“Kölner
Dom - Hohe
Domkirche St. Peter und Maria” is one
of Europe’s finest and largest Gothic Cathedrals. The Cathedral is
located in Cologne, Germany on the banks of the Rhine River. The
building of the Gothic cathedral started in 1248 and it was
completed in 1880, the details and more can be found on the
Cathedral website:
www.koelner-dom.de in both
German and in English. Searching the web will provide plenty of
photographs and historic details of the Cathedral. I recently
received a beautiful Geocoin showing the Cathedral from a German
fellow geocacher
“dl2qb”. The
geocoin,
Kölner Dom Church reference
TB2GD7W
,
can be viewed on its own web page. Please note the beautiful stain
glass window on the reverse side. This geocoin will be launched
with this cache.
On the front side of the geocoin you can see the following written
at the bottom: R2567383 H5645557. These are the coordinates of the
Cathedral in the German Grid system (Potsdam Datum). The challenge
here is to find the cache placed here in Ottawa in
honour
of the Cathedral of the same name. The task is very simple as the
cache is located at: 95448841 5024895 in the German
Grid system (Potsdam Datum). The German Grid use two blocks of
seven digits, with the first block being measured Eastwards from
Western France and the second block covering the range from the
North Pole to the Equator. Unfortunately the distance Eastwards
from Western France to Ottawa is huge and the first block of digits
needs eight figures. Some GPS units can display the first eight
digits but as far as I can tell none will accept an eight digit
input. These co-ordinates cannot therefore be entered directly into
the GPSr. If however the GPSr is operating in the right mode it is
possible to locate the GZ for the cache by searching the local area
with the GPSr cursor. This can be confusing because the eigth digit
of the first block may show up as the first digit of the second
block! The good news is that working with the first seven digits of
the first block (9544884) and the digits (502489) of the second
block is accurate enough to bring you close to GZ.
The cache is a small camouflaged Lock ‘n’ Lock container that will
accommodate small trades and coins. It is located within a
kilometer of the posted co-ordinates. The initial contents
are:
A log book.
Two small pencils
A pencil sharpener
Two beaded Key Rings
A Leather key Fob from Peru
A beautiful “Kölner
Dom
Church”
geocoin reference TB2GD7W.
A Canada micro geocoin “Beaver Dude I”
reference TB2KETF.
A $5 Tim Hortons
card for the FTF