Geocaching

My friend Natalie has been going on about this for ages, I personally had never heard of it before and thought she was just crazy looking for treasure that isn't there.

So many of you are probably still wondering what the hell it is so I will tell you a bit about it.

Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants us a  GPS or mobile device to hide and seek containers called geocaches or caches anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and sings it with their established code name. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek" or "a treasure hunt" as Natalie calls it. They are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide.

Basically it's a massive treasure hunt.

For my first ever Geocache I wanted it to be easy so found one that was close by and with a really good clue. Mark and I went in the dark but still managed to find it. Once signing the log book we hid it again, sadly I forgot to take a picture that night so I went back the next day to do it. This one was a large box and had lots of stuff to trade in there.

Today we thought we would be a bit more adventurous and true a couple of harder ones. Firstly we went back to where we found our first one (so I could get a picture) then found another close by. This required Mark to climb up a tree. We then headed to Greenwich to complete the Gates of Greenwich Series. There are 11 in total but we only did up to 8. The only one we was unable to find was number 3 so we will be back another day to give it another go. From visiting the website I notice some people take along a mascot and get pictures of them with the caches so I thought I would take Danny Duck with me.

Once you have found the caches you need to log them on the geocache website. I have just done mine and I am now up to 9 in total. Have a long way to go yet to catch up to Natalie.

I am hoping to count this towards my Look Wider Out of Door Octant Phase 3. (will explain more about this another time.)

At first I thought this was a bit of a silly hobby and didn't fully understand it but after actually doing it you can learn a lot of History about the place you are visiting and they can also take you to places that you wouldn't normally go, for example I have never actually walk around the whole of Greenwich Park. It was great fun and I can't wait to do some more.