Mum and Dad have just come back from a holiday in Spain, and they said they had a lot of fun hunting for Geocaches with Mum's new handheld GPS. That finally convinced me to have a go, so last night I downloaded 'c:geo', a Geocaching app for my Android phone (an HTC Desire) and this afternoon we went Geocaching!
Our first 'treasure hunt' was in Little Thetford. C+R had a doze in the car while Leon and I went hunting. We found a likely looking trail and checked the compass - yes we were on the right track! I could see a bridge not too far down the track, possibly a good place for a cache, so we set off. Only half way there, however, the compass swung round, we'd gone too far!At this point I decided to 'decode' the hint, and I'm glad I did as I don't think we would have found it otherwise - the cache was about 5m from where the phone had lead us. And Leon found it! It was a small tupperware filled with trinkets and a log book - I put the date, our names and '1st cache!' Next time we'll take a trinket with us to swap.
Leon was keen to do another one, so I tried to do a search, but 2G was far too slow. Luckly I had saved one to the phone earlier while we were on wifi. It was at Cherry Hill, back in Ely, and was much harder. Firstly the phone's North kept wandering and second the GPS couldn't have been too accurate because it kept pointing us in different directions. Thirdly the cache was tiny! Again, the clue was invaluable. Didn't make it easy, but combining that with some of the comments I got an idea of where it was. Chris and the kids had set off back to the car, but I revisited where I thought it must be and eventually found it; a small tube with just enough room for a roll of paper and 1/2 a pencil! We celebrated with ice creams outside the Porta :)
So... the Desire's compass and GPS aren't particularly good for this game (although the battery ran out moments after I found the 2nd cache, so that may have affected it) but I can see it being good for spicing up days out with the kids.
Alright, I'll admit it, it'll actually be for me - I'm hooked! :)
My third geocache, just outside Ely Porta. I really felt like a spy, waiting until no-one was looking then plucking this little sealed magnetic tube from under a bench. Just enough room inside for a roll of paper - wrote my name then deftly replaced the tube. My work here was done...
