Whatever happened to...

On my way to Cornwall last weekend for a family holiday I stopped at a random cache in Gloucestershire (okay, not so random as I'd planned to stop there as it is just off of the M5 and I was passing, but you know what I mean) and I found this fellow...

Yes, somewhat battered (and blinded!) but still going, it's my own long-eliminated entry, The Exterminator!

What was especially surprising about this is that the little DALEK was logged into a cache in North-West Scotland! Since being the second elimination from The Great Travel Bug Knockout, with only 3.78 miles on the clock, the evil pepperpot has visited The Balearics, Germany, Austria, and toured much of Scotland.

Not all of the now-eliminated entries have been so lucky, Rag Zombie and My Little Eye made some modest moves before disappearing, while Scary Halloween Monster, Quatchi, Billy Bear Racer, Voodoo Whodo What You Don't Dare Do People and Happy Hoppy all vanished without trace before being eliminated from The Knockout.

What will happen to the next elimination?

It's okay, you can come out from behind the sofa now...

...Happy Humphrey's Scary Halloween Monster TB has been exorcised from The Great Travel Bug Knockout. Actually SHM has been missing for a while; could these lads be responsible?;

Now that's what I call really scary!

In other Knockout news, Jacaru's Knockout Ferrari Travel Bug keeps racing along; cacher composter1 placed the little sportscar in this cache on historic U.S. Route 101, adding 32¼ miles to it's distance travelled. It was retrieved the very same day by Californian cacher, shakenbake47.

Scroll to bottom of this page for official Knockout placings.

Knockout Ferrari squeezes a litte more milage out of it's tank

5...4...3...2...1...

Longtime California-based cacher kmfriend retrieved Jacaru's Knockout Ferrari Travel Bug from Ice Cant See the Tide From Here and placed it into this cache 2.06 miles away, from where KF was collected the same day by fellow Californian composter1.

Meanwhile, with 24 hours to go until Elimination Day in The Great Travel Bug Knockout, Happy Humphrey's missing Scary Halloween Monster has barely a ghost of a chance of surviving...

Scroll down to bottom of this page for updated Knockout placings

BraveHeart retrieved already, 2 days left for Scary Halloween Monster?

5...4...3...2...1...

Good news for current Knockout leader, Blid435's BraveHeart Travel Bug which has already been retrieved by newbie cachers TheHamiltonsNZ, on their very first day of caching.

Bad news for Happy Humphrey's Scary Halloween Monster TB which is still missing without trace. Possibly it's like a trackable Germelshausen and only reappears every Halloween...

Scroll to bottom of this page for updated official Knockout placings

BraveHeart back in a cache, Scary Halloween Monster still AWOL

5...4...3...2...1...

Despite the Christchurch earthquake disaster on New Zealand's South Island, caching has continued on the North Island, with cacher cabhassett placing Blid435's Braveheart Travel Bug into this cache in Taupo township on the northern shore of New Zealand's largest lake, Lake Taupo. As this is the 5th cache that Braveheart has visited whilst in the possession of cabhassett, no distance has been added due to the only the first dip counts rule, despite which BH has still travelled more than twice as far as it's closest competitor in The Great Travel Bug Knockout.

Unfortunately nothing more has been heard from Happy Humphrey's Scary Halloween Monster Travel Bug, meaning that SHM is currently the most likely TB to be kicked out of the Knockout at the March 1st Elimination.

Scroll to bottom of this page for current Knockout placings.

Playing catch-up!

I'm back!

I'm sorry for the lack of updates over the last week, but computer bugs have intervened. Nevermind, The Great Travel Bug Knockout is still in full swing, but not for thejellybabies' My Little Eye TB, whose hopes blinked out on February 1st. Bizarrely enough, someone has sinced logged a retrieval on it, but too late!

Other movers and shakers over the last week have been;

Hediya's Love and Peace (Maan) Travel Bug, which has been retrieved by Canadian cachers teammelbert;

cooper troopers' the noble traveller TB, which was placed into this cache in a northern suburb of Paris,  adding 164.45 miles to it's distance travelled and moving up one place in the overall Knockout rankings. Only 4 days later tnt was retrieved by French cacher daniel95. Mention of the noble traveller gives me a good excuse to use this picture;

of tnt before being placed in it's starting cache. Always nice to add an extra photo to the blog!

Another Bug to add to it's distance travelled was Wemnog's The Skylark which was placed into this popular TB hotel, adding 110.83 miles to it's distance travelled. Local East Midlands cacher plantsman soon retrieved the little dinghy and moved it along to this well-researched Derbyshire cache, adding a further 17.28 miles, giving The Skylark an official Knockout distance travelled of 242.99 miles.

