Welcome

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Geekteacher's geocaching exploits. Here you can follow my progress as I visit (and hopefully find) many of the geocaches hidden around the UK. This all started for me when my wife bought me a GPSr unit for my birthday. But what is a 'GPSr' and what is 'geocaching' I hear you ask - well here's my own brief explanation:

Geocaching is a global treasure hunt in which anyone can take part. All you need is a free account with www.geocaching.com and a handheld GPSr (Global Positioning System receiver) unit (or a large scale map of an area). A GPS or GPRS is an electronic gadget that reads data transmitted by a range of satellites which can then identify your position almost anywhere on the planet down to an accuracy of a few feet. These units are used in vehicle satellite naviagtion (SatNav) systems to help plan your route or tell you where you are.

You use the GPSr to accurately locate the boxes of 'treasure' know as geocaches or just caches, after getting some details of where they are hidden from the geocaching.com website. Once you have found a cache, you log it in your account at geocaching.com, and so over time a record of your finds is built up.

Geocaches range in size from small to large: small ones are usually 35mm film cannisters or tablet containers, and the larger ones are plastic 'tupperware' style sealable boxes. The 'treasure' can be almost anything that will fit inside, but there is always some kind of logbook or logsheet to record your visit.

You are allowed to take anything you find in a geocache, but you should always replace it with something of your own if possible. Common items include keyrings, badges, small toys and stationary items. None of these items have any real value.

There are two special items that you will sometimes find in a geocache: Travel Bugs (TB's) and Geocoins (GC's). A TB is a metal dog tag which is attached to a small item and GC is a specially minted coin with some kind of emblem on it. Both of these are known as 'trackable items' because they each also contain a unique reference number which is logged in a database at the geocaching.com website. The idea is that if you find a cache with a TB or GC in it, you take it and move it on to another cache. You log where you have found it and where you deposited it and,i n this way, the movement of the item can be tracked around an area and sometimes around the world. Hence the name - Travel Bug.

Anyway, this all started today for me, and this is a record of what happened next ....