GeoCaching

Geocaching is a good way to get out for a bit of exercise or just into the outdoors with a bit of added entertainment.

All you need is a smart phone with geocaching app downloaded and set up good to go, do create an account up front.   You can get a free version of the app and you can create a free account but you will find many more caches hidden behind the premium paywall, so when the urge takes me (or I decide to take Rangers, Brownies or even Rainbows) I usually pay a bit extra for a short time



Geocaches (in the rural environment) are tubes, pots or tubs hidden in hedges, bushes, trees, bridges.  The app will take you by GPS co-ordinates (or literally just following an arrow on the app) to the vicinity of the cache but then you have to find it and some are very cleverly hidden.

They are well hidden to stop Muggles (non-geocachers) finding them and clever hiding and quick (or not so quick) finding is part of the challenge.  Whilst you are poking in bushes, looking up trees or on your hands and knees looking under a style if a muggle should come by you need to pretend you are doing something else.  This can cause confusion even when you understand the game sometimes!

When you find a cache you can mark on your app that you have found it and it is normal to leave a message on the app for the cache owner saying thank you and maybe 'quick find' or 'gosh that took a while' but don't give away too much or you will spoil it for the next hunters that might read the message log.  Although it can be really helpful to read both the cache hint and the message log if you are struggling to find one as sometimes you can pick up enough clues about where you should be looking.

Caches will have a log in them for you to sign, in the tubs they are often nice big notepads but in the tubes they can be very rolled, tweezers come in handy for getting them out for signing.

Caches come in a variety of sizes from Tupperware boxes to tiny magnetic cartridges,  old film canister tubes are quite common but I have seem them cleverly hidden in torches, hollows of stones, fake logs and even a snail shell attached to a tube that was pushed into a gate hinge hole.

Large caches might have trackables in them, these are items that get moved from cache to cache and they can slowly travel the world.  If you find one you can log it and move it onto another cache if you want to.

Large caches might also have geo-swag in them, these are bits and bobs to be swapped, this is particularly good fun for the younger cachers, so I tend to be in the habit of leaving badges in them rather than taking anything away but if you do it must always be a swap, never just take.


Because of where I live I am clearly going to be found mostly wandering up and down a canal towpath with my GPS signal bouncing around and up to my arms in nettles

So I generally take this out with me:

• A pair of fairly hardy gloves - I use my running gloves generally
• a pair of tweezers
• A ball point pen, a pencil and a fibre pen (because one of them will write on the paper log and on any given day one seems better than the other!)
• A pokey stick - I take a walking pole
• something to 'swap' - I tend to take guiding badges or cracker toys (never food/sweets)
• long trousers, long sleeved t-shirt
• hand gel
• baby wipes
• a tube of soothe or anthisan

In a more urban environment you are likely to be looking around drain pipes, under seats, attached to the back of signs, holes in walls so I would still take:

• A pair of fairly hardy gloves - I use my running gloves generally
• a pair of tweezers
• A ball point pen, a pencil and a fibre pen 
• something to swap
• hand gel
• baby wipes

It can actually get quite addictive and seeing green dots rather than smiley faces on your app, especially for local caches, is a challenge I cannot ignore!

There are some rules and helpful advice here that I recommend you read before you get going.


As a Guider I have done geocaching as an activity with all ages ranges.  For Brownies and Rainbows I recommend you go in advance and find each cache yourself, this will help you to guide them if they need extra help.

For Rangers I tend to look at a reasonable round walk online, show it to them and just give them my phone (and usually ask if any of them have a big data allowance and get them to download the app in advance too) but mostly I just trust them with my phone and follow them around.   There are a remarkable amount of them within a fairly short walking distance of our meeting place and the last time we went looking it was a challenge to get them to stop and get back in time to got home, the time before that a different set of girls weren't very engaged, so it depends on the girls you have at any one time.

As a unit we own a travelling trackable.  I hang it off my rucksack and if people that know what it is spot it they can log it.

Geocaching is something a bit different to get you out and about - give it a go and see how you get on.

Let me know how you did.

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Littlier People

I've had a lovely evening at Brownies this week. We went geocaching.

I pootled off into the fields with a six, one of whom had just come up from Rainbows.  Rainbows, I have re-learnt, cannot stop talking.

We were going great guns, finding the ones we were supposed to.

Although the brownies were struggling with the concept of "wait for me" and "don't go into the next field until I get there"









It was about this point I got a phone call from Wise Owl saying "I think you've gone too far, you're a field over from where you should be"  Ahhhh blessed be the bright red uniform after all!

