The Joys of Geocaching

Geocaching as many people will know, and others will not, is a giant global treasure hunt, with more than 2.5 million 'treasures' or geocaches located in various countries. It uses GPS to locate these and the most accessible way for most people is through an app on your phone - just search for 'geocaching' or 'Groundspeak' in your app store. The main website for all of this is www.geocaching.com - please go there to learn some more. It's essentially using multi-million pound satellites to find tupperware in the woods.
I'm by no means an expert having only found, at the time of writing, 32 geocaches. Most of these have been around Larne. However, I love this game. It allows me a good excuse to get my kids outdoors and having a little adventure. The kids love it too, as they inevitably get to swap some small treasure for another. Most of my finds have been with one or both of the kids in tow.

 One of  the best things about it is that there are so many of these around. I can be anywhere in the country and just boot up the app and find the nearest one (or few) of these and off I go for a quick five minutes or half hour search. We may not have some of the crazy two week hike into the wilderness type geocaches that exist in America, but that suits me fine just now.

 Travel bugs are another great part of the game. They are trackable tags that can be attached to any small trinket, assigned a mission and then moved from cache to cache, potentially travelling thousands of miles. My son and I both released separate Travel Bugs a year or so ago, and his is in Florida (click here) and mine is in Slovakia (click here) today.

 And the most addictive thing about Geocaching is the sheer frustration of not being able to find a Geocache that everyone else seems to find easily. So which one will be your nemesis?

 So go on give it a go. If you're Larne based, I recommend my son's own geocache - Charlie's Secret Forest.

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