My name is The Whirlwind and I am a Geocacher…….
I am a Geocaching Addict – I spend my weekends using multi-million pounds worth of satellites to locate Tupperware hidden in woods! I go by the name of Whirlwind, am married to Driver and Security and have two sons – Big Blue Box and Legodude1.
Have I lost the plot? No – definitely not!
Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players use a GPS enabled device to locate hidden containers and then share their experiences online. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.
There are over 1.5 million geocaches hidden world-wide and over 5 million geocachers across the globe. Geocache containers range in size from micro containers as small as your little fingernail to large ammunition style boxes.
They all have one thing in common – they all contain a log book which must be signed as evidence of finding the container. The larger containers may also contain goodies which may be swapped – items such as stickers, toys, stationary, badges. Once you have successfully found the cache you then record your log on the Geocaching website -www.geocaching.com – here you can read the logs of all the previous finders and look for other caches to find and download coordinates onto your GPS.
My family, one by one, all became hooked on this activity when my elder son became a Geocaching member last November. As his dad and I had to drive him to the cache locations and his younger brother had to come along too we also caught the bug…..and it has become an excellent family hobby! We spend most of our spare time walking, hiking, climbing and visiting places we have never been to before and probably would not have visited had it not been for Geocaching. My sons are out in the open air and exercising and spending time family together – it has cut down on the amount of time they spend digitilising…….games consoles, laptops, TV etc which for me is a huge bonus!
We all have our own individual cacher names – hence the Whirlwind, Driver and Security, Big Blue Box (Doctor Who fan!) and Legodude1. Big Blue Box will be online one year in November and we have our own personal goal – to get him to one thousand cache finds by then. We are well on target – he has found 998! Only two to go! We have cached in the North and South of Ireland, Scotland, England and France. In fact pretty much wherever we go now we check to see if there are caches nearby.
We have attended quite a few Geocaching events also– these allow you to meet up with other cachers, swap stories and pick others brains if a particular cache has alluded you! We have made quite a few new friends and also got a few nice surprises along the way – people that we knew at work and at school sharing the same hobby! Who knew that our school librarian was a secret cacher!
I now can’t remember what I used to spend my Saturdays doing…….donning my hiking boots, scrambling over dale and ditch and getting mucked to the eyeballs has pretty much become the norm! definitely the highlight of my week!
For more information you can check out the Geocaching website for yourself at www.geocaching.com
There is step by step guidance on how to get started with Geocaching. You will be surprised how many caches are located near to you!
