We’re pleased to announce that our tickets and on-the-day merchandise have launched. As in previous years, we ticket for entry into the main London Calling events to help cover the cost of venue hire and so forth. We recommend purchasing your tickets in advance, as that way the funds can go towards this year’s event. They are £7 in advance and £12 on the day. Carers and accompanied children aged 15 or under do not require an entry ticket.
Also launched are our Supporters Packs. We’ve made it simpler this year, going from three levels of packs to two – our Supporters Pack and our Platinum Supporters Pack.
The Supporters Pack contains: 1x London Calling 2025 Event Day Coin 1x London Calling 2025 Pathtag (exclusive to the two supporters packs) 1x Set of three London Calling woodies (exclusive to the two supporters packs)
The Platinum Supporters Pack contains: 1x London Calling 2025 Event Day Coin 1x London Calling 2025 Platinum Edition Event Day Coin (exclusive to the Platinum Packs) 1x Exclusive Platinum Supporters Pack T-shirt (with new trackable code, and an exclusive design) 1x London Calling 2025 Pathtag (exclusive to the Supporters Packs) 1x London Calling 2025 Platinum Pathtag (exclusive to the Platinum Packs) 1x Set of three London Calling woodies (exclusive to the Supporters Packs) 1x Additional exclusive Platinum Supporters Pack item
Also: Exclusive early access to London Calling 2025 from 10:30 am onwards. (General admission at 11 am)
There are a limited 100 Platinum Supporters Packs available.
In the run-up to each London Calling, we’ve launched a London-themed Signal the Frog coin. Back in 2021, it was our first proper geocoin, with our Signal Guardsman coins. Then before London Calling 2023 last time, we launched our Sherlock Signal coins.
We’re doing it once again, this time around we’ve chosen to theme our Signal coins around London’s famous Pearly Kings and Queens, known collectively as the Pearlies. These iconic characters of London have been around since the 18th century, doing the Lambeth Walk.
We have three versions of the coins available for sale, with two of the versions available for individual sale at £13 each. These are our black suit edition, which comes with shiny silver plating; and our white suit edition, which comes with black nickel plating. Our third version is only available as part of the set of three, which is our pearl finish edition, which features single white pearl enamel on one side of the coin. The set of three is £42.
The past two weekends we’ve been pleased to get out to this year’s two UK summer Mega events. First up was Piratemania 16 Dinton Pastures – Eight Bells Nigh!. The Piratemania team always put on a good show, with great theming and the crowd getting really into the spirit of it. As you might tell from the name, it’s a Pirate-themed event! It was a little further south than usual, and I was joking that since you could walk it from Twyford Train Station which is on the Elizabeth Line, you might be able to call it a London event. Although probably not since the Oyster card doesn’t work that far out!!
Piratemania will always be one of my favourite events, not just because they’re literally going to have their 17th event next year (and 18th as they’ve got a bonus event in Germany for the first time), but I don’t know how they manage to arrange a complex mega involving tents and camping and so forth every year. Doing an inside big event like London Calling with only a couple of side events instead of a week of them is complex enough, and we can safely never have to worry about electricity supplies, food vendors and so forth!!
The South East’s seagull theming was impeccable
Then the following weekend we arrived at the South East Mega 2024, this year’s Official UK Mega. Held at the famous (at least to us in the South East) Ardingly Showground. This year’s Mega was quite poignant, as the Sussex Mega was cancelled due to national Covid restrictions back in 2020. Some of the team were the same for the South East, and so it felt like we finally got to have that missing Mega. It was really an excellent show – the theming for South East has been trailblazing, I don’t think I’ve remembered any mascot for a Mega yet I will probably never forget their seagulls. It’s certainly caused a lot of discussion in our committee about having a mascot for London Calling.
Plus their logbooks was one of the best I’ve seen at an event ever. It was a half size beach hut as you might see along the coastline in the UK. Just tremendous.
They even got the other Megas involved, competing against each other on the Friday night in games of Family Fortunes. Sadly we were beaten by Piratemania, but we won the wooden spoon! It’s still a trophy for our cabinet!!!
We’re pleased to announce that as part of our “On Tour” side events, we’re off to Wales for a series of events in mid-August. Starting with a visit to Cwmbran on the evening of Saturday 17th August, followed by Merthyr Tydfil the following day at lunchtime. Then at lunchtime on Tuesday 20th August, a stop at Barry Island.
Cwmbran, Torfaen – 17 August 2024, 6:45 PM to 7:15 PM (GCAM2Z1)
Merthyr Tydfil, Merthyr Tydfil – 18 August 2024, 12:45 PM to 1:15 PM (GCAM2ZF)
Barry Island, Vale of Glamorgan – 20 August 2024, 12:15 PM to 12:45 PM (GCATE5V)
If you’re around, we’d love to see you and chat our about our upcoming plans for our Block Party next year.
