Tag: london calling 2025

London Calling 2025

What is a Block Party exactly?

Brian

Many of you will know that London Calling 2025 will be hosting a Block Party at Westminster Hall, instead of the usual Mega, that we held in 2021 and in 2023. However, some people are unaware of what a Block Party is and have asked for an explanation.

HQ hosted the original Block Parties in Seattle from 2011 to 2015. Only 5,064 geocachers received the Block Party icon during those years, which goes to show that it was a fairly exclusive activity. Geocaching HQ have offered the international geocaching community to host Block Parties to allow more people to earn this rare icon on their profile.

A Block Party is still an event, similar to a Mega, and needs to abide by the following criteria:

• Take place between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025.

• Qualify as a Mega-Event or Giga-Event.

• Have at least 300 Will Attends.

• Be at least 6 hours long.

• Highlight celebrating 25 years of geocaching.

On May 2nd 2000, GPS was made public; on May 3rd 2000, the first geocache was placed and the game was born. 2025 is the year to celebrate 25 years of Geocaching and London Calling’s Block Party falls on the very same weekend as the 25th anniversary of the first geocache being placed.

Inside Westminster Hall, you will find many fun and interesting stalls, including geocoins, trackables, merchandise, a creatively designed log book and physical Adventure Labs. If you haven’t done so already, please post your Will Attend as this will really help with our planning and organisation to make the event as enjoyable as possible for everyone involved.

London Calling 2025

Tickets and Supporters Packs Launched!

Brian

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.

Buy tickets here!

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)

Purchase your Supporters Pack Here


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.

Purchase your Platinum Supporters Pack Here
Geocoins, London Calling 2025

Signal the Frog Coins Launched!

Brian

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.

These are on sale now on our online store.

The pearl finish edition
The black suit edition
The white suit edition
London Calling 2025

Thanks for the Megas!

Brian

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!!!

London Calling 2025

South Wales Mini Tour Announced

Brian

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.

London Calling 2025

London Calling 2025 Announcement

Brian

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.