Finally, what could be described as a negative move rather than a positive one, as Happy Humphrey's Scary Halloween Monster has been marked missing and I've therefore marked the frightening little TB as current whereabouts unknown. This is especially relevant as SHM is in 15th and last place of the surviving entries in The Great Travel Bug Knockout.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page for official Knockout placings.

A bit of everything; placements, retrievals, grabbing, missing and disallowed milage!

Relative newbies to caching, rallisalli & hawkeye, who claim that their occupation is having fun (my kind of job!) have retrieved cooper troopers' the noble traveller from Round The Bend From Yonder Man! They also took possession of oceanblue07970's Half Hearted Travel Bug by grabbing it from this Derbyshire cache near the famous village of Eyam. Half Hearted had been placed into this cache by newbie cacher the-scout, who may or may not be related to the TBs owner ;-)

After a little argy-bargy with Half Hearted being grabbed back and logged in and out and so-forth, the end result is an opening distance of 13.84 miles being recorded for the broken-hearted trackable, almost enough to jump it into the Top Ten entries in The Great Travel Bug Knockout.

There's been a second instance of disallowed milage, as cacher Baira has transferred Happy Humphrey's Scary Halloween Monster TB from her temporarily disabled In Search Of The Golden Cache #4 to Keep Crossing Clear. As Baira has already moved this entry, the resulting 29 hundredths of a mile will not count. You may scoff, but that could be sufficient distance to keep a Bug from elimination...

Finally, a cacher has reported that Smart451's Smart Car 10 Knockout Racer has gone missing from Edinburgh's Crag & Tail cache. I'm currently in the process of attempting to track down this TB's whereabouts, and hopefully will have soon heard back from whoever has taken it.

Blid435 does it Joe Cocker style but Humphrey is Happiest!

The Cache Owners of jack-s-dales-1st cache, two fat pigs, are good friends and regular PAFsters of Blid435 and have retrieved his BraveHeart Travel Bug to move along.

Meanwhile, Baira has placed Hediya's Love and Peace (Maan) TB into this cache and Happy Humphrey's  Scary Halloween Monster into this one, both in the central English city of Nottingham. This gives Love and Peace (Maan) a distance of 17.2 miles travelled and Scary Halloween Monster a distance of 17.28 miles covered, that extra 0.08 of a mile sufficient to give SHM the current lead in The Great Travel Bug Knockout.

Finally for today, Grizzly Pair have placed their Quatchi - Grizzly's Knockout Racer TB into this cache on the outskirts of the Derbyshire town of Long Eaton, not far from the M1, one of the UK's major motorways.

The first two retrievals (or possibly three?)

Nottingham cacher Baira has retrieved both Happy Humphrey's Scary Hallowween Monster and Hediya's Love and Peace (Maan) Travel Bugs from Skeg to Ness #99.

It's also possible that castlegrice's George's Fun Bus 2 TB has been retrieved from Skeg to Ness #105, as a finder yesterday logged taking a TB, but hasn't actually logged GFB2 out of the cache. I've emailed the cacher in question to inquire whether he spotted castlegrice's trackable in the cache and I am awaiting reply.

Oddly enough, I've just realised that I bagged FTF on both Skeg to Ness #99 and Skeg to Ness #105. Small geocaching world, eh?

Placements: Safe and Risky!

No sooner has Hediya entered The Great Travel Bug Knockout than she has placed her Love and Peace (Maan) Travel Bug into this cache in the Nottinghamshire section of the controversial, but generally excellent and much-visited, multi-Cache Owner Skeg to Ness mega-series. At the same time Happy Humphrey took the opportunity to place his Scary Halloween Monster TB into the same cache. Could this be a mistake or masterstroke? Two TBs in the same cache could attract more finders, but maybe the finders will choose one TB over the other...

Intriguingly enough, castlegrice have also chosen to place their George's Fun Bus 2 Travel Bug into another cache in the Skeg to Ness series, only 6 caches further along! Will all three entries be retrieved by the same cacher?

So much for the safe options, cooper troopers have taken the risky move of placing their the noble traveller TB into an unpublished cache off of the B5057 near Darley Dale. If the cache is quickly published then there will be guaranteed visitors, but if the cache is not promptly listed at geocaching.com, then it could sit in limbo for some time... a risky gamble, but it could pay-off.

EDIT: 1/1/10; As the cache has now been published, I've edited out the link to the map and added a link to Darley Dale. STP