GeoCaching – first multi-cache find
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | Geocaching
For a while now I’ve had it in my mind about doing geocaching, as a way of getting out and about, seeing things or places you may not have seen before and of course exercise. But lack of a decent GPS unit with the ability to put in co ordinates held me back. But since Garmin has been released will full touch screen ability for the nokia 5800 it’s now much easier to have some fun!
There are several different types of cache, but the most common tend to be the traditional cache, where by the co ordinates given are the location of the the cache and the you basically just have to hunt around and find it. Or the multi-cache (offset cache) which I prefer as you move around to get to your final location cache. Either by working out clues to get the co ordinate for the cache or by finding smaller caches which gives you clues to the next cache and so on.
Having had one successful traditional cache find some time ago, I then went on to do a multi cache. This was still at a time when I didn’t have a decent means of putting co ordinates in to the Nokia 5800 and was unfortunately a failed find. Although a lovely walk and clue finding fun not finding the cache left me disheartened and I decided to leave it for a while. I’ve had Garmin fully functional on the 5800 for some time now but only on Sunday I decided to give it another go. I looked up and interesting multi cache on www.geocaching.com that was an easy walk along the Southampton City walls, the final co ordinates were deciphered from a set of 8 questions.. the answers of which could be found on information boards giving details of the walls along the walk. Unfortunately there was some restoration work going on in one particular area that prevented me from finding the answers to two of the questions and thus getting the final co ordinates. I had an idea where the cache might be but being in a relatively busy area I didn’t want to hunt around for it.
Returning home having failed again I set to finding the answers to the questoions on the internet. Once found they confirmed I was indeed thinking in the right area on Sunday so today I returned and found the cache fairly quickly. Depending on the size of the cache depends what you might find, some caches are very small 35mm film canisters, other can be 1ltr boxes. Today’s cache was a 0.33ltr box which contained the log book and a few things, most notably an Egyptian Cartouche like the one on the right in the picture below.
Egyptian Cartouche
The message with the cartouche was that it wanted to travel to Egypt and then back to it’s home and owner in the Isle of Man. I wasn’t sure if the cartouche was on it’s way to Egypt or on it’s way back.
The general rule of thumb with geocache finds is “if you an item from the cache, leave an item” However with travel bugs as they are called such as the Egyptian cartouche the object is to move it on as quick as you can. Not knowing when I would do another cache and being unable to move it very far I decided not to remove the Egyptian cartouche. Each travel bug has it’s own page that you can log or watch it’s movements, so when I got home I looked it up and it hasn’t made it to Egypt yet… Hopefully someone will find it that can take it further on it’s journey. I have decided to watch the cartouche and follow it’s travels.
Fingers crossed there will be many more successful finds!
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