Hide and Seek

If you read through my post about geocaching a few days ago and thought, 'why would anyone want to waste their time doing something like that?' then probably best to stop reading now...because today I'm going to tell you a little more.

Some caches are very small - like the magnetic nanos in the pictures a few days ago. Others are 'micro' caches - often old 35mm film canisters. Obviously there is little room in these caches for anything other than the log - in these cases: a small roll of paper. As caches increase in size, from small Tupperware style boxes, to old metal ammo boxes there is more and more room for them to contain other items. The general rule is that if you take something out you must put something of similar value in - a game of swaps that makes geocaching an ideal family activity.

In addition to swaps, a cache may contain a 'trackable'; typically a travel bug or a geo-coin - each with its own unique reference number. Both of these items function in the same way. They are registered by their owner on the game website, and then their owner places them in a cache. Once they are found by another player they are removed from the first cache, and then moved on to another cache within a few days. These actions are also logged on the website. Some trackables simply move from cache to cache - others have specific tasks such as to visit every country in Europe, or to be photographed in every football league ground. The progress of a trackable can be followed on the website, where it is possible to view photos of its travels, to see the distance travelled, and to see its progress on a world map.

A travel bug is a metal dog tag - and owners often attach a small item of significance or relevance to the task. 

So far I have released one trackable.

I have called it 'Find your Ps and Qs' and its task is to travel to caches whose name starts with either a P or a Q - or failing that to visit a list of caches whose first letters cover the whole alphabet. I should have mentioned that all caches are named. So far my travel bug has travelled over 300 miles and visited 16 caches. Currently it is in a cache called 'Riverside Park Jewellery Box', north of Southampton.

During the recent half-term we found a couple of travel bugs and one geo-coin. Here the girls are helping to find a new cache for a geo-coin called 'Rosie' - a 32 point compass.

It was a bit muddy underfoot, and would soon start to rain. But the views were great.