Down the Smoke – Geocaching in The Big City
London is a big city. Well, it’s the biggest in the UK. It’s also quite close to where I used to live, and as a result I’ve been caching down the smoke on a number of occasions.
London has been host to a number of events I’ve attended, especially the London Calling ones (see London Calling 2021, London Calling 2023 and London Calling 2025, but also I’ve had a number of days where I’ve just been there for a day of caching in urban conditions rather than going to the countryside.
This tactic is particularly useful in the winter, because in London you can find loads without getting your shoes dirty. But then equally, it’s good in the summer too, when you can have a nice long day at it.
Since the advent of the Adventure Labs concept, London has become much more friendly and productive for geocaching, which is no bad thing. The problem with “proper” geocaches is that you have to search for them, and in much of London that can make you look suspicious. Or “professionally inconspicuous” as I like to think of geocaching.
Ups and Downs
Caching down the smoke obviously has some downsides. Physical caches tend to be quite widely spread and don’t form neat loops you can walk in. Adventure Labs tend to be intermingled and some of the series in London are spread quite far apart. That can mean a disproportionately large amount of walking per cache compared to the countryside. Being urban, most of the physical caches are also tiny and/or attached to dirty objects.
However, it’s a big place and despite all the visits here I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve really only been to the West End a few times. I’ve not spread outside the city centre much at all. Plenty left to go at.
And a definite upside of caching “Down the Smoke” is that the average Londoner couldn’t care less. Londoners when they’re out on the street are not unfriendly, but their definitely distant and non-interfering. So that means that unless you’re openly causing a ruck, you tend to be ignored. That doesn’t often happen in the countryside, where the frequency of passing pedestrians is so low that it’s a novelty worthy of scrutiny.
Individual Posts
So here are all the individual posts I’ve made about days of geocaching in London.
