts of the area suggested that it was, indeed, in what had once been an active pasture but had been abandoned and disused for many years. The grass and brambles grew high and were caked in snow, but we hopped the gate and pressed on for the final hundred metres.
We made the right choice: the hashpoint was just barely inside the disused old field, and we were able to get to it with only slightly wet feet and without disturbance (except for some kind of nesting bird that was unhappy to see us, and some kind of medium-sized mammal – possibly a fox – that ran away as we approached).
We reached the hashpoint at 11:24.
Flushed with success at this relatively easy victory, we continued our walk to a nearby dairy to see if they’d sell us some cheese (their farm shop was shut), and then crossed the river and climbed the nearby hill to find the fantastic geocache at Pallas Castle.
Circling around from the hilltop to return to the car, we drove back home, completing our expedition (hashpoint, cache, and all) in a little under 7 hours.
Tracklog
Dan Q found GCAA274 Garrigues #23 – El Vilosell
This checkin to GCAA274 Garrigues #23 - El Vilosell reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The geokids and I are staying nearby and came out for a walk this morning to discover this under-appreciated cache. What an amazing location and such a great view! We searched many “obvious” locations without luck, then translated some logs to get a clue. We should have checked the attributes! A little danger later and the cache was in hand. SL, TFTC/GPC! FP awarded – thanks so much for bringing us here. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!
Dan Q found GC6TKBN MALIP – Monument a les il·lusions perdudes
This checkin to GC6TKBN MALIP - Monument a les il·lusions perdudes reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
After failing to find this yesterday, I came back earlier this morning for another go. Thanks to the hint, I was pretty confident I’d been looking in the right place, and a message from the CO helped confirm this (gracias!).
There are, in my mind, two significant challenges to this cache:
1. It’s a challenging and unusual hiding place and you will need to use the hint. I see from previous logs that some people used the hint… and still got stuck! Got to look around and see what it could mean. This bit… I got right. In fact, I touched the cache yesterday but just didn’t know it for sure!
2. It’s a busy area in which searching for a geocache… looks a bit suspicious! I came at almost 08:00 yesterday and, probably because it was a weekday, the area had lots of muggles. I felt self-conscious hunting for the cache and that made it harder. Coming back today an hour earlier made all the difference.
A really sneaky cache good enough to hunt for twice. TFTC/GPC. FP awarded. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK.
Meetup Magic
I’ve spent the last week1 in Tulum, on Mexico’s beautiful Yucatan Peninsula, for an Automattic meetup. And as usual for these kinds of work gatherings, it was magical (and, after many recent departures, a welcome opportunity to feel a closer connection to those of us that remain).
No, I mean that the whole thing felt magical. Like, I’ve discovered, every Automattic meetup I’ve been to has been. But this is perhaps especially true of the larger ones like Vienna last year (where my “flash talk” topic was Finger for WordPress; turns out I love the excuse to listen to other people’s nerdity and fly my own nerd flag a little).
Our events team, who are already some of the most thoughtful and considerate planners you might ever meet, had gone above and beyond in their choice of location. The all-inclusive resort they’d booked out for pretty-much our exclusive use was a little isolated and not the kind of place I’d have chosen for a personal holiday. But it provided all of the facilities my team, sibling teams, and division could desire for work, rest and play.
As usual, an Automattic meetup proved to be a series of long but energising days comprising a mixture of directly work-related events, social team-building and networking opportunities, chances for personal growth and to learn or practice skills, and a sweet sprinkling of fun and memorable activities.
Our meetups might not feel like “work” (even when they clearly are!), but rather like… I don’t know… a holiday with 400 of the coolest, friendliest, most-interesting people you could ever meet6… which just happens to have an overarching theme of something that you love.
Recently-developed changes to strategic priorities, and the departure of a few of our colleagues during the recent aforementioned “realignment”, meant that my “superteam” – my team and its siblings – had a lot to talk about. How can we work better together? How can we best meet the needs of the company while also remaining true to its open-source ideology? What will our relationships with one another and with other parts of the organisation look like in the year to come?
Every morning for a week I’d wake early and walk the soft warm sands and swim in the sea, before meeting with colleagues for breakfast. Then a day of networking and workshops, team-time activities, meetings, and personal development, which gave way to evenings with so much on offer that FOMO was inevitable7.
Our meetups are merely an intense distillation of what makes Automattic magical on a day-to-day basis.
Did I mention that we’re recruiting?
Footnotes
1 Travelling light, as has become my normal.
2 Excluding the two who couldn’t make it in person and the one who’s on parental leave.
3 Another example might be the pronoun pin badges that they made available in various locations, which I’ve written about already.
4 The spiders, which weave long thin strand webs that hang like tinsel from the cave roof, catch and eat mosquitoes, which I’m definitely in favour of.
5 Okay, fine: Harvey Mackey isn’t the original source, and it’s not clear who was.
6 Also, partially-tame trash pandas, which joined iguanas, agouti, sand pipers, and other wildlife around (and sometimes in) our accommodation.
7 I slightly feel like I missed-out by skipping the board gaming, and it sounds like the movie party and the karaoke events were a blast too, but I stand by my choices to drink and dance and perform magic and chat about technology and open source and Star Wars and blogging and music and travel and everything else that I found even the slightest opportunity to connect on with any of the amazing diverse and smart folks with whom I’m fortunate enough to work.
8 While I completely reject the magical thinking espoused by our “sound bath” facilitator, it was still a surprisingly relaxing and meditative experience. It was also a nice chill-out before going off to the higher-energy environment that came next at the poolside bar: drinking cocktails and dancing to the bangin’ tunes being played by our DJ, my colleague Rua.
Hurricane Milton
From safely outside of its predicted path, just around the Yucatan coast, Hurricane Milton seems like a forboding and distant monster. A growing threat whose path will thankfully take it away, not towards, me.
My heart goes out to the people on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico who find themselves along the route of this awakened beast.