It was a nice night and it's good for the girls to run free in the fields, so I took them over just one more field to another geocache and then came back down the green lane with lovely views over our village.  We talked about the way markers and cows and when it is safe to be in the fields with them and when it isn't.  It's a good lesson for these girls.  And we got back in time, just!  Bet they slept well though.


If one evening of littlier people than Rangers was not enough, I had volunteered to help out one of my Rangers Rainbow activity days.  She was organising it to help her complete her Adult Leaders Qualification and as part of her Queen's Guide.

Now, Rainbows generally scare the nellies off me. They are very small with a tendency to cry if I use any one of my stock phrases like "what part of no are you confused about?" whilst giving my best Paddington Bear stare.


But I behaved and stayed smiley.  I even managed to not give the dairy free child dairy.  Look, anyone that knows me knows I cannot be trusted with that sort of responsibility 100%!!!

But they all decorated cakes happily, with clean hands and appropriate intolerances tolerated and I was even jolly and patient through the 'extension activity'.

The sweets were diligently counted per head without hassle and every rainbow made a cake of absolute 'rainbow tried hardest' standard.  I used the phrase "oooh that's lovely"  ever such a lot (whilst wondering how Gordon Ramsey would have worded it!!)










The table remained organised and clean throughout.

And as the last of 60 girls finished I looked down and realised most of it was on me!

It was a lovely way to spent an afternoon, so maybe I do like Rainbows after all.....I just couldn't eat a whole one!!

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Sculpture in Nature

I like this time of year at my favourite park.  The season is on the cusp.  It starts to take on a more dramatic edge but without the biting cold winds.

There are many great oaks in the park, huge but some are showing their age and look more like great natural works of art than trees.

 In October the stags rutt.  Amazing to watch and at this time of year you can see the boys starting to mature and break away from the large herds.












Some of the males have huge necks, I assume these are last years males.

 And they stand like majestic works of art on the hills.














There are still the grazing areas with 100s of deer (red and fallow) on them but I prefer the boys just hanging out in the bracken.

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Impassable Paths

This week's Gallery is 'My View Right Now'


I spend a lot of time out in the fields.

One of my regular running routes looks like this.  It's actually dangerous to run, I'm tripping and getting wrapped up in the neck high grasses just walking.

This was one of the paths I followed geocaching at the weekend.  Don't be fooled by the picture, that gap you see was not as wide as me.  The dry rape seed scratched my arms very badly.

Please, please Mr Farmer man...is it time to harvest yet?!!!!

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Playing ants, me?! Noooooo

This week's gallery is 'Detail'. 

I spend a lot of time walking around fields, as you know.

And they mostly look like this to me (at this time of year if the weather is good!)

But whilst I was out and about geocaching a few Sundays ago, I got the urge to get down into the buttercups and see what an ant sees.

It's ok, no one was around and if you don't tell anyone either, no one will know I am pretending to be an ant in the fields.

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Gone Geocaching, be back soon.

I told you a while back about geocaching.  It's a great way to make a walk outdoors more interesting, it adds 'a reason', it send you on routes you would never have otherwise have taken or even known existed.  I've not been for a while but the bug has recently bitten again.

We went in dreadful weather in the half-term break. If it wasn't for the cache challenge and the fact we knew having less people around would make it a lot easier, there is no way we would have gone out.  Heck, we were wearing water proof trousers the weather was that wet, but even the teenagers still wanted to come.  If it gets teens out of their beds on a wet, wet day to poke around a field, it must be good.

 The upside of being out when not many others are is there is a lot more wildlife around and close up.

 Cog even insisted on a paddle.  We got 5 out of the 7 caches we had planned to find.  They were quite far apart and took some finding, so not many, but a lot of fun all the same.

 A few days later, with the weather a bit brighter, my friend and I set off again.  This time we found 11 on a really nice round walk.  She is much better at finding them than me.  She is far more tenacious.

It is supposed to be a secret that you are looking for something, they are hidden for a reason and it stops them being moved or broken by 'non-players'.  But at one point we were both on our hands and knees on a canal towpath, up to our arms in hawthorn and a couple of walkers went by.  Oddly they totally ignored the fact that we were not behaving entirely to 'canal towpath walking' order.  They were clearly either s geocachers themselves or perhaps regular London tube commuters, used to not acknowledging the absurd!

 Some are easier to find than others.  This was my quick find of the day.

 Always they seem to take us off on lovely walks.  This is only 500 yards from a road I drive on regularly, I had no idea this path was here.

I've another 17 on a round walk saved to my phone for the next opportunity.  I suspect my summer weekends are going to be a stick poking around the base of a tree sort of affair!

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