I started geocaching in 2005. It was fairly new then and there weren’t that many caches around, but the driving force behind starting it up was to give my then young kids some incentive to come on walks with us. It worked too, they really enjoyed it, and, back then, caches seemed to be way more fun for children, often hiding a variety of collectibles and toys.
Now, fast forward almost 20 years, my incentive is slightly different – I need to get fitter after a long time sitting behind computers, and walking and cycling are my preferred methods of exercise, so geocaching seemed like a great way to motivate myself.
I was pleased to be able to reactivate my old account seamlessly, and see that my old finds and hides were still listed. I live in The Cotswolds, and I’m a huge The Jam fan, so the name seemed fairly obvious to me back in 2005 and I think still works today.
I was also excited to see how many caches are available today! I think it must have exploded around lockdown or something, or maybe it just carried on growing in popularity without me knowing, but there are a lot. Some things have changed though. I have noticed many more micro caches being hidden as opposed to the more traditional, small lunch box size that seemed to be the norm when I started. This is fine, and micros are fun to find, but it greatly restricts what can be placed in the cache. The small and medium ones too seem to lack anything of any note – people are simply not leaving things in the cache, probably as there are just too many of them. One of the fun aspects of geocaching for me was travel bugs – I released several myself and have a currently active one in circulation. These too seem fewer in number, although I did pick one up in France recently to bring back to the UK.
But it is still unquestionably fun though, and gets me out there and a bit more active, so it’s all good from that point of view. I have also got a nice little second hand GPS unit, a Garmin eTrex 10. Most people seem to use their phones nowadays and that’s fine of course, but when I started out, using a dedicated GPS was the done thing, and it just seems right to carry on using one today. Plus it mounts nicely on the bike without risking a broken iPhone in the event of a mishap!
I have just got back from France where I found over 20 new caches to kick start my geocaching adventure, and even my now grown up kids have caught the (travel) bug and have created their own accounts. Something fun for us all to catch up about.
With the way the world is today, a nice simple hobby that gets you outside and has you searching for small, large, interesting treasure chests, and that also takes you to some interesting places you’d never otherwise visit, has already made me happy. And happy is good.
I’ll blog here about some of the more interesting caches I come across, with periodic updates on my travel bug, my hides and interesting areas I discover.