Stephen J Waldock
www.sjwaldock.com
My Geocaching Home
What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is a treasure hunt played with your GPS (global positioning system or sat-nav). People set up caches all over the world and put their location on the internet. People can then log on and find to co-ordinates of these caches load them into their GPS and off they go to find them. Once found they contain a log book and maybe even a reward. All you are expected to do is leave something in return when taking a reward.
Some times caches contain trackables. These are items that have a unique number on them, the idea being that you can track their movements from cache to cache around the world.
There are also different kinds of cache. The Traditional cache gives you instructions and co-ordinates to one container. There is the multi-cache which you must find clues form other locations or caches in order to find the final cache and problem solving cache's where you must work out a puzzle in order to get the co-ordinates. (these are just a few examples).
Geocaching and I
So how did I get interested in this. Well having bought the other half a new sat-nav for the car I was looking around the Garmin website and came across a link "Go Geocaching". So in curiosity I followed then link and with a few more clicks ended up at www.geocaching.com after having a little read I thought this looks fun I'll give it a go some time. After telling my brother about it a few days later we decided to go out armed with our mobile phones and give it ago (in the snow!). After a bit of a chilly walk round a country park we had found the two caches we set out to discover but chickened out of any more as it was too cold. However a jaunt round Epping Forest (in the mud) and a few more successes and the bug had bitten. It's a good motivator to get out in the open and do some exercise (goodness knows I need it).
I now have a couple of trackables out there in the big wide world:
Click on them to track their progress.
If you have a GPS and fancy giving it a go follow the link above register and get started. It's quite a buzz when you find one.
Why not read about my caching trips on my blog.
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