I’d become hooked on geocaching after listening to friends (TwoRedBoots and ChickenAnBite) chatting about it in the back of my car as we drove to London to the Queen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace (long story) and I was bemused when, at a roadside services, they suddenly pulled out their iPhones, cried “there’s one not 200 yards away” and disappeared into the night.

After that I read An Idiot’s Guide to Geocaching, registered with geocaching.com and borrowed a friend’s GPSr to find a few in my lunch breaks. I also used Google Earth to locate some others and found them too. From that moment on I was hooked.

Two weeks ago we went for our first Geocache Walk in Northcombe Woods (N50º44.965 W004º10.120) to find a series of 9 Caches with a bonus mystery box. The weather was dull and drizzly and spirits were low but we found the first 3 caches before we had to give up. Last weekend while my wife was at a trade show we tried again, this time taking my father – or Graa as the boys call him. The day started badly as the youngest boys’ wellington boots are in my wife’s car but once we were a third of the way round the course (in very muddy trainers) they cheered up thanks, no doubt, to the sweets and snacks I’d thought to bring with us.

We followed the trail and found all the caches which contained stencils to fill in and build up a set of coordinates for the mystery box. Along the way we also had to collect 4 digits and a letter which would help us with the mystery cache. I assumed there would be a padlock on an ammo tin but to our shock it turned out to be a safe embedded in a tree stump with a digital keypad. Unfortunately our pen died and our pencil had gone missing meaning we were unable to sign the log so I left a business card instead. We had great fun rummaging through the swops in the cache and I vowed to return one weekend to sign the log properly.

As a teenager I had been a Dartmoor Letterboxer and had reached my 1000 badge but now as a father with young children the moor is a little too difficult for the little guys and expeditions actually require far more planning than we have time for. For now we shall stick to urban areas and forestry trails. With Letterboxing I’ve always been used to counting paces and checking bearings to get in the locality of a box then hunting in an ever-widening spiral for the wretched thing but with Geocaching I’ve learned that once I am at the coordinates and the GPSr says the cache is within 3m it REALLY means it and I have to fight the urge to wander off to investigate a distant likely looking spot

So now I’m hooked. I am borrowing a friend’s Garmin Vista HCx. I have 900 caches within 100 miles of my home and work programmed in. I have the GPx file loaded into GeoShrine on my Java enabled mobile phone . I just need to work some more hours to build up some flexi time to cache longer at lunch times now!

By OckmentBells

OckmentBells has only been geocaching since September 2010 but is thoroughly hooked to the point of obsession. Whether it’s quick lunchtime cache and dashes or the occasional weekend hunt for 10 or so it’s a great hobby. With his wife, eldest son (5) and twin sons (3) stealth isn’t always possible so they go for remote caches or forest trails when hunting en-masse.

Comments(1):

1. Hooked

   The wife and I have been hooked for four years. The is no better way to spend time with the ones you love.

   Sunday, October 16, 2011 Marvin