Sheersy has introduced me to the wonderful world of geocaching and I very much fear I may get addicted. Child friendly walking, the promise of treasure, information on whether you can take a buggy, maps, puzzles, fresh air, exercise, geeky technology and stuff to track around the world – what’s not to love?
If, until now, you have been ignorant of this secret world, modern geocaching is essentially a worldwide treasure hunt. Anyone with a GPS can take part. The seeker uses map coordinates published online and a GPS to locate the cache, or to solve puzzles that lead to it.
I have known about geocaching for years, but I had the impression it was carried out on large Forestry Commission sites or mountainsides. Both terrain types are sadly missing from Basingtoke until my plan to move a small Munro onto Monk Sherborne comes together. I was also a bit sniffy about GPS (for townies who can’t read maps or use a compass), but I have succumbed to the lures of satnav to help cure my driving nerves and mine understands coordinates.
Sheersy pointed me to www.geocaching.com where you can check out nearby caches by postcode. There are almost a million worldwide and a surprisingly large proportion of them near to us. There are five in the village alone and a seven point clue ridden trail round Silchester. There appear to be caches pretty much anywhere we might think of going in the next five years too, well certainly Durham, South Wales, Thailand, Romania, China and the Cook Islands. I’m particularly keen on finding those Cook Island caches…
So, we decided to try it out when visiting friends in Durham last weekend. Undeterred by the falling snow we loaded Coswise, Baby Brighteyes and Coswise’s scooter into the car and followed a trail round a Durham park. Apart from the temperature and lack of scooting opportunities it worked well. Seven clues were set tens of metres apart from each other, all building to a set of coordinates for the cache location. The satnav worked fine as a GPS, although even in walking mode it kept telling me to ‘TURN LEFT, DRIVE FORWARD FOR HALF A MILE’ in a rather imperious way. The final cache was fairly straightforward to find, hidden in some ivy at children’s head height. I think the idea is to hide them so that they can be found without drawing to much attention to what is going on. It contained several small toys, a log book, an instruction sheet and several cacher calling cards. It was a shame that the developing blizzard had numbed Coswise’s interest by this time.
Unfortunately on the way out of the park our Megane decided to do some downhill skiing towards the dual carriageway Durham ringroad. To stop it Daddy steered up the park bank – a surprisingly long way up the bank – and we ended up teetering on three wheels in a very Italian Job way (but with less gold and more children). Daddy was a complete hero, passing children out to passers-by, organising other passers-by to heave on the uphill side of the car, slowly getting the car off the bank and very gingerly skating down the park drive to the ringroad.
So we are back safe in Bramley (give or take a tyre blowout on the motorway!) and Sheersy is hiding a cache in an area near you. More may be posted once the cache is hidden. Meanwhile, Coswise, Baby Brighteyes and I are off to find some more treasure. See you at the church…