Week 16……X marks the spot

As I’ve mentioned before, my other little obsession other than Lego is Geocaching. It is a great pastime for old and young alike, and I’ve met a wide and diverse group of people participating in it. It is basically a treasure hunt using co-ordinates and a GPS unit. (Most mobile phones these days have a basic GPS function) to find a cache (which is normally a tupperware box). Inside you will find  alogbook or sheet to sign, and if it is big enough, treasure!

The kids love it. Most ‘treasure’ within a cache is aimed at kids, marbles, badges, keyrings, small toys. So for them it really is a ‘treasure hunt’ For adults it is more the finding and signing the log, although there are special items of treasure in some caches, called Geocoins and Travelbugs. These are trackable and are moved from cache to cache so they can see the world.

I have a few caches out in our local area that I have hidden, and unfortunately one had been ‘muggled’ This is the term geocachers use to mean a non geocaching person. Sometimes a ‘muggle’ can find a cache by accident. And hopefully most will read the instruction sheet found inside most caches and place it back. However you always get a portion of the population who if finding one, destroy it by emptying the contents and throwing it all away. Maybe they think it’s fun to do this, but really it stops the fun for the millions of geocachers found throughout the world.

This particular one of mine is in some local woods, which unfortunately is becoming a bit of a hangout for the teenagers. Which is fine, no objection to then hanging out and having fun, but I do object to all the rubbish and broken glass they seem to leave in the areas they hang out in. Seems this cache hidey hole had been used as a fireplace. It was in the base of a hollowed out tree. So I had to pop up to the woods to replace the cache. This time I have moved it a bit further away from their hangout spot, so hopefully it will last longer this time.

So whilst I was up in the woods, I thought it was a great chance to take some Lego minifigs exploring. I took quite a few with me. Bob came as he always enjoys the outdoors, the lumberjack from series 5 and then I also took Captain Jack Sparrow and a couple of pirates too. I was unsure of which I would use, but I have always had in the back of my mind a geocaching themed photo using the pirates, and as that was the reason I was up in the woods today, then it seemed apt to use them, so here they are

Captain Jack and his men were enjoying the rewards of this newfangled treasure hunting they call geocaching

I reckon a GPS has got to be far better than a map with an X on it. I think the pirates might be more successful in finding treasure, even if it is only a shiny marble!

So who here has either geocached before, or has never heard or tried it before but might do so now?