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Treasure hunting… | Janice Scott's Blog

Treasure hunting…

The advantage of having your youngest daughter home for the Easter holidays is that she drags you out to all sorts of unexpected and novel experiences.

The latest is geo-caching. For the uninitiated, this is a sort of glorified and occasionally sophisticated, treasure hunt. The aim is to find hidden caches, using map co-ordinates and clues.  When you find the cache, you fill in a logbook and maybe exchange a small treasure – a coin, or a badge or some other tiny token. If your knees are already buckling at the thought of co-ordinates and maps, don’t despair. It isn’t as difficult as it sounds, thanks to the delights of smart phones which do most of the work for you.

From the geo-caching webpage, you decide which caches are near you and which you would like to visit. This is a world-wide movement  so there are geo-caches everywhere, and this area of Norfolk is no exception. There are literally hundreds within a few miles.

We started on Tuesday. Downloaded the information into the smart phone and set off. The first cache, near Hemblington Church, took us several minutes to find, but the next cache, near Panxworth (ruined) Church was very easy.

Encouraged and cock-a-hoop, we ventured forth again yesterday morning, this time to Blofield. There’s a group of geo-caches in the vicinity named after Dad’s Army characters, so we thought we’d hunt for them.  This is where it all started to go horribly wrong. We couldn’t find the first two, and the wind was so bitterly cold we gave up and went home for coffee. But not to be outdone, we had another attempt in the afternoon, this time different caches within a few hundred yards of home. Should be easy, right? Wrong!

One was a ‘puzzle’ cache, where you had to work out quite a challenging puzzle to find the cache. We managed the puzzle – at least, I think we did, but who knows? – but couldn’t find the cache, so we moved on to the next one which should have been easier. It wasn’t. On the other hand,  had we  known our north from our south we might have had more success. Again the weather was bitterly cold, and for some reason, home with a mug of hot tea was more inviting than scrabbling about in the undergrowth searching for a micro-cache.

I’m afraid the sum total of our joint success so far is two miserable caches, but never fear! We’re merely waiting for warmer weather before setting off again, fired with renewed enthusiasm. Watch this space, for as you know, where your treasure is, there is your heart also. Or something like that.

 

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