At the beginning of this month I talked about our wedding plans and said I'd let you know if she accepted my proposal. Not being one for doing things the conventional way I didn't actually get down on one knee until Tuesday. This despite the fact the venue is booked and all the invites are out. It was a formality really and unlikely she'd say no, but I still wanted to try and make it special and something we'd remember.

It sounds geeky, but it can be good fun. If nothing else it's a nice way of finding out about nice walks you'd probably never see otherwise. Karen loves walking but hates Geocaching. Geocaching to Karen is what golf was to Winston Churchill - "a good walk spoilt". She hates having to stop while I mess about hunting around in the under-growth, often in the freezing cold.

Now, I'm no Geocaching obsessive. I just think it's something to do on a weekend that doesn't cost an arm 'n' a leg for the whole family to do. Anyway, I was discussing ways to propose with friends when one offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that I hide it in a Geocache. To him it was a joke, to me it was a great idea. Thanks Mark.

So, on Sunday a friend and I went off to Wollaton Hall to find a suitable spot to hide the pretend cache. Obviously we didn't actually hide it. We merely logged the position of a suitably romantic vista on the lakeside. Then I faked a Geocache page, which I printed out on Tuesday after agreeing with Karen to go on a walk. As far as Karen was concerned it was just like any other walk. She literally had no idea what she was walking in to.

The cache, which was in my pocket, was an old film canister with the ring in it. The plan was that I got down on one knee next to a tree, under which I'd pretend to find it, and then say "Oooh, look what's in it", followed by the obvious question. It could all have gone very wrong as Karen normally carries on walking and tells me to catch her up once I've done messing about. Luckily she didn't and it all worked out perfectly.

You should have seen her face when I opened it. It literally took a couple of seconds for her to work out what was going on. She really thought I'd just found it and apparently her first thought was "No way, somebody's left a ring in it!".

So, when asked where I proposed I can always tell people N 52° 56.599 W 001° 12.882. I wonder if anybody else has ever proposed like this...