We’re pleased to say that London Calling 2025 is now live – we’re taking place on 3rd May 2025, at Central Hall Westminster. That’s a return to the same location as London Calling 2021, right opposite Westminster Abbey in the heart of London, a short walk from Trafalgar Square and only moments from the Houses of Parliament and the Elizabeth Tower/Big Ben.
We are also currently the first and only Block Party listed in the United Kingdom, so we’re pleased to be bringing that icon to our country for the first time. Further news on the launch of the UK GPS Adventures Maze will be coming over the next month or two as we set that up for launch on Geocaching.com.
What is the significance of a Block Party, I hear you ask? It’s a special type of large scale geocaching event, which until now has only been hosted by Geocaching HQ at their base in Seattle. To celebrate 25 years of geocaching, they are allowed Block Parties to take place worldwide. In order to be a Block Party, the focus has to be on celebrating the history of Geocaching – something we’re taking to heart as this year’s theming is Geocaching’s birthday party!
Behind the scenes, the London Calling Committee have feverously been working away on our plans to return for a third time as London Calling 2025. We’ve now got our venue confirmed, and so we can finally make some announcements that we’ve been eager to tell everyone about.
London Calling 2025 will take place on 3rd May 2025.
It will be hosted at Central Hall, Westminster. For attendees of LC21, this will be very familiar, as we’re going back to that venue. It’s a minute’s walk from Parliament Square, and directly opposite Westminster Abbey. The site is a brilliant location if you want to combine tourist activities in London with Geocaching.
The other major news is…. WE ARE BRINGING THE GPS MAZE BACK TO THE UK!!!!!
That’s right, for only the second time ever, the GPS Adventures Maze will be appearing in the UK, having previously appeared at the North Wales Mega in 2016. Except this time, it’s a debut of a brand new UK-specific maze, rather than one which has been borrowed from elsewhere.
The maze will be available to visit between 1st to 3rd May 2025, and will also be located at Westminster Central Hall. It will be free to access, and we will be publishing details of the virtual ticketing/queue system over the next few months. We’re aware that in some cases people have had to physically queue for several hours to get into the GPS Maze at certain events, and we’re keen to avoid that as much as we can.
The Geocaching.com listing for both will go live at the start of May 2024, with ticket sales for the main event, supporters packs, coin sales etc, all going live at the same time.
London Calling 2023 has come and gone, and we had a lot of fun. The side events have now been auto-archived, and the main event will auto-archive shortly. We’re still getting a trickle of attended logs coming through, but it’s decreased to a couple a week at this point so we thought it was worthwhile posting some further updates.
Firstly, we had a write-up on the Geocaching.com official blog. A massive thank you to Matt, who was the first Groundspeak Lackey to be able to attend a London Calling Mega. The write-up was totally unexpected, and we were over the moon to get even a mention let alone an article. If you’ve not seen it, check it out here: https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2023/05/london-calling-2023-recap/
We recently posted an announcement on the Mega listing about some stats, but it’s worth re-iterating them here.
LC23: The Game is Afoot (image above) launched our event on Friday evening. Some 330 caching accounts have posted attended logs, making it a very respectable 22nd most-attended regular event ever to be held in the UK.
London Calling 2023 was held during the day on Saturday and was our main Mega event itself. At the time of writing, this has had 992 attended logs from caching accounts. That means that London Calling 2023 was the fourth most well-attended Mega in the UK ever. It is remarkable when you remember that the biggest Megas in the UK are generally the roving Official UK Megas – and until LC23, the biggest numbers pulled by a different Mega was The Halloween Mega 2014 with 689 attended logs. It also meant that LC23 was the biggest event in the UK for five years, although obviously, that is over the pandemic era so take that as you will.
LC23: The Marylebone Mystery was our Saturday evening event. This had a remarkable number of attendees, way more than we could have anticipated and we were so glad we held it at the Mega venue itself. This was the most well-attended regular mega event ever to be held in the UK, with some 644 caching accounts posting attended logs. To give it some context, this would have qualified as a Mega based on numbers alone, and had more attendees than London Calling 2021.
LC23: Wombling Free was our Sunday morning CiTO. Again, remarkable numbers and the position of this one may yet change as we currently have 223 attended logs which puts us in third place overall in the list of biggest CiTOs ever in the UK. However, second place is Gaydon Garbage Grab! (a side event of the 2018 West Midlands Mega) which has 225 attended logs. So we may yet sneak past that if we get three more late logs.
All supporter packs (except one which we were asked to hold for a couple of weeks) have been sent out to those who couldn’t make it or forgot to grab them on the day. We will be relaunching our online store in a couple of weeks with a very special new item. In conjunction with this year’s Official UK Mega in Milton Keynes, we have our very own special variant of their cow coin – called London Mooing.
