This event is for everyone - whether you've been to umpteen events previously and have found thousands of caches or if this is your first Geocaching event and can count your number of finds on one hand - you'll be most welcome to join us in what I hope will be a great social evening to chat about Geocaching ... and anything else probably!
The event will nominally start at 6.00 p.m. and will formally end at 9pm (though some may choose to stay later of course - there will be a DJ in residence after 9pm). If you wish to be included in a draw for the official FTF status your name will need to be in the hat by 7pm. The bar is family friendly until 9pm when children are no longer allowed. The time has also been arranged to allow for some local caching before hand for those wishing to do so while there is still daylight.
If you are approaching from the main street level entrance, look for the Geocaching signs to let you know where we are. There is also a wheelchair friendly rear entrance which opens direrctly into the upper floor area, where we will be.
I have arranged for us to have our own area, upstairs. Depending on number of will attend logs, we will either have a few reserved tables or if it appears that there are going to be quite a few of us, the entire upstairs area may be ours for a couple of hours. For this reason, please indicate how many you anticipate are coming in your group's will attend log so that I can gauge how much space to book.
Food is available from the bar until 8pm. A menu will shortly be provided on-line and linked to here
The venue is conveniently located right in the centre of Kilkenny City, just around the corner from the castle and there's plenty of things to do and see as well as Geocaching. There is ample parking within a short walking distance including street parking and a large pay and display car park (which is free after 6pm) 3 minutes walk from the venue.
The evening will be an opportunity to help Travel Bugs and Geocoins on their way, especially if anyone is off to an exotic destination in the near future. If you intend to bring a TB or two, please try to include details of the Bug and its objective in your attendance note, by dropping it into this event cache's inventory prior to attending.
There will also be an area where personal travel bugs/Geocoins can be placed for discovery. Here you will have the opportunity for others to see and discover your trackable, safe in the knowledge that people won't mistakenly take them at the end of the evening to be placed in a cache. Hezekiah has offered to bring a selection of Geoswag to be bought on the day.
I hope to have some simple activities on the day to help us get to know each other better (both for children and ... the grown up children!). More details on this, closer to the time. There may be a couple of intersting surprises I'm trying to pull together on the day too...
I can now confirm that there will definitely be a number of new caches going live in the area - some over the next 2 weeks and at least a couple for the event day itself. I'm not placing any of these - local cachers have offered to help.
There will be live trad music in the main bar downstairs during the evening and both bars will have a DJ for disco after 9 pm.
For those thinking of staying in the area overninght, the venue has a hostel literally across the back lane from where we will be meeting. This is all dormatory accomodation and there are no family rooms, however it only costs €20 a night (plus €10 if you're having breakfast) You will need to book ahead if you plan on doing this.
I have deliberately held this event in an area relatively central to southern Ireland (specifically, about 2 hours in each direction from Dublin and Cork to encourage cachers from all areas to come along and meet each other - though if you're coming from further afield or are a tourist who happens to be in the area - you'll be more than welcome to join the craic!