Geocaching

Studland Beach

On Saturday I went Geocaching with friends for the first time. Geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS receiver to help you find hidden containers which sometimes, depending on their size, will hold treasure e.g. toys, cds, and trinkets etc together with a log book you can sign. Most of the items only cost about a pound and you can take something out of the cache so long as you put something back in for the next person to find. Some of the containers are micro in size which is the smallest container you can find and can range from a 35mm film canister or recently I found a container that was only 1cm in width which had a tiny piece of paper inside to sign to say that you had found it.

You can find cache's in your local area by visiting the Geocaching.com website and searching by putting in your town. Once you find a cache you want to find you enter the co-ordinates into your GPS and then follow the arrow on your GPS to the area the cache is hidden. You have to do a bit of searching but so far we've found all of the caches we have been looking for although some were quite hard to find. There are lots of caches in my area and loads all over the country. You can also search for caches if you are on holiday as they are hidden all over the world!!

My GPS and Travel Bug

Here is a picture of my GPS next to a Travel Bug we found in one of the caches. A Travel Bug has a trackable dog tag attached to it. You don't keep the Travel Bugs as the idea is to move it from cache to cache so that it can travel the world. The Travel Bug we found is an old spark plug from a volvo car and the owner wants it to ultimately travel to Sweden where the car was made.

Cache box and contents

Here's a picture of one of the cache's we found on Saturday. This box had a great selection of items which included a little Forever Friends teddy, a pair of socks, a dvd, face mask, whoopie cushion, a blank DVD-RW, a set of highlighter pens etc. We took the little teddy who will now go on our Geocaching travels with us. We left a necklace and a fridge magnet bottle opener as a swop for someone else to take in the future.

Old Harry Rocks

One of the caches we found was near Old Harry Rocks in Studland. The weather was gorgeous....very warm and sunny, there were lots of visitors enjoying the spectacular views and munching on their sarnies.

The Globe

On Sunday we went to The Globe in Swanage to find a hidden cache. The Globe is a 40 ton limestone representation of the world, three metres in diameter, engraved with a 1880's world map. Again the weather was warm and sunny. My littlest neice is in the photo above and all the kids had a great time treasure hunting and following the arrow on the GPS.

This is the Obelisk on the Purbeck hills between Swanage and Corfe Castle. We had quite a walk to get to this cache but the views were breathtaking and well worth the hike up the hill.

This is a really fun sport/hobby for the whole family to enjoy. Why not have a go yourself???