Friday September 16, 2005

No cars in Brussels on Sunday!

Sunday September 18, 2005 all cars are banished here in Brussels (and in many other cities all over the country)! It is the 10th time the European Mobility Week is organized with a car-free day on Sunday. The roads will be kept (almost) free from 8AM till 7PM.
At the same time the Train, Tram and Bus day is organized. For a nominal fee (€8.50) Belgians can buy a ticket entitling them to travel anywhere in the country using the public transport.
So why not go out geocaching by public transport! Come to Brussels, there are a lot of caches waiting for you!

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Fading Ads (GC7F94)

Today I found a rather special fading ad. It is an ad painted on the side wall of a house in Schaerbeek (Belgium) for an insurance company RCT that was making publicity for a product named "risk cover for war" (=risques de guerre). People could see it in those days (before 1940) from the train. But, as soon as World War II started the company stopped its activity! I logged it as a locationless cache.

Saturday September 10, 2005

Caching with Skree

Today I went caching with an American geocacher. His ID is Skree, he is a member of GEOCKY, a group of geocachers in Kentucky (USA) but nowadays he is living in Leuven, Belgium.
We did the "Quinque Altaria" cache, a walk of 8 km with 16 WP's. Although we did not find WP12, we could continue our way to the stash that was easily found. Skree brought a Jeep 4x4 Travel Bug from the States. I was glad to grabb it. It will soon be placed in another Belgian cache.

Friday September 9, 2005

WAAS/EGNOS enable

I received this morning a message telling me that in Europe EGNOS was operational. So I took my GPS (I have a GPSmap 60C from Garmin) and changed the settings in "WAAS/EGNOS enabled". The result was surprising: I became my home co-ordinates with an accuracy of 1 meter!


So you all know what to do: put on the EGNOS signal and ... go geocaching!

Thursday September 8, 2005

Once again a FTF!

A new cache online: Tervuren by Bike! And not so far away from home. Could I be the first to find it? Let's give it a try.


It is a bycicle ride of 11 km. Not bad. But during the preparation at home I found already a lot of data I needed to find the final coordinates. So I only had to visit a few waypoints to find the stash. I started at WP9 and could easily find WP11, 10 and 12 in that order. Then I had to find WP4 and there I had to recognize a picture. That was easy, and as I was nearby I found also (although it was not necessary) the WP5, 6 and 7. With these data I could locate the stash and after a short ride I was searching in the wood the box. I discover it at 12.45h and ... logged a FTF!
Once again it was proven: a good preparation at home is sometimes very helpfull!

Wednesday September 7, 2005

2 long walks

This morning I did 2 caches.
"Broekelei" (GCQAXK) was the first. A walk of almost 6 km through a quiet nature along 10 waypoints. The answers to the questions were easy to find and so was the stash. I logged after a bit more of one hour at 10.00h.
The second one, "De Samenvloeiing", made me discover something I had not seen before: a anti-tank canal. With the data I found there I could decrypt 3 WP's and after visiting these, I could easily locate the stash. Here I logged at 12.25h.
After these 2 long walks I decided to return home, although I had more cache descriptions with me. But the weather was just to warm to continue ...

Sunday September 4, 2005

Back home

Yep, our holidays in Germany are over. But we were very lucky, the weather was just great. We enjoyed the hotel, the wellness, the beautiful region.


Although geocaching was not the first priority, I tried to find some caches. The best I did was "Der Schatz der alten Männer", searching WP's with a map and without a GPS ... but I had to log a DNF because I found only the East co-ordinates of the stash!


The caches I found were:
- Hochblauen, a multi ending on top of a point of view;
- Nix für schwache Augen, starting with a stereogram and ending in a castle;
- Schwarzwaldhaus 1902, a long walk passing at that old house once used for reality program of the German television.



This morning I found a new cache "nearby" my home co-ordinates. So I left home, made a beautiful walk in a wood an could log a FTF at 10.45 AM. It is great to be back home ...