Outdoor Treasure Hunt - Geocaching

The other week as I was looking through the posts from other bloggers who join in and link up with the fantastic Linky CountryKids from Coombe Mill and I saw a post by Emma's Little World all about Geocaching.

Now I've never heard of Geocaching before so I read through Emmas blog post with interest, it sounded exciting. Real treasures hidden all over the place, and people can go out and find it, A proper outdoor treasure hunt! It sounded great, a fun way to encourage everyone to get outside, because who doesn't enjoy searching for treasure!

So I googled to see what it was all really about, and learn how to join in, and I came across the Geocaching website.

Which explains that Geocaching is a real world treasure hunt. Which  anyone can join in.

How it works is that all over the world there are hidden containers.  The locations of these containers are all placed on the GeoCaching website  as co ordinates which you can place into any GPS device.
You can register as a member on the site to locate the closest geocaches to you, send the co ordinates to your GPS device and go out hunting.

Each Cache on the website tells you what size the container is, how difficult to find it is, gives you a rough location and a clue to help you find it too. You can search via postcode and locate all the nearby cache, so you can go on a hunt to find several in the same area.

There are various different shapes and sizes of containers, some contain just a log book, others contain 'swops' Which are token treasures, how it works is that if you find a cache you can take something from the container as long as you leave something different for around the same value in its place. You also record you name on the log book record sheet. Then re hide in the same place as you found it ready for the next treasure seeker to uncover!

There is a huge online community of people who are all hunting out the cache and once you return home you can record your finds on the website, enabling you to keep track of how many you have found and locate other cache near by.

I was surprised to find lots of cache located near us, in all my normal walking places so I couldn't wait to get out and see what we could find.

The only thing you need in order to find the geocache is  a GPS device, or a mobile phone which can download the geocache app. However we have neither!

But all is not lost because the website gives you enough information and clues to have a good guess at finding them without the co ordinates (just obviously it makes it easier to use a GPS device)

We only found one container, as it looked as tho the other 4 hidden had been lost or damaged. But it did not put us off. The search took us to new places which we hadn't visited before.

We loved searching and solving the clues. Finding a bridge to nowhere and a horses paddock.
both of which are beautiful places which I never even knew existed!

If you want to do something outdoors that is alot of fun and gets everyone involved then give Geocaching a look. It adds a fun twist to a country walk.