Ed's Circuit

Ed's Circuit is a series of 16 geocaches laid on a circular walk from Compton.  It is clearly a popular series of caches to do as the footfall of previous seekers has worn extra paths to some of them....



Last weekend we did the first 7 caches and today we decided to risk the rain and return to finish it.  Started with an extra one in the grounds of Compton Church and then headed down the road to No 16 and from there round the circuit in reverse order all the way back to where we finished up last weekend.

On the way round we liberated an African Mask trackable which headed out on its travels at the start of this year in Rhône-Alpes, France and we will now move on to a new home.

We timed it well, only having a few mins of rain now and again to interrupt the sunshine and had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours walking through some really lovely countryside.

Logged a total of 10 cache finds - a new "personal best" daily find score :-)

Also pleased to note that the number of caches left to find to complete my 2012 challenge ( to find all of the ones within 5 miles of our house) now stands at 99 - first time below 100.

Half a century of geocaching

I noticed that I have now passed the half century milestone and found over 50 geocaches since I started back in June last year.  For those not familiar with the concept of Geocaching - Wikipedia describes it as "an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world." Astonishingly there are some 1,689,466 geocaches worldwide according to the activity's home - www.geocaching.com

As with so many things, once you start you discover all sorts of benefits that you never imagined before.  Seeking to locate the caches is providing a wonderful incentive to get out and go for walks in the area and I'm discovering lots of parts of Winchester and surrounding countryside that I'd never explored before.  Looking to see if there are any caches nearby can also lead you to some surprising discoveries - such as the cache at the site of the old quarry at Leigh Delamare (East bound) services that I was introduced to the other week.

I recently paid the modest fee to become  "premium member" and hence access to lots of lovely statistics.

Here are my figures for the number of finds each month....

I've not found any really hard caches yet (though I have to say I've struggled to locate some of the ones I have found).

Most have been close to home but I've found a few further afield....

 ... and this accounts for the further afield ones....



My target for 2012 is to locate all of the caches within 5 miles of my house - as of today there are a total of 161 with 126 still to find.   Given the recent flurry of new ones that have been created in this area however it may prove a bit of a moving target so we shall have to see how we do but I'm looking forward to continuing to explore new parts of the lovely countryside round Winchester in the process.

"Let's do it"

Yesterday evening Carol and I paid our first visit to The Anvil in Basingstoke.  We were there to see Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag's show "Let's Do it".

It was a great evening of music, song and dance.  Elegant and impressive dances from Anton & Erin and their supporting dancers were interspersed with music from the orchestra and songs from Lance Ellington (one of the singers from Strictly).  As well as their intrinsic entertainment value these gaps provided the time for Erin to change her way through a bewildering array of dresses.

During the second half there was a Question and Answer session - the audience having been invited to write questions down and post them into a box in the Foyer during the interval.   In response to the selected questions we got toning advice from the 2011 "Rear of the Year", insights into favourite dances and dancers, a discussion on shoes, and some reflections on Riverdance.  All delivered in an engaging and fun way.

A lesson in how not to sell courtesy of a lady who said she was from BT

Had a really curious call this afternoon from a lady who said she was from BT. We use BT as our broadband provider and she said that she was calling to offer us a deal on the new BT Infinity service which it appears is now available in our area. Problem 1 was that the place where she was calling from was so noisy that it was difficult to hear what she was saying over the background hubbub. Then she started to ask me questions about which calling plan I was on, whether I made many calls during the day or whether I mainly used the phone in the evening. In other words she was asking me to describe in BT's product language what my service was. Stuck me that this is asking quite a lot of your customers - much better I would think to talk to them in their language rather than yours. I expressed surprise that having phoned me she didn't have such details to hand. At this point she cited the data protection act as the reason why she couldn't know which service I had, my calling profile etc! Most odd. Companies clearly can know about their customers and have discussions with them about their service/ account etc so I'm left a bit bemused as to why she would have been told the root problem was the data protection act. At this point part of me even began to question whether she was indeed from BT but in any event it seemed like a good time to say goodbye and return to playing a game of Rameses' Pyramid with my daughters.

It's not always about leadership

I recently came across this video on YouTube which suggests that we shouldn't neglect the importance of the "first follower" in the success of a movement or change. I like the idea that it's not always about leadership but that people being willing to step forward and be the first follower are also key. We tend to focus a lot of learning on "Leadership" and this video has made me wonder if perhaps there shouldn't be more on "following" as well. As they put it so eloquently in the video ...."When you find a lone nut doing something great have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in." How many times in an organisation do we recognise and reward these key "first followers"? I suspect the answer is - not enough.

My first Geocaching Travel Bug

I was recently over in America visiting IBM's Learning Centre in Armonk (New York State).   I stayed one night at the Holiday Inn Express in Fishkill and visited the geocache  in the Van Wyke Homestead
where I found Sparky the travel bug.

 

Sparky was keen to travel around and see National Parks so I thought he could come back with me and see some of the lovely National Parks in the UK.

So he joined me on a British Airways flight back from Newark to Heathrow

Last week we tried to place him in a cache but it turned out to be a bit small and damp - definitely not the quality of accommodation that Sparky had become used to on his travels so far.  Today however we headed up onto Twyford Down and the "Bear Necessities of Life" Cache where he will have the company of lots of bears until he moves on to his next destination.  

I've subscribed to his profile and will now watch with great interest to see where he gets to next.

Bye bye Sparky - it was good having you stay with us :-)

New Wine - Central and South West #NWCSW11

Today has been a day of unpacking, sorting, putting away etc following a fantastic week at this year's New Wine Conference - which marked for us a decade of attending this annual event.

I spent the week working as part of the medical team - one of the 1000+ volunteers who work on various teams to make the event happen.  Overall attendance at the event was probably somewhere over 12,000 people!

I had worked as a first aider on the medical team 2 years ago and it was great to catch up with some familiar faces and meet some new people this year.  The team is mix of first aiders, nurses, paramedics, doctors who come together to pool their experience and provide medical cover for the event.

The New Wine CSW event is held at the Royal Bath and West Showground near Shepton Mallet and it is a sobering thought that the number of people attending probably comfortably exceeds the local population. Clearly, were the delegates to try and access the existing healthcare provision in the area it would be swamped so the aim of the medical team is to provide a wide range of care while people are at the event.  This results in a medical centre on site that is a cross between First Aid room, GP Surgery and A&E Department which makes for a very interesting mix.

As a First Aider I clearly lack the depth of medical skill and knowledge of the professionals on the team but  none the less it was an intensely satisfying experience and an opportunity to use some of the limited skills I do have and gain some new ones.  It's also true that medical skills aren't always what's needed.  For example, being by the main door and welcoming people into the medical centre, finding out why they've come, capturing the right information and arranging for them to be triaged by one of the nurses.

At last year's New Wine I decided to set myself the target of reading through all 66 books of the Bible over the next year.   I found a reading plan  that nicely themed each day of the week and set about following that - I'm delighted to report that I finished the task on the first day of this year's New Wine :-)

I think this was the first New Wine where I've seen a Twitter hashtag advertised - #NWCSW11.  Setting up a quick search on Twitter enabled me to see a range of posts from people at the event which was great.  Also led me to a blog which has a good mix of entries that capture some of the essence of the event.

As ever it was a great, enjoyable, spirit filled and uplifting week - hard to imagine that we won't be back next year.