We've just discovered Geocaching!

[clorogue]

Well my son has and it is sooooo good! Basically it is a treasure hunt in the countryside at national and international level - and it's free too. Yesterday evening I was out with my children hunting for the little capsules (could be in a tree or hanging off somewhere) and then adding our name to the log in there and he was able to log on the computer where he has been, you can exchange treasures, take letter for the bonus one etc. The capsules are called geocaches and you can plant some yourself and look at them and see who has visited. Families travel around the country to do this. We are on track for 100 capsules at the moment. Great exercise and the children love it - great exercise for me too!! An hour and half of walking last night! Has anyone done or or heard of it? What do you think if you have? I only heard of it when my son stumbled across it. A GPS seems to be essential for it too. I never knew this existed.

[manjay]

Well my son has and it is sooooo good! Basically it is a treasure hunt in the countryside at national and international level - and it's free too. Yesterday evening I was out with my children hunting for the little capsules (could be in a tree or hanging off somewhere) and then adding our name to the log in there and he was able to log on the computer where he has been, you can exchange treasures, take letter for the bonus one etc. The capsules are called geocaches and you can plant some yourself and look at them and see who has visited. Families travel around the country to do this. We are on track for 100 capsules at the moment. Great exercise and the children love it - great exercise for me too!! An hour and half of walking last night! Has anyone done or or heard of it? What do you think if you have? I only heard of it when my son stumbled across it. A GPS seems to be essential for it too. I never knew this existed.

We have just discovered this too:thumbsup: . We read about it in our Caravan Club magazine and we try to have a go when ever we go away. We use iphones as our GPS but I think most modern phones have it built in

[suzyblue]

Just had a look and it looks great! My other half is into metal detecting :eek: but I cant get into it so this would be good for us to do together. I have just emailed it to him :thumbsup:

[clorogue]

I think it is fantastic for families - makes walking interesting for the kids and the joy and achievement they feel when they have found it - not to mention a well exercised dog too!!! www.geocaching.com - I just want to spread the word!

[PixiePetal]

I have just registered!

Will check it out when home from hols :thumbsup:

[clorogue]

My son has just told me that you can buy trackable items such as geocoins and travel bugs from the website or find them in caches which you can get an access code from on the back of the trackable item. It will count as you picking them up when you log the access code into the website. Then you are supposed to move it to another geocache. I'm just learning it so i hope i have got it right!

[miss mopple]

We love caching. Its great fun :clapping:

[funfunfun]

I think it is fantastic for families - makes walking interesting for the kids and the joy and achievement they feel when they have found it - not to mention a well exercised dog too!!! www.geocaching.com - I just want to spread the word!

Thankyou counds v interesting .....wonder if they do this mear me registered off to have a nosie now :)

[Leanne59]

never heard of it, but sounds great fun, going to research it to see if we can get involved!

[clorogue]

I've been out caching since 6.45 and came back at 8.45 - the family loved it - am I mad!!

[tashaleee]

never heard of it before... seems to be in my area so off to investigate :thumbsup:

[Pipsqueak]

that looks really fab - thank you for sharing.
there is a few in my area... think i will be encouraging the children to come out and play hide and seek

[Dare4Distance]

I've been doing this for the past year after my brother introduced me to it. It's great fun!

My brother goes searching for night caches which are harder to find, they usually have clues that you can only see in the dark, like by reflecting a torch light off them or something.

[ZoeAlli]

Have just had a quick look at the website. It looks great! and there are some near me!! Will show my husband see what he thinks and go from there. Looks lots of fun!:)

[clorogue]

Well there are three 'rings' in our town and aroundabout 109 altogether and I have spent about 5 hours walking so far and been to about 8 - 101 to go - will the legs last!!!

[Pauline]

Doing our first Geocaching on Friday, can't wait. Our son and partner are really into it and want to share their new found hobby with us!

:clapping:

[PixiePetal]

I am still waiting to go - got to persuade DH :thumbsup:

also Dartmoor does Letterboxing if you live/holiday there - bit easier for children apparently :) not quite so hard to find :thumbsup:

[Jods]

Done it, joined so thanks, just trying to work it out lol!!!

:thumbsup:

[funemnx]

I've been reading a lot about Geocaching recently, I love walking and hubby needs some excercise! :thumbsup:

[singingcactus]

We do it too. Have done for a while.

[PixiePetal]

I just looked up some of my local ones and had a fit of laughter.

Reading the logs, someone found a cache early one morning and said the lady in house next door to it came out in her dressing gown with a grumpy face and slammed the garden gate shut...................that would be my SIL then :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

[RachelE]

We're big fans and wherever we go - for different reasons, dh always looks where the nearest ones are.
- he went to London with work and said there was one at a tube statio near a post box. However, he said he didnt want to be caught putting a package back next to a tube station! :rolleyes:

Off away this weekend, maybe get some more!

Rachel x

[mumto3]

I joined up a couple of months ago, weve found over 30 of them around our area and when we went on holiday to dorset in april, kids and hubby love it, i hate it when we cant find one tho, really annoying, sometimes we go bak and try again

[SandCastles]

Thanks for the link, I have not heard of it before, but have registered and will take a look at our local ones.

[miss mopple]

We're off on a 17 mile cycle ride at the weekend with 70 caches on it :clapping:

[caz3007]

I would love to do this and someone said you download an app onto your blackberry, well I tried, but couldnt get back on it again.

