Geocoins, London Calling 2023

This… was London Calling

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.

London Calling 2023

Closing Statement from our Chair

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!

London Calling 2023

Launching our Adventure Labs

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.

London Calling 2023

Tickets and Supporters Packs Are Now On Sale!

Attendees at London Calling 2021

We’re pleased to say that the tickets and supporters packs for London Calling 2023 launched last Saturday at the Official UK Mega in the West Midlands. We’re following a very similar format to London Calling 2021 and retaining the same ticket pricing.

Tickets, which will enable entry to the venue and access to the vendors, log book, trackable table and the on-site adventure lab caches, will be £5 in advance, and £10 at the door for adults. They are available here: Adult Ticket – London Calling 2023

Children under the age of 15 are able to enter for free, as long as they are accompanied by an adult. We would ask, however, just for number tracking, if you could “purchase” a free child’s ticket here: Child Ticket – London Calling 2023

Supporters Packs come in three levels, Bronze, Silver and Platinum.

Bronze Packs are £15, and contain the bronze version of the event geocoin (not the Sherlock Holmes/Signal the Frog geocoin) as well as three out of the set of five of the wood coins. Available here: Bronze Supporters Pack

Silver Packs are £45, and contain the bronze and silver versions of the event geocoin (not the Sherlock Holmes/Signal the Frog geocoin), four out of the set of five of the wood coins, a t-shirt exclusive to the silver/platinum packs and our first pathtag. Available here: Silver Supporters Pack

Platinum Packs are £75, and contain the bronze, silver and platinum versions of the event geocoin (not the Sherlock Holmes/Signal the Frog geocoin). Additionally, the platinum version of the event geocoin will not be on sale individually. Also included is the full set of five wood coins, a t-shirt exclusive to the silver/platinum packs, our first pathtag, a platinum pack exclusive extag/aardtag, a platinum pack exclusive embroidered beanie hat and of course, 30 minutes early access to the venue from 10:30am onwards. Available here: Platinum Supporters Pack

Competition

One Week Left For Our Raffle

Geocaching Premium Membership

Don’t forget to enter our raffle, in which we’re putting 10 Premium Memberships up for grabs. These are valid for 12 months on Geocaching.com, and can still be used even if you’re only partway through a yearly subscription as it’ll extend your membership by a further year once applied.

Tickets are available on our online store for £2 each, from the following link: https://londoncallingnow.co.uk/product/premium-membership-raffle-ticket/

The closing date for the raffle is next Sunday, the 19th December 2021 at 11:59 pm. The draw will be made the following day with a recording posted on our Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/LondonCalling2021

All proceeds go towards the funds for the next London Mega, which we’ll hopefully be able to update you all on soon. Planning has been underway for a while now and we’re getting closer to an announcement. So any funds help us out immensely and you might get something back for it if you’re lucky enough.

A big thank you to our sponsors, Groundspeak, for providing us these Premium Memberships to give away.