Hi. Is it possible to request a checker for GC3YE4Q?

Question

Hi.

This challeneg cache requires you to have found and logged a cache in 5 different Englsih counties in one day. The GC code is GC3YE4Q.

Regards.

Answer 1

Unfortunatly this checker can not be made as there are for the counties no polygons available yet

Comments

Isn't county one of the fields returned in the hash for finds?

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Yes for most of the countries but the UK is an exception

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It depends on what definition of county the cache owner is willing to accept - many but not all will accept the geocaching/project-gc definition where some of the counties are actually unitary authorities (cities basically), whilst others will prefer the 'historic' definition of counties which those cities are within.

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The condition of the challenge is quite clear i.e
"By counties I mean the county names: Leicestershire, Berkshire and Lancashire for example. NOT the geocaching.com counties such as Northeast England and Northwest England.

But when using the county level in PGC you run in difficulties with the cities like York etc

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Except what he has listed there (Northeast England etc) is the Region field in PGC not what is seen in the county field

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The region field is blank in PGC or is there another way in getting the wright county listing

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No it isn't region is present and the results looks like the following:
{cache_name="08 What's got your goat?", visitdate="2012-04-09", country="United Kingdom", cache_id="2772972", region="Southern England", longitude="-1.406650", premium="0", latitude="50.939250", county="Southampton", gccode="GC3DW9M", }
{cache_name="Map Ant Stop", visitdate="2012-04-11", country="United Kingdom", cache_id="2108957", region="Southern England", longitude="-1.396617", premium="0", latitude="50.973417", county="Hampshire", gccode="GC2PJAT", }

The interesting bit is whether Southampton can be accepted as a county/unitary authority or should be treated as being in Hampshire - different cache owners have differing views on that

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Are you not getting the same result as on the PCG county map (http://project-gc.com/Tools/MapCounties?profile_name=mole125&country=United+Kingdom&region=Southern+England&submit=Filter). There I see Hamphire with Southampton and Portsmouth apart but both town are in Hamshire.
You see the same for Dorset with Poole and Bournemouth, Wiltshire with Swindon and Buckinghamshire with Milton Keynes.

Answer 2

I have created a script which can handle this. I've tagged it, but I don't know exactly how many of these cities need to be moved into the shires (I've only done York and Southampton so far since they were specifically mentioned in other people's comments). If any English person (or other person who knows England well enough) can give me further direction, I'll update my tag.

http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC3YE4Q/17070

Comments

Have a look at this forum post which discusses some of the issues in a bit more details: http://forum.project-gc.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73&p=395&hilit=county#p395

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You might also have a look at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_England

This one tells you in which county the cities are.

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There is still the issue of Wales. Strickly speaking this is not England.

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And of course if Wales should be included it leads onto the question of Northern Ireland which Geocaching.com makes even more complicated...

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Oh yes, I did forget to exclude the Welsh counties when I was doing the Scottish ones. Shows how unfamiliar I am with England.

I've updated the exclude list and the remap list. There is one PGC county which doesn't quite work (it's split between two ceremonial counties), but it's the best I could do without resorting to individually-defined polygons.

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There is also the issue of Scotland too, where for some bizarre reason project-gc have chosen to use county boundaries that were brought in 41 years ago and abolished 20 years ago. ie: project-gc are using boundaries that are neither current nor the historic boundaries, but an abomination that no-one ever wanted and is at odds with people's normal thinking of what constitutes a county. They were brought in in 1974 and abolished in 1995. Why can't Scotland have the same boundary definitions as England. ie: current authority areas.