May have another try as there are lots in my area and great to do on holidays too

[clio0602]

Oooh that looks great. Might have a go at the wkend liven up the walk for the kids. Think we'll def start with the easiest tho to get into it.

Quite excited :D

[mumto3]

I would love to do this and someone said you download an app onto your blackberry, well I tried, but couldnt get back on it again.

May have another try as there are lots in my area and great to do on holidays too


Ive got the app on my iphone, its great, u can log ur finds straight away and upload pics onto the site too

[caz3007]

Had a look on that website and there is one I can find without a GPS, if its not raining may take my LO for a walk and see if we can find it, at least it means I will get to know what I am looking for. And we can feed the ducks at the same time.

There are several really easy ones in our area that I may be able to find

[The Juggler]

i love the sound of that.

[mushpea]

looks great and i put the coodinates in my phones sat nav, got it all working and was very chuffed with my self then my partner said that it was costing me money as I would be on the internet to recive it all,,, is that right? if I use my orange mobile phone as my gps does it cost me my minutes/data?

[Pauline]

We have been out all day and had a fabulous time. Some great caches hidden in some really ingenious places.

Can't wait to go again :thumbsup:

[PixiePetal]

I have become obsessed with looking up caches online :laughing: There are so many locally which I must have been walking past for years!

My SIL found one by accident so we will have to have a hunt when we visit them on hols next year :thumbsup:

Can't wait for some time off to be able to go and find them, now I just need a GPS :rolleyes:

[clio0602]

looks great and i put the coodinates in my phones sat nav, got it all working and was very chuffed with my self then my partner said that it was costing me money as I would be on the internet to recive it all,,, is that right? if I use my orange mobile phone as my gps does it cost me my minutes/data?

My gps doesn't cost to use it. It's just like sat nav apparently. Although I know nothing about these things really ds 10yrs had to show me how to use it lol

[mumto3]

I use the app on my iphone to direct me to it altho its not spot on, i wouldnt know how to put co-ordinates into a sat nav, what app are u using to do that?

[Hebs]

think i'll start doing this with the mindees :thumbsup:

[mushpea]

we found our first box today and sadly I was quite chuffed with myself:blush: , we used my phone and it didnt cost me anything, have planned to find two more tommoro,, poor dogs gonna be knackerd at this rate:laughing:

[onceinabluemoon]

Thanks for this, I've been idly thinking about doing it for ages (even bought a GPS compatible phone so I could) but never got to do it. Have now registered thanks to you and am looking forward to giving it a go. x

[miss mopple]

We're back from our mammoth one today. Opted to do it on legs instead of bikes- good move as we had to literally tromp through fields of rape seed that were as tall as us :eek:

The sun was seriously fierce, my daughter played up for my niece who was babysitting, the niece with us felt ill with the heat and we struggled to find the pub lunch we had planned. Ended up doing 8 miles, 20 caches and getting a cab back to pick up our car :laughing:

Wine time I think!

[loocyloo]

LOL! :D

i'd been thinking about doing this for ages ... but today WE DID IT!

there is one about a 10 min walk from home, so started with that one ( found a lady who lives up the lane, sitting RIGHT where we wanted to look, so we told her we were on a treasure hunt! she insisted we were in the wrong place, and that there wasn't anything there as she always throws rubbish away! in the end we said we were going to carry on walking up the lane .... once we saw she'd gone we turned round and found it! then walking back she saw us again ... and said, '' i told you that was the wrong way '' ... we just smiled :D BUT, lots of people look for this one, so she must seen people randomly walking her lane !!! LOL!!!

the children were so excited by finding it, we ended up doing another 3!

...guess what we're doing with no school on thursday! :D

i'm using a free gps on my android phone ( its more acurate than the free gps on DH Iphone ;) )

[rose hol]

i have tried to do it today, with no success. Defo going to try again though.:laughing:

[PixiePetal]

I have my eye on a couple of local ones ;) - don't have GPS yet so going by map and local knowledge for now :)

[caz3007]

I have my eye on a couple of local ones ;) - don't have GPS yet so going by map and local knowledge for now :)

There are a couple local to me that should be easy to find or at least where they may be, just got to find the actual cache. May be good to find out what we are actually looking for

[Zoomie]

It was far too hot for us to try this today, although we did try to find our closest cache twice last week.

We were using the gps on my phone, which wasn't very accurate, but even using the hint and clues from other posters, we weren't have to find the cache. Just not sure what we are looking for.

Anyhow, we have tried to sort out the gps on our phone. we both have blackberries and tried a few apps but so far they are not 'working' for us.

perhaps we will try again, a different cache, next week, when it isn't so hot :)

[yasminkids]

Fab isn't it. I took my children to a National Trust Event in May and they had a tent set up to hire out the GPS and then kids were off!! Lots of fun swopping items and hunting them out. Definitely a fun time, with lots of walking and running involved.:)

[loocyloo]

the caches are generally plastic boxes with lids, some very small, like film canisters, others are the size of an ice cream box! (going on what we found!) some were camoflage colour just to make it harder!

xxx

[PixiePetal]

At last I have done it!

2 caches found locally :thumbsup: :clapping: :clapping:

very hot 2 1/2 mile walk, DD came for company and chat and the dog too in case we needed a reason to justify our whereabouts :rolleyes:

looking forward to the next one :D