News & New Caches 87

Just one new cache and a couple of events to report since our last post.

GCA8FE7 Quiet time! by CheesyPasta Traditional D1/T1.5

GCA8D9R 9 Usual Suspects – Nosh & Natter 57 by 9 Usual Suspects
For this months N&N we are back at the Anglesey Arms, lets hope for a lovely sunset!

When: Wednesday 31st May
Where: Anglesey Arms, Harbour Front, Caernarfon LL55 1SG
Time: 7pm to 9pm or when the last person leaves

Magic Maker Souvenir Event

To celebrate custom made geocaches HQ are awarding the Magic Maker Souvenir for anyone that attends or hosts a Magic Maker Event between June 13th to July 3rd 2023. We are please to announce our event has been approved. As part of the event we will be running a competition for favourite custom local geocaches giving everyone a chance to vote for the winner. Please nominate your chosen caches in your ‘will attend’ logs remembering to quote GC code.

GCA8D3G Maker Magic: 9US Get Creative…..

Where: Plas Gwernoer, Nantlle. LL54 6BB
When: 1st July 2023
Time: 2.00pm-6pm (the bar will remain open until the last person leaves!)

North Wales Wildlife Trust

Looking for some inspiration for a wildlife garden? North Wales Wildlife Trust are holding an open day giving everyone the opportunity to explore their wildlife garden in Bangor. Advice from experienced wildlife gardeners will be available all morning. Free, no booking required but please sign in at the office.

When: Monday 15th May
Time: 10:00 – 13:00
Where: Llys Garth, Garth Road, Bangor

News & New Caches 86

We have just one new event for July and an event reminder to report since our last post.

GCA7B67 The Chens on Tour 2023 – Llandanwg by the Chens
When: Saturday 15th July
Where: Y Maes Caffi, Beach Car Park, Llandanwg LL46 2SD
Time: 11-11.30am

The Chens are a couple from Devizes, Wiltshire, and will be touring around Wales in their caravan. They would love to meet up with local and not so local geocachers while staying in LLandanwg.

Event Reminder

Just a quick reminder its N&N tomorrow night.

GCA72GP 9 Usual Suspects – Nosh & Natter 56 by 9 Usual Suspects
When: Wednesday 26th April 2023
Where: Parc Snowdonia, Waunfawr, Caernarfon, Gwynedd LL55 4AQ
Time: 7pm to 9pm or when the last person leaves

Hope to see you there…….

Souvenir Challenges

Wheel of Challenges

Aprils Wheel of Challenges finishes on April 30th, there are only a few days left to reach the maximum cache find score of a 100 to qualify for all 3 souvenirs.
Are you ready to start the next challenge which starts on May 1st?

Mays Wheel of Challenges starts on May 1st and runs to June 4th, there are just 2 souvenirs to earn, easy and hard. To earn the easy souvenir you must earn 100 points, to earn the hard souvenir you must reach 1000 points. To help you keep track of your current point total it will be shown on your leaderboard. Here are this months point values :

Found a cache with 10+ Favorite points20
Received a Favorite point on an owned geocache50
Found it*10
*Log a Found it on any cache type including Adventure Lab® Locations

Blue Switch Day 2023

Prior to 2000, the U.S. military created and deployed satellites to produce accurate location information for military applications. Selective Availability restricted precise GPS data to the U.S. government. On May 2nd, 2000, the U.S. government “flipped the switch” and made accurate GPS available to all. The very next day, May 3rd, the first geocache was hidden.

Earn the Blue Switch Day 2023 souvenir by finding a geocache, Adventure Lab® Location, or by attending an Event between May 1st–3rd.

CITO, Let’s Make Spaces for Wildlife

GCA5MYF CITO 2023 Season 1, Let’s Make Spaces for Wildlife by 9 Usual Suspects

This was the first 9 Usual Suspect CITO event that did not involve picking up litter. The activities ranged from making bat/bird boxes, insect/beetle buckets, bee-friendly seed bombs, nearly every attendee took something home.

Please let us know if your bat/bird boxes attract any residents and how many bees enjoy the flowers from the seed bombs.

Again we must thank everyone for attending and helping to make another successful 9 Usual Suspects event. A special mention goes to Bess’s Friends (Ray, the Woodwork Teacher and Julie) for all their hard work in manufacturing the bird/bat box, insect house kits and help in organising this event.

News & New Caches 83

Only one new cache and an event reminder to report since our last post

GCA6GGX The Old Boathouse by Glaslyn1 Traditional D2.5/T3 Premium Member Only

Event Reminder

GCA5MYF CITO 2023 Season 1, Let’s Make Spaces for Wildlife by 9 Usual Suspects

We have a wide variety of activities planned, from making bat/bird boxes, insect/beetle buckets, bee-friendly seed bombs and learning to recognise the diverse wildlife that surrounds us while out geocaching.

We will be suppling all materials and tools, the Cache Bar will be open with drinks available on a self service basis and it wouldn’t be a 9 US event without cake!

When: Friday 7th April, 2023 (Good Friday)
Where: Plas Gwernoer, Nantlle, Caernarfon LL54 6BB
Time: 2.00-4.00pm

To help us with planning the day please remember to log a ‘will attend’ stating the number of adults and children that will be attending.

Favourite Points

What are favourite points? Favourite points are a Premium member only feature. On subscribing to Premium membership you are given one favourite point, then for every 10 caches you find one point is given to you to be awarded to a favourite found cache. These points can be awarded to any type of cache except events, even though Adventure Labs stages count as a ‘find’ they are not counted towards earning favourite points.

The purpose of favourite points is to highlight the best, fun or most interesting geocaches. This can be a very useful guide to finding great caches when visiting a new area. A recent upgrade to the Geocaching® app allows players to see highly favourited caches at a glance, with the favourite point total shown above the cache icon on the map.

The most favourited cache in our area with currently 503 points is
GC5F13 Where is Snowdon Summit??? by GammaBoo Virtual D1/T1.5 Placed 16.5.2002

As a cache owner it is always nice to receive favourite points, especially when you have put a lot of effort to find a hide for a special container. But how many logs have you received promising a favourite point that never materialises?

After feedback from a recent post it has become apparent that there are two types of geocachers when it comes to favourite points, awarders and hoarders.

Team Marzipan are definitely one of the best awarders
‘We award lots of favourite points! But only if we think they merit it by our standards!!!! Have to keep retrieving them from archived caches.’

With Harry the furry squid coming out as top hoarder
‘I currently have 1267 unused favourite points. Have started awarding them a little bit more often since having a regular caching partner – “Which of that series gets the FP?” is a regular topic in the car on the way home!’

Are you an Awarder or a Hoarder?