That’ll be added to the store upon relaunch, although we will be giving a countdown here and on socials before that happens as we suspect some collectors may be waiting on them. There are only 25 to be had, so if you want one be fast when it happens. The coin itself comes in the colours of our logo – red, white and blue. The blue itself is transparent enamel, so you get some detail coming through especially when you hold it to the light, and the white part of it is glow in the dark.
At the same time, we will also be adding two auctions to the site. The first is for one of our limited-edition volunteer coins. These were handed out to all of those wearing the grey t-shirts on the day with our logo. The second will be our ultra-limited edition Sheerluck coins. These were only available if you won a trackable through our Sheerluck adventure lab at London Calling 2023 but we have a couple left, so we’re making it available here as fundraising for London Calling 2025.
The volunteer edition (above) comes in a black nickel finish, with a filled transparent map logo in the centre of the magnifying glass. The London Calling logo itself is in glitter enamel. This was a limited edition of 80 and has never been on sale before.
The Sheerluck edition (below) comes in an antique bronze finish, with a matching bronze map logo fill and the London Calling logo is in black and white monochrome. This was a limited edition of just 15, our shortest run of any coin ever. Again, these have never been on sale before.
So look out for those towards the end of the month. Further notices will go out ahead of the listings going live so no one should miss out on these and our cow coin.
A huge thank you to everyone who attended London Calling 2023 and the side events over the weekend. It was fantastic to be outside on the way to venues and pass people in London Calling merchandise in the wild! I never fail to get a kick out of seeing one of our t-shirts being worn by someone at another event.
I few thank yous first. I would like to thank the wonderful staff at St Mary’s – what a fabulous venue. A special thanks to the committee: -Krop- for once again doing amazing things with lab caches. I used to dabble with electronics, but you are on another level. Hedgepiglet for organising our very own army of volunteers seamlessly and keeping on top of issues as they came up on the day. Minion&Myles for running merchandise flawlessly, staying positive and being far more organised than I’ll ever be. Goldpot, who was our greeter-in-chief, putting everyone in a good mood as they arrived and keeping everyone entertained in the queue. bunny-summers, without who we would have no coverage of the event and for generally being a voice of sanity. And last but not least TurnyT for his great ideas, not least the logbooks for this year’s event which everyone absolutely adored.
I mentioned the “army” – I have to give thanks to our wonderful volunteers. No doubt you were probably all pleased not to have the bright yellow shirts this year, but that didn’t dampen your visibility and enthusiasm. Without our wonderful volunteers giving up their time to support this event, many of whom volunteered for a second Mega in a row, it would not be possible to run London Calling at all.
A massive thanks to our fellow vendors, the GAGB and the Mega Committees for Milton Keynes 2023, South East 2024 and Severn 2025. Be sure that we’ll be attending as many of those events as possible for our future event endeavours. Further special thanks go to Pinpoint Magazine who produced this year’s wonderful event brochure. A final special thanks goes to Matt Quint who travelled over from Groundspeak in Seattle especially to attend this event and support us.
Consider the message on the back of this year’s event brochure to be the announcement, but just to repeat it here: See you at London Calling 2025!
At the time of posting, it’s less than four hours until the first side event for London Calling 2023 begins. Signal the Frog is in town. The outside adventure lab caches have gone live, and the additional Wherigo and Mystery caches already had their FTFs.
We’ll probably go quiet on the website over the weekend as we’ll be busy dealing with people in person. We have got plans to keep the Facebook page updated with news/announcements and general goings on. So if you’ve not followed us there, then please do: https://www.facebook.com/LondonCallingMega/
Looking forward to seeing you all, starting in a few short hours.
I’m sure anyone who attended London Calling 2021 can remember our adventure labs. We’ve had some amazing compliments on our clever temporary indoor adventure labs which included the use of magic wands, gold pots, QR cubes, magic glasses and of course Big Ben. Of course, we also cannot forget the outdoor lab cache trail which takes in many of the highlights of London as it snakes its way from Westminster to Tower Bridge and back.
We are once again putting out a series of outdoor adventure labs, which will be able to remain out, as well as temporary adventure labs within the Mega venue itself which will only be available for completion on 29th April.
Some attendees will want to create .gpx files to enable them to find the adventure labs. As such, we are launching our outdoor lab caches slightly ahead of the Mega on the morning of Friday 28th April. All of these sets will be staying out. These will include the following:
Four sets of 10 adventure labs around the Marylebone area
Six sets of 5 adventure labs around the Wimbledon Common area
One set of 5 adventure labs in the City of London
The set of 10 adventure labs which will be available during London Calling 2023 will be going live that morning prior to Platinum Pack entry at 10:30 am. The set of 10 adventure labs going out during LC23: The Marylebone Mystery will be going live just prior to readmission to the venue at 6 pm. Both of these sets are temporary, and so will only be available until Saturday 6th May for logging purposes, at which point they will be shut down and will no longer be visible on the Adventure Labs app.
