Outdoors: Geocaching

Published on Sunday 4 April 2010 13:36

Thousands of people are addicted to searching for recently hidden treasure - and the bug is catching.

Most people do not know this but, for ten years, volunteers have been hiding secret caches of valuables in the Scottish countryside. If you have climbed a mountain or crossed a stream, the chances are you've walked past one without knowing it. There are literally thousands out there.

These mini hoards are on Ben Nevis. You'll find them on the summit of Schiehallion or at Loch Lomond. People have left stashes of fascinating trinkets for others to find.

Interested in discovering one yourself? If the answer is yes, you have been snared by the bug which is geocaching.

When Bill Clinton ordered the US military to free up satellite signals in the 90s, American gadget buffs speculated what GPS (global positioning systems) could be used for. One obvious idea was locating objects in remote locations. From this root came geocaching.

Basically, this is hi-tech treasure hunting where the individual becomes the game's character. A volunteer places a cache in a wilderness location then posts the co-ordinates online. A geocacher signs in and notes the latitude and longitude, dons a pair of walking boots and heads into the hills with a hand-held GPS and finds it.

When they do, they open up the container, write their comments in a log book and take an item, replacing it with another of similar or higher value. At the last count, there were one million active caches hidden across the world, on every continent including Antarctica.

Some people are on to their thousandth cache, while others are just beginning their search. However, the craze is growing and it is coming en masse to Scotland for the first time this year.

Mega Event Scotland will bring the geocaching fraternity to Perthshire in July. There have only been two previous events in the UK. It will be an eye-opener for many. Despite a decade of growth, the pastime is still relatively unknown. It can become an obsession. Some of the keenest enthusiasts spend thousands of pounds travelling to foreign countries for geocaching holidays.

What's good about it is that, unlike many technology-based hobbies, the one thing you definitely have to do is leave your living room.

This is no Wii Fit culture, this is an adventure for those who love experiencing the outdoors.

Paul McLennan, from Perthshire, became hooked on geocaching after discovering how it transformed local tourism on Prince Edward island, Canada. An outdoor enthusiast in his fifties, he decided to see what was available on his doorstep when he returned home. He was shocked by his discovery.

"I never realised there were so many caches near to where I lived," he says. At present, there are about 900 active caches in Perthshire. This is expected to exceed the thousand mark in time for the event in July.

After finding his first cache, containing coins and key rings, on Birnham Hill, McLennan became a devotee. He describes it as like "a bulb going on in his head". Each enthusiast has a geocache name; Paul's is "Cateran". To date, he has found 110 caches and has even hidden some himself. Furthermore, he has met whole families who share his unusual pastime.

"It is for all ages and types. It is great for encouraging kids to explore outdoors because there is a point to the walk; it is treasure hunting. The fact you also have a hand-held GPS system makes it fun. People like gizmos and toys."

The 2009 film Splinterheads introduced a huge number of the uninitiated to geocaching, bestowing a kind of "cool" upon the activity. If you want the kids to stop hogging the PC, get them to note the locations of caches then set off into the hills to find some treasure. With the help of a former US president, the web and a GPS, geocaching could become the Munro bagging of the new decade.

For more information on geocaching, see www.geofrees.org

#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman on April 03, 2010