Animals of Leigh Woods Wherigo Cache

The cartridge for this Wherigo can be downloaded here:(http://www.wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=af1b8a9d-e27b-482f-8129-a0004c54cd7d)

The Whereigo can be done in conjunction with The Colour Purple and Light ahoy if you fancy a longer walk.

The game will probably take at least 1 hour, more depending on how many friends you try to find (more of that in the game). When you find friends, don't forget to talk to them and gain their help. There is no need to head down hill from either the main forestry carpark or the starting parking location, all of the game is set up on the high part of Leigh woods. With the exception of the cache, you do not need to leave any paths. In the caches case, its located with in a very short distance off the path (see hint for distance) and can be reached very easily. If you think the going is difficult, you have probably gone the wrong way. Please read the tips below about playing the game on different devices.

Leigh Woods

Leigh Woods has been in the care of The National Trust since 1909.

The site was given by the Wills family, who made their money through tobacco industry. They were generous benefactors in Bristol including the university.

Leigh Woods has an iron age hill fort called Stokeleigh Camp. The massive earthworks enclosing this site were deigned to protect the families, members of the Dobunni tribe, who lived there. The Whereigo takes you around part of this.

The National Trust have begun clearing the trees and scrub from the hill fort. This is to prevent the roots damaging this important archaeological site. It also makes it easier to appreciate the scale of the hill fort and its defences.

The National Trust Wardens and volunteers based at Leigh Woods also look after 7 other countryside sites in the Bristol area. These include another iron age hill fort Cadbury Camp above Tickenham.

The presence of species such as Wood Millet, Yellow Archangel, Wild Service-tree and Small-leaved Lime show that much of the woodland is ancient. These are sites that are believed to have had continuous woodland cover since at least 1600 AD. Before this planting was uncommon, so a wood present in 1600 AD was likely to have developed naturally. Peregrine Falcons and Ravens nest in the old quarries in the Avon Gorge. Other rare species include Bristol and Wilmott’s Whitebeams (only found in the Avon Gorge), Bristol rock-cress and the Silky Wave Moth.

This cache was placed with the kind assistance of Bill Morris and Katie Laidlaw of the National Trust so a big thank you to them for their help and information. Other caches in the area on National Trust property include the Tyntesfield caches, which are well worth checking out - they are fantastic and huge too! Lastly, please try and keep swaps to a nature theme – birds, animals, insects, that kinda thing!! Oh, and there is a little friend in the cache please don't take him but do take your photo with him, using the disposable camera left in there. Thanks!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to all who have helped in the creation and debugging of this Wherigo. Special thanks goes to The Cartooners for debugging the Wherigo on their PPC and finding out the sound file was corrupt. Without that help I would have spent ages scratching my head and pulling my hair out trying to work out where my code was going wrong. Others who helped include Chaotica_UK for testing possible reasons for the bug, *mouse*, Keehotee and Captain Gore-tex for their observations and comments. Thanks also go to the National trust volunteers and Katie Laidlaw for their comments and suggestions and for testing the first alpha version. If you have problems, the game will have autosaves at key points, so you should be able to restart the Wherigo and finish the adventure. Please send me the "animals_of_leigh_w.gwl" file and a description of what went wrong and what you where doing at time to help me fix the problem, even if you managed to finish the adventure. Thanks.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Side Competition

This is a competition to find the most friends in the woods. A list of friends is displayed when you have the meeting.

Currently:

There are plenty of friends in the forest, with a possible 22 turning up for the meeting. All the animals have now been found at some point or another, just not all pursuaded to help at the same time.

Note: Once you have started talking at the meeting, the hunt for friends ends. You may need to take several trips to Leigh Woods going along different paths each time to get a high score. Please send me the "animals_of_leigh_w.gwl" file so that I can check how many you have found and add you to the score chart.

Good luck

Using different devices to play the game

Autosave: The game will automatically save after any significant events. This means that if you have any problems with your device and have to restart the wherigo, you should be able to pick up roughly at the point the game stopped. On the iPhone, this takes a second or two. This is especially noticable when your at the viewpoint having a conversation, where a message dissapears, saving happens then the next message appears. If you see the saving happening, please wait rather than try and press buttons. The autosave feature should mean you don't have to save the game yourself. If you close the game and reopen it, the game has to recalculate where you are which can take up to a minute or so.

Map: The map is provided so that if you get lost, you can find your way back to the car and to see roughly where the purple trail goes. Unfortunately having the map object open increases the number of active zones, which slows down devices (especially Garmins), so closing the map is generaly a good idea if your device is having problems.

Garmin Oregon: These devices can be a bit slow to respond at times. If your having problems, press the button, and keep your finger on it until it goes Blue, then take your finger off and wait up to 5 seconds before trying again. If you try pressing buttons quickly and repeatedly, it may try and do all the presses in order and you end up either closing the wherigo, missing messages or overloading the GPS and it crashes. As stated above, close the map unless you need it.

iPhone: Currently the iPhone player doesn't have a pointer to characters or objects. The only time this is beneficial is at the end when looking for the cache. The best way to resolve this problem is being looked into, but for now pay attention to the hints your given at the viewpoint and you will need to search a bit more than other playes would need to, but the final zone is relatively small, so you should be able to find it relatively easily, especially if you remember the hints

iPhone: The sound doesn't seem to be working correctly, and all you get is a button saying beep at the bottom of your screen, so keep an eye on your screen so that you don't miss any new messages.

Batteries: Please make sure you have a fully charged phone battery before you start. From various reports playing the game will use at least 60% of your phones battery. Garmins seem to be fine, although taking a spare set of batteries is always a good idea.