Geocaching....

[Meadowcopse]

I found one listed online when I was doing an internet search on a woodland plot I help look after in the middle of nowhere, half a mile from the nearest road. A trig point had been chosen in the middle of the plot to place the 'find'

I found another with the hedge-trimmer, along the private access to my own plot.
A black waterproof container had been hung around a tree branch in the hedge on a long length of thin green pvc coated iron garden wire.

Land access can be debated on many levels and from many stand points, but I have reservations about trying to find small containers at a 'competitive' level on private land and all the various risks and liabilities.
As it might be 'fun' for children to do, by being a minor they are exempted from a lot of aspects of risk awareness that an adult may be reasonably expected to perceive.

[Rankinswood]

This is the first time that I have heard of this nuisance but might expalin why I have seen an increase in offroad cyclists riding through local woodlands.

If someone comes onto your property and leaves junk then in my book that is fly tipping and that is a criminal offence. The council will not uplift flytip dumped on an owners land but they are obliged to uplift this from roadside so I will leave it to you to figure out how to get rid of unwanted junk deposited on your land. If the trespasser(s) persists with placing these devices against the woodland owners wishes then this could possibly be seen as harassment - once again a criminal offence.

If a land owner allows these items to remain on his land then he is beginning to wave his ownership rights over that land. That is how public footpaths become established. If you don't want this to happen then make a Highways 316 declaration with the local maps officer to prevent a footpath or byeway from becoming established due to persistent tresspass.

Can someone post a picture of what these devices look like for the great uniformed ?

Rankinswood

[SimonFisher]

Can someone post a picture of what these devices look like for the great uniformed ?

A box or container that will keep the log book and goodies dry, often a plastic food container, see https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=geocache&tbm=isch

[Dexter's Shed]

This is the first time that I have heard of this nuisance but might expalin why I have seen an increase in offroad cyclists riding through local woodlands.

If someone comes onto your property and leaves junk then in my book that is fly tipping and that is a criminal offence. The council will not uplift flytip dumped on an owners land but they are obliged to uplift this from roadside so I will leave it to you to figure out how to get rid of unwanted junk deposited on your land. If the trespasser(s) persists with placing these devices against the woodland owners wishes then this could possibly be seen as harassment - once again a criminal offence.

If a land owner allows these items to remain on his land then he is beginning to wave his ownership rights over that land. That is how public footpaths become established. If you don't want this to happen then make a Highways 316 declaration with the local maps officer to prevent a footpath or byeway from becoming established due to persistent tresspass.

Can someone post a picture of what these devices look like for the great uniformed ?

Rankinswood

at last, someone talking sense

[oldclaypaws]

Geocaching may sound like great fun, sending the kids out cycling to discover the countryside, but if done in a haphazard fashion by a naive individual it could be a disaster and I can see all sorts of liability issues. Woodlands would appear to be a favourite location, because by their nature they conceal the object and there are more places to hide it.

Suppose someone pushes through my hedge without consent and places a cache in the wood, and a couple of local 8 year olds come out cycling to try and find it. Firstly, you're half a mile away from the nearest house so if you get into trouble its a long way for a rescue party and there are no distinct landmarks.

So here are the two little scamps having a great time scrabbling round my wood. Unfortunately they dont know that one area still has a large number of broken bottles in the undergrowth left by the travellers. There are also various bits of wire in the ground to trip over and the odd snapped branch making a nice stake to impale yourself on(I did that one myself as a kid), and theres the odd bicycle part, car bit and metal sheeting protruding from the ground. Trip or fall on one of those and it could be a serious injury. My log heaps are large, loose, and not designed to be climbed on, if they rolled, you could get crushed. Maybe the cache is inside a log heap? There are those interesting blue berries on the plants on the roadway. Why not see what they taste like? One single berry will kill you (honestly); its deadly nightshade and I've several growing wild in the wood. I've also found a nice greeney white mushroom, its a destroying angel, one bite will kill you. And if it rained heavily over the previous couple of days, I get a couple of feet of water in the bottom of the very slippery old clay pits, enough to drown a child. Sometimes I have the embers of a fire still smouldering and might have forgotten to take the fuel can home, what happens if we put some on the fire? Theres a tractor going along the outside of the hedge doing something, shall we go and have a look? Whats the big whirring thingy coming towards us?

