About the SideTracked Series

We have Motorway Mayhem. We have A-Road Anarchy (cos there aren’t many Motorways in Wales!). But what about public transport users? SideTracked Caches are intended to provide quick Cache-and-dashes at Train Stations.

SideTracked started at Evesham station on August 10th 2007, placed by schnarff & bikermel76. It took a while to get started, but is now spreading across the country!

SideTracked - The resurrection (January 2012)

I'd known about the SideTracked series for some time, and when the opportunity arose to place my own at a nearby Station, I decided to do some investigation on the SideTracked Series as I'd done others around the country.

I noticed that the statistics for the SideTracked series at the time were last updated 4 years ago in 2008, and wondered if the website was still updated. An email was sent off to Melissa (the original owner of the SideTracked Website) to establish if the series was still running. A few days later, I had a reply from Melissa explaining that the site isn't updated as day to day personal life gets in the way.

It was then that I offered to help Melissa and remove some of the burden of maintaining the series. and so from 28 January 2013, the SideTracked website was transferred to me. With my background in website designing and coding, I was confident that I could inject a fresh new look to the SideTracked Series.

It was then I hit a stumbling block - the statistics used to be managed by Roderick, who used to supply Melissa with the information she could place into the Website. With a few pointers from Melissa, I contacted Roderick who talked me through generating the statistics, and it dawned on me that this was going to be a tedious process. Firstly, I had no idea how to use GSAK, which Roderick used to capture each SideTracked cache, but with a lot of help from him, I managed to get something that slightly resembled the Statistics needed. I had to find every SideTracked cache, add them to a bookmark, and then run a pocket query to import them to the GSAK database. This was no easy process, and took around three months to finally complete. Without Roderick's help, I wouldn't even be at this stage now. Thank you Roderick, I am indebted for all the help you have given me.

So. Here we are, the NEW SideTracked Website. The start of a new era.

The SideTracked Series thanks...

What we mustn't forget, is all the people who has made the SideTracked Website possible from the start:-

  • Melissa (bikermel76) for starting the series
  • Roderick for his help in providing the statistics
  • pete37038 for providing valuable advice on hiding caches near train stations
  • studlyone for the help with the creation of the original 'tracks' geocoins
  • Birdman of Liskatraz for providing the old Geocoin Shop.
  • Sean of the Flookfinders for the statistics macros
  • stuarthowe11 for the production of the 10th and 15th anniversary geocoins and trackable tags

Without all of these people mentioned above, the SideTracked series would never be here today, but the most important thing of all, is that the SideTracked series continues to flourish with more caches being published under the SideTracked name every week. For this, I have to thank you. The cache owners who are willing to join the series.

Thank you.

Chris ~ AKA SideTrackedChris (formerly known as bus.stop).