2025 - What's going on this year? - Geocaching with MKGees

Objectives

So here is my diary for 2025.

These used to be caching diaries, but seeing as I’ve started using this site to describe my exploits with running parkruns and climbing Wainwrights, then I guess the annual summary needs to be restyled to suit.

2025 got off to a moderate start. I am still settling into living in the East Midlands instead of Milton Keynes, if I’m honest. Things just don’t feel right yet, partly due to the ongoing saga of atempting to sell the house in Milton Keynes. Nothing will feel quite right until then, I suspect.

But back at the plot….. I’ve done my best to get out and about a little bit and have definitely re-engaged with the parkrun side of things. I made two trips to the Lake District to do some Wainwrights (but relatively little geocaching) and I also made a trip over to the north of The Netherlands to attend the “Kings and Queens” Mega Event in Assen. On top of that there was a whistlestop trip to London for this year’s London Calling event.

Statistics

January – 133 finds
February – 1549 finds
March – 311 finds
April – 4237 finds
May – 438 finds
June – 825 finds
July – 51 finds
August – 48 finds
September – 81 finds
October – 671 finds
November – 69 finds
December – 99 finds

Geocaching Summary

So there we have my in-progress 2025 Caching Diary. So what have I actually achieved:

A total of 8,512 finds, most of which were lab stages
No new countries
A new personal best of 1,381 at the Cheshire Cat, again mainly labs
31 days ticked off my Shifty Fifty Challenge
10 days of more than 100 finds

I was going to attempt to become eligible for the 360 Degree Challenge cache in Northamptonshire, because that sounded reasonable. In the event though, I didn’t get much further through it.

Likewise, I also didn’t add any new English or Welsh counties. I would have done, but work got in my way at the start of August and I ended up cancelling a holiday in Bristol to visit Piratemania and the UK Mega. That meant no trip to the South-West, and hence no extra counties done.

parkrun Summary

I started off the year running quite slowly. New Year’s Day at Conkers took me 37:36. As the year went by I improved quite a lot in the summer, running a best for the year at Jubilee in Bedford, at 29:41. So what were my parkrun numbers then:

Total runs completed: 47
New courses completed: 22
First lap of the alphabet completed, and I’m over halfway to a second lap too.
Passed 50 total courses completed, finishing the year on 56

Wainwrights Summary

Two trips (one full week and one of four days) saw me add 26 new Wainwrights to my tally, taking me somewhere into the forties. Enough, in fact, that I can start tracking them as a possible achievement, rather than seeing them as something I’ve done occasionally and never continued.

I won’t list them all, as you can see them in the individual posts. The main characteristics though, is that I did mainly quite low ones. On the first trip I was with Ami and she wanted to focus on doing lots of fairly small ones (neither of us is really accomplished at this point). On my second trip I was alone and I focused on doing ones that Ami had done the previous Easter with Kas, and again they were mainly quite small. I didn’t quite finish all of them though, so I’m a few behind Ami. That leaves some leeway for a couple of trips on my own though, to grab a few more. Ami’s done four more than me. To be honest, on that second trip I stopped after 2 full days and two half days, mainly because my legs ached and the weather turned a bit grim.