are there any in the uk

[+andreagl]

Hi everyone,

 

ive been geoaching now for 12 months and have just been reading about benchmarking on the Groundspeak web site. Please can you tell me if these are world wide like geocaches or just in the US? I live in Manchester in the UK and would love to give this a try it sounds really interesting

[+agentmancuso]

The short answer is 'yes', but in a slightly different format, in that the UK equivalent isn't linked to the Groundspeak empire in any way.

 

There are two sides to it - trigpoints and benchmarks. Trigpointing is more common - most people are familiar with the 4-foot concrete pillars that stand on many hilltops. Have a look at the sites - if you'd like any more details don't hesitate to let me know.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

andreagl -

 

Groundspeak runs the geocaching site, the benchmarking site, the Waymarking site, and some others.

 

The foundation of the benchmarking site is a position and description database obtained from the U.S. National Geodetic Survey in 2000. Its scope includes only the 50 U.S. states. People log the marks in this database (over 700,000 marks) but cannot add marks to it.

 

Groundspeak's Waymarking site includes benchmark waymark categories for different countries, including the U.K. and Ireland Trigpoints site.

[+agentmancuso]

Groundspeak's Waymarking site includes benchmark waymark categories for different countries, including the U.K. and Ireland Trigpoints site.

 

Waymarking is very poor compared to the two UK based sites. Crucially, Waymarking has no base data, whereas T:UK & Bench-marks.org.uk are both derived from data obtained directly from the Ordnance Survey itself. Waymarking depends entirely on user added points, a current total of about 2000. So unless you happen to live very near an active waymarker, you'll have to add any points manually yourself, which is a laborious and time-consuming process, run along a set of obscure rules apparently designed by committee. On T:UK the data is there for you already, and freely downloadable; there's no comparison in terms of user friendliness.