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geocaching.com Treasure
hunting with hand held Global Positioning Systems, Geocaching has come to
Britain. Simon Willis tracks down
the mysterious Jock Scott who brought this new craze over here. There is
treasure in them there hills.
And not only the hills - might be hidden in a city, town or village,
on a coastal path or in a country park.
It might be under a moss covered boulder or inside a ruined
building. You may even have to
crack a code to find it, or decipher a cryptic clue. But every month, another stash of
goodies is hidden somewhere in Britain, just waiting to be discovered by high
tech bounty hunters. The truth
may not be out there, but the treasure certainly is. DonÕt
expect gold or precious jewels, whatÕs priceless about Geocaching is the way
the players are working together to spread the game around the world. It works like this: someone takes a
small waterproof plastic box and puts inside a few goodies, such as a log
book, a pen, a disposable camera, CDÕs...... whatever. This ÒtreasureÓ is then hidden
anywhere itÕs unlikely to be found by accident, and the longitude and
latitude are noted using a hand held GPS unit. These co-ordinates are then posted on the website
www.geocaching.com and another stash is ready to be found. Other
players choose a cache they hope to find, enter the co-ordinates into their
hand held Global Positioning System and go treasure hunting. ItÕs not easy, since the GPS unit
only points in a straight line to the cache, so a gorge, a motorway or an
entire mountain range could lie in between. People who find the cache donÕt ÒwinÓ anything, theyÕre
just expected to follow three simple rules; Òtake something, leave something,
and write in the bookÓ. And thatÕs
it. It really is that simple,
and perhaps this simplicity, plus the affordability of GPS units, explains
why it is growing so fast. The
first cache was hidden in the UK last December and new ones have been added
at a rate of three a month. Not
surprisingly, it started in the United States. A chap called Dave Ulmer is credited with inventing
Geocaching when he hid a five gallon bucket in a field on the outskirts of
Portland in Oregon. According to
the official game website, Dave has retired from the game but others have
taken up where he left off. What
made this sport possible was the decision of the United States government to
permit increased accuracy of non-military GPS units. Until recently the signals were
deliberately degraded for security reasons, but now objects can be pinpointed
to an accuracy of about thirty feet.
This has boosted the sales of GPS units, and a basic model can now be
bought for around £120. I first
learned about Geocaching while hiking in Colorado. Over a beer or two in the town of Grand Lake, a group of
American hikers asked me whether there were, Òany caches in BritainÓ. When I confessed my ignorance, they
explained the set up and told me Geocaching was enjoyed by a whole range of
people - hikers, families and a few computer nerds! Each cache was graded for difficulty, one mark indicating
the terrain, the other indicating how well the treasure was hidden. A cache graded 5/5 would be somewhere
up a remote mountain, hidden under a rock in a boulderfield. A cache graded 5/1 could be in a city
park, so it would be easy to reach, but again, tricky to actually pin point. When I returned
home I logged onto the site and discovered the first Geocache had just been
hidden in the United Kingdom.
Described as ÒScotlandÕs FirstÓ it was registered with the website on
15th December 2000 by someone with the apparently fictitious name
of ÒJock ScottÓ. Why should
anyone make up a name just to take part in a game I wondered, so I decided to
track down the mysterious Mr Scott.
I was not
alone. Other journalists were
also trying to contact Jock Scott through the Geocaching website, but he did
not respond to them. I know
this, because Mr Scott did respond to me. I still donÕt know his real name, but Jock agreed to an
exchange of e-mails because he liked TGO magazine. He told me; ÒI used this name because I wasnÕt sure if
Geocaching was legal in Scotland.
The American based website explains how new players can get started
but it advises caches should be hidden on Òpublic landsÓ.Ó Since every square inch of our small
islands is owned by someone, there is no equivalent to American public land,
and Jock was worried heÕd incur the wrath of landowners. I agreed not to write about our
exchange until after the Foot and Mouth crisis was over and ScotlandÕs hills
were no longer out of bounds. Before I
managed to track down Jock Scott I was able to find his cache and according
to the log book, I was the first.
The etiquette of the game prevents me from revealing its location,
except to say I drove an hour and a quarter North from my home in Glasgow, then
hiked for an hour and a half up a steep mountain. A small pile of stones had been placed on top of a large
rock, with the container hidden underneath. Since then
IÕve watched the website as caches have been hidden all over Britain. ThereÕs
a cache in the Usk Valley in Wales, several in Northumberland, and two on the
Island of Mull, one of which is in the summit cairn of Ben More! A cache in London is proving
particularly popular, and along with the co-ordinates this clue is posted;
Òtake a constitutional up the hill with a governing view of London. Seek the resting place of Alan A
Johnson, Pilot. Turn your back
to the madding crowd and walk 300 meters North by Northwest. Our cache lies buried at the foot of
a solitary gnarled tree in a lonely thicket.Ó To date, seven people have e-mailed the website to say
they attempted it. Jesper,
visiting from Denmark was successful; MrMoose from Tennessee, was visiting on
business but failed to find the cache after riding the underground, surfacing
in various tube stations to switch on his GPS. This is a very international sport! But is it
a good thing to have small plastic boxes despoiling the countryside? Might some people argue theyÕre
nothing more than litter, track them down and remove them? Well, they might and thatÕs up to
them, IÕm certainly not going to become an advocate for Geocaching. Indeed, I still canÕt decide whether
this is a world wide weird game for gadget obsessed geeks, or a harmless and
entertaining way to encourage people to exercise. Even in the United States, where people have been
Geocaching for several years, it is still developing. But it seems to be settling down into
a family friendly pass-time, with caches hidden in such a way as to give Mom,
Dad and the kids an entertaining day out. So if you accidentally stumble across a small plastic box
with a few goodies inside, now you know just to leave it where you found
it. It might not look like much,
but to someone, itÕs hidden treasure. |
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