Geo-Caching

By Jay Oram>

A giant game of puzzles, gps and treasure hunting!!

So how easy is it to do and what do you need? Surprisingly little, a smartphone that can go on the net, some sort of gps navigation or an app. Then by signing up with GeoCaching you can see where any of them are. I had my iPhone and I had downloaded the Geocaching app and had found that within just 2km of my house there were twenty or so caches.


First ever Geo-Cache!

The idea is simple, get the gps location, get to that location hunt for a small waterproof container that holds a paper log, some contain other goodies to swap or trackable items that have moved from cache to cache. Not everyone in the world knows about geocaching and the people that dont are affectionately known as ‘muggles’ while searching around in the trees or around buildings you have to look out for muggles and make sure they don’t know what you are doing. Adding a little bit of excitement to the game.


Best find

I set off after collecting all I needed at around 10am, the first cache was a puzzle to solve to get the cache co-ordinates, I had solved that and searched that area for about 45mins - no luck :-( so I carried on to the next one, finding it was the best feeling ever!! spurred on by this triumph I continued my tour of Ilkeston and it’s surrounding areas. Finding hidden green spaces, shortcuts that I didn’t know were there and picturesque villages and views. It was a great way to spend the day and after my iPhone running out of battery twice and 11hours out searching I had completed my round of 15 out of my original 20 and found 12 of them. It’s a great way to get out, discover new bits of my area and have a bit of fun.

Check out to find a cache near you and see how it goes, you might get hooked!!

There is a much more detailed look at my day at my Blog

Have fun,

Jay

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