How to Snag the Tag and the less than quiet country road ramble!

A couple of months ago I was reading one of Geocaching HQs weekly enews’ and saw an interesting article on Snag the Tag. Rather intrigued, being a big fan and collector of geocoins and travel bugs, I clicked through to the website to read the full article with interest.  

It’s always exciting when new elements are added to enhance the game, and I was quite surprised to see Snag the Tag had been running since 2018, yet it was the first time I had heard about it. I clearly don’t spend enough time in the Geocaching community forums.  

 

The idea – similar to the main game itself – is there are hiders and finders. Anyone can play, all you need to do is sign up to the Snag the Tag website www.snagthetag.com by creating a free account, with a username and password. Once on there you can set up alerts so that whenever a tag is hidden somewhere near you, you receive a message, and can race out to find it.  

 

The games seem to run every few months and when live, each game has a theme and different types of tags available to buy and hide, for others to go and find them.   

 

A hider purchases a pack of two tags from one of the officially designated Snag the Tag game stores, and in doing so also receives their own matching tag and an accompanying geocoin. The tags are magnetic and stick to the coin – both are really well made and designed, and nice to own, especially if you like collecting geocoins. 

 

The hider registers their own tag on the Snag the Tag website and then sets about hiding the other two tags – somewhere in keeping with the theme of the event.  

 

The theme of the most recent event, which ran from November – February, was High and Low.  The two tags issued featured Signal the Frog, one for High, called Signal Mars Rover and the other for Low, called Signal Submarine. I really liked both, so decided to jump straight in and become a hider of both sets of tags. 

 

Hiders all around the world took part and all seemed to approach the task of finding suitable hiding places for the two types of tags, in very different ways. For mine, I decided to try and find locations that were either associated with flying and outer space for the High tags and water, rivers etc for the Low tags. 

 

The packs of tags are a little pricey to purchase - around £40 for each type of tag available in the High and Low game - but the fact I got a nice geocoin and tag in each packet to keep, was great.  

 

Personally, I found the cost of taking part as a hider worthwhile, because I knew I was helping to add a little more fun to the wider geocaching game.

I also really enjoyed pouring over satellite maps and googling airports, runways, observatories, rivers and other big watery landmarks, as I tried to decide where to hide each of the tags - two High and two Low. It certainly got me out of the house on some cold winter days when I perhaps wouldn’t have gone out at all.  

 

Once I had decided on my various locations and found a suitable hiding spot at each of them, it was then just a case of inputting the coordinates on each tag’s page on the S&T website and drafting a brief write up on where I’d hidden them and how I was linking the locations to the theme of the game.  

 

After clicking submit each tag soon appeared on the worldwide map, so that finders could head out and grab them. And once they had been found and claimed, each finder was able to contact the shop which had sold the tag, and pay the small cost to get the accompanying geocoin sent out to them. 

 

However, I made a slight error on this! When I went to buy the tags the only shop in the UK that stocked them didn’t have any available, so I decided to see if I could purchase some from one of the other international retailers. 

I managed to find some available in an Australian shop, which was happy to post them internationally. I was delighted, but of course, I hadn’t realised that finders can also get a geocoin, and needed to purchase these from the same shop!  

 

Oh dear! Many apologies to those who found my tags and had to pay a bit more on international postage! Of course, the UK shop had some in a few days after I’d looked, so if I take part again, I’ll definitely wait until they’re in stock in the UK. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, and I can’t wait to see what the next event is, and hopefully take part again, possibly as a finder next time.  

 

Aside from hiding tags, I’ve been out on a few traditional geocaching excursions recently. The first was with my siter and my nieces 3ft and 4ft of team DannyJGB. We wanted a nice, short local walk to do, as it is a bit chilly for the youngsters to be outside too long at this time of the year.  

 

Just up the road a new linear series of caches called ‘Country Road Ramble’ had been published, along a small, narrow road linking the villages of Icklingham and Cavenham.

I know the road well as I’m always driving up and down it to go and see my vicar friend, so whilst talking my sister into going on this particular walk, I said, “It’ll be a nice walk”. “It’s a really quiet road, hardly any cars use it, so it’ll be like a country lane walk”. Little did I know that those words would soon come back to haunt me!  

 

We had of course picked the one day when some water maintenance workers had decided to completely close a section of the High Street in Tuddenham. They had put the ‘road ahead closed’ signs right up near Cavenham, which effectively directed everyone and their dog along ‘the quiet country road’.  

 

Oh, what fun we had trying to grab the caches. Every 30 seconds we were jumping onto the verge and doing battle with the hedgerow, as yet another car came speeding towards us.  

 

At one point, there were even articulated lorries, horse boxes, big vans and a bus trying to get past. And it wasn’t one way traffic either. Those trying to navigate the narrow road, which was barely wide enough for one vehicle, were also having to deal with masses of traffic coming the other way too!    

 

A walk to collect 10 caches, that probably should have taken an hour at most, took nearly three…most of which we spent standing on the grass verge, as those driving past grinned and occasionally waved at us!  

 

But…aside from the traffic mayhem…it was a nice new series of caches, and we found all but one of them. All were in good condition too and it was nice to find some small Tupperware boxes in amongst the smaller tubes and bisons. We will definitely return soon for the one that evaded us, albeit on a quieter day! 

  

My other recent trip out was to Downham Market in Norfolk. Norfolk cacher Poshrule has been rather busy of late, replacing some of his series’, including ‘Stowbridge Scuttle’. Hence, I decided it was time for another trip up there to do the walk along the huge river once more.  

 

Unfortunately, I picked a rather wet and chilly day for it, and consequently, I barely saw a soul all day as I walked along the river paths from a great little car park at Stow Bridge to the outskirts of Downham and back again.  

 

Despite the cold, it was an enjoyable walk and it helped me to get a little closer to the big 10k finds. Many of the caches were hidden next to the river markers and poles, so it was nice and easy to find them, but there were also some nice hides in some of trees along the east riverbank.  

 

As part of the walk also went right past the railway station, I was able to pick up the Side Tracked cache...always nice to collect another in that series. I only had one DNF along the whole route…and I think that was probably because I didn’t search long enough in the leaf litter. The rest were all lovely quick finds thanks to great hints and great coordinates. 

 

That’s all folks until next time, when we’ll be braving the winter weather on another riverside walk in Downham Market, finally collecting the devilishly brilliant ‘Vacancy’ mystery cache, and trying to stay warm by picking up some long-solved mysteries by car in South Cambs.