We are fortunate to live in a very beautiful part of the world. The Wye Valley and Forest of Dean are stunning. The Brecon Beacons are nearby and I absolutely adore them. I recently met a Yorkshire Rambler in Piercefield Park who told me he would never move back because you just can't match the peace, quiet and seclusion you get in this area as the Lake District is visited by millions of tourists every year.

It's a double edged sword though. On the plus side with only one other serious cacher in the area we have pretty much the choice of all the fabulous locations to hide new caches. On the minus side we almost never get new caches in the area and when we do it's just one in it's own, so you can't link a few together and make a day of it.

The most depressing thing for me is when you travel 50 miles to go caching, with all the fuel costs and Severn Bridge toll, just to get to an area with caches that isn't a patch on where you live. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often, but it does happen and that's when I usually take a break from caching for a while.

We did have a local cacher place three caches last summer. The first was so poor that I didn't have any inclination to do any more by that cacher. The second was archived as it was in such poor taste and the third sits undone by us - and always will. There are other reasons we refuse to do this cache too, but I won't go into them here. This brings me on to my next rambling.

I used to let some things get me hot under the collar, but don't let them worry me now.

We have a couple of caches round here that are in arbitary locations in the forest, infact one is in one of the ugliest forest locations I know. The Forest of Dean is famous for it's Oaks and broad leafs, so why chose a bunch of uprooted pine trees amongst stringing nettles in view of some council houses? Despite this you still get logs praising these caches! I find it bizzare. For some people the main criteria of a good cache is not having to walk more than a few hundred yards.