Having first heard about the phenomenon that is Geocaching from a Facebook friend I was keen to find out more. I looked up the main web site, geocaching.com and took things from there. I entered our postcode and put in a search radius of 20 miles and was surprised, yet pleased to find that there are many caches on my doorstep waiting to be discovered.

After a little saving (mainly through another pastime of completing online surveys) I was able to purchase a GPSr to allow us to start our treasure hunting adventure. I chose 3 local caches as I knew the area and knew that they would be easily accessible for my children. The first we went to was called "the splash". Knowing exactly where this was and knowing the children would like the novelty of driving the car through the ford we set off on what was a great afternoon geocaching. Having read the cache info online I was aware we might not find the cache but took the suggested photo of us all along with our GPSr. It is a really quiet spot and was surprised to hear a car, but not nearly as surprised as I was to discover it was my dad heading home on a strange route!

After this cache we headed towards our second search site. This time we were looking for a themed cache. Having parked up at the suggested parking spot we all bailed out and followed the path we have walked many times. In the past being completely oblivious to the hidden gems that were waiting on us. Ok, so I knew there would be no gems as such in this cache as it was suggested that swap items were to be cars. Clue is in the name I guess. :)We followed the path and the signal was telling us we were close. After a brief scout around the box popped into view. Inside the box were various vehicles, L had brought an item to swap so he was allowed to choose what he wanted. We took a photo of the children with the open cache before signing the log book and tucking the box and it's contents safely back where we found it.

The trip back to the car didn't fill DH with joy. He was hit by a branch, then by the stick J was carrying and finally head butted by F (whom he had on his shoulders). Once we were all back in the car we headed for our final cache of the day.

Safely parked up less than 100m of the cache we climbed the fence into the wood. Jacob inflicted more pain by hauling the wire up to let me through but resulted in near slicing DH's nose off! This time we were looking for a much smaller cache. It was a well hidden cache and missed first off by DH. After 10 minutes of searching L located the container and it's goodies. F saw a bracelet she fancied and so duly put in a notebook in exchange. L went straight for the pack of water bombs. We only had a pack of tissues to swap but figured they were a fair swap. After signing the log book and heading out of the wood we wished we'd entered more caches into or GPS such fun was had by all. 

There is alway another time, cache ya later x