If any harm comes to these adventurers, I suppose its me that's liable? Maybe I was negligent putting up a sign 'private' because these kids aren't British and can't read English? If they are Eastern European, 'privet' is Russian for "Nice to see you!".

[Zathras]

If a geocache has been placed in an inappropriate place in ignorance to the fact it is private land or dangerous then simply ask for it to be moved.
Job done.

Seems to be a lot of what-if's being talked about here, but I haven't heard of any actual negative interactions between land owners and the geocaching community - apart from the affront to the bare faced cheekiness of being on our land in the first place and encouraging unwanted visitors, which I understand completely (I myself suffered actual loss and serious issues from unwelcomed visitors recently) but seems like we're heading into the realms of making a mountain out of a mole hill to me.

[Stephen1]

I'm not too anxious about the liability issues. Many insurance companies, no doubt Beechwood excepted and perhaps RAP also, like folk to imagine any incident happening on your land is your responsibility - but the onus is on the idiot that's come a cropper to prove you were negligent.

For me it's the privacy and ground flora impact that is the issue. I'd much rather such a thing didn't happen - it's clearly an infringement of the rights I should have gained when parting with what was to me a big wad of cash for a 152 acres - if I'd bought a coupe of Ferraris no doubt my ownership of these assets would be protected by the police - but ownership of land is de facto different, if not actually different in terms of the letter of the law.

I wish I could stop it but ultimately like many other forms of trespass I can't - so I make the best of the situation. Even if I were to spend 25 hours a day 'policing' the woods or hire a gamekeeper - other people will use the land. Best I can in reality hope for is compromise. I spent the first few years of woodland ownership ruining the experience for myself by demanding and acting to enforce my exclusive rights, but with experience came to terms with the reality of land ownership as opposed to almost any other form of ownership. I don't have the exclusive access I'd fantasised was the case if you bought a wood, but I don't go mad with stressing over other people doing essentially harmless stuff either. Of course physical damage or theft is different and I'll pursue that. This works for me but I don't suggest everyone should do it this way, or that this approach would suit everyone's personality/character/whatever - we're all different!

".. grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."

to probably misquote someone or other!

And as I said the geocachers I dealt with were a reasonable bunch and were more than happy to compromise on the location

[Dexter's Shed]

I wanted to find out if we had any of these sites on our woods, as a few weeks ago whilst driving around the rides to visit another plot holder, I noticed a "rambler" type person walking on the public footpath, I parked up and walked to the corner that the path goes around and looked up along it, you can see a good 200mtrs, but no rambler, so I walked further up, to hear him crashing through the undergrowth, as he came out I gave him the few choice words that I wont repeat, he tried saying he was studying bluebells for a college course, likely story as the bluebells had finished flowering, but could he have been geocaching? other plot holders think it was a drugs drop off or pick up, I think the idea of totally fencing this footpath either side is a good idea, some already have along their boundaries, we just may have to follow suit

[Zathras]

...but could he have been geocaching? other plot holders think it was a drugs drop off or pick up, I think the idea of totally fencing this footpath either side is a good idea, some already have along their boundaries, we just may have to follow suit

Could be either or anything else besides such as finding a toilet location but embarrassed to say.

To find out if there is a cache nearby go have a look on the main geocache site and do a search.
The majority of caches are publicly listed, although there are some only available/listed to paying members.

[Meadowcopse]

Not a mountain out of a molehill if there are joint ownership or shared access issues and a history of unwelcome visitors or vandalism.
To place an item listed on a public forum (geocaching.com) that encourages folks to root around private land, trampling vegetation in conservation projects and poking around buildings that may otherwise go unnoticed is a bit out of order.