[Moose]

If you have a portable GPS receiver, have you considered getting out of your car and giving Geocaching a try ?

What is Geocaching?

Geocaching is a treasure hunting adventure game for gps users.
The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches (treasure) all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet, GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches.
Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards - toys, gifts, books etc.
All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

For the definitive guide to Geocaching, visit Geocaching.com

Geocaching is more popular than you might imagine in the UK, perhaps because of our history of LetterBoxing on Dartmoor which began in 1854; if you want to know more about LetterBoxing, check out Dartmoor Letter Boxing

There are lots of caches near campsites too, as we choose to spend our time in the more beautiful parts of our country and so do many cache owners.

Searching from the CCC site at Blackmore, there were 16 caches listed within 10 miles of the site, generally located at the more striking locations around the edge of the Malverns - what a great series of day trips for the summer hols; and from the Oxford CCC site there are 46 caches listed within 5 miles, mostly easy walking from the city centre !

You can look for your own nearest caches by postcode here

The Geocaching Association of Great Britain has a website with a list of agreements already made or refused for the placing of new Geocaches in the UK and most importantly some practical guidelines for the creation of new caches which you should consider before placing a new cache

With the support of CL/CS owners, there should be some interesting cache sites we could add, I'm voting for beer gardens :D

Having used a GPS to get to the campsite, why leave it switched off until it's time to go home ? Geocaching combines site-seeing with a treasure hunting challenge and often just enough exercise to make you feel virtuous about the first cool drink of the evening on returning to the van ;)

Happy caching !

Moose

[SEPS]

Moose,

We have been Geocaching for a couple of years now - fantastic ! :lol:

Agree with your sentiments entirely - great for everyone, and as caches are graded by difficulty and terrain, can be visited by either families with pushchairs, or serious walkers !

Always in interesting places too - some where you would never think of visiting.

As an occasional commuter to London, I enjoy the city centre caches as a way of getting out and exploring the city at lunchtime. :rolleyes:

We have recently introduced some local families to Geocaching - we offered an afternoons Geocaching at out School's Auction of promises, which was great fun ! If anyone is staying at either of the Henley on Thames sites, send me a message and I can show you some good caches locally.

Two great hobbies that go together, what more could a family want ! B)

Cheers
Sarah

[Dave E]

Delighted to see this promotion of geocaching. We've been caching since 2001 and love it. As of today there are 14,500 live caches in the UK and 336,000 live caches across hundreds of countries worldwide.

Geocaches are usually away from the roads so beware using Tomtom or other car navigation only GPS receivers to find them since these usually route you to the nearest road location which may be a substantial distance from the cache. However, Tomtom 6 gives the capability to enter full longitude/latitude (I haven't tried this function but if it routes you to the edge of fields or into the woods then it's probably right). The ideal GPS kit is a handheld receiver (some of which also do car navigation).

If folks would like a Tomtom download of selected areas of geocaches then it's free from the geocacheuk website after you register (it's free). Alternatively you can get inidividual long/lat from the main geocaching.com website, start with the postcode search in Moose's post above.

I'm one of the committee on the GAGB also mentioned above and would be happy to help anyone get started, particularly since I'm new to caravanning and am getting lots of useful information here.

[Eddie_C]

Only started recently, but I've already over a dozen logged in my area, and one in Afghanistan! I plan to be out and about soon finding more!

[Dave E]

Here are today's facts about this unknown, quiet little activity:

There are 598127 active caches worldwide.
In the last 7 days, there have been 388240 new logs [visits] written by 56098 account holders.
In the UK, there are 29773 active caches.