Silver Whispers

It must be for a few years that I've been aware of the slightly odd pastime of geocaching. When I heard about it, I thought it sounded like it might be a good way to get the kids outdoors and add a bit of fun to walks and extra interest to my running.

My first, failed, attempts taught me some important lessons:

1. There is more than one way that coordinates can be given and if you write down the wrong one for the type of SatNav you're using, you could end up driving round in circles getting nowhere
2. There are more than two ways that coordinates can be given and if you write down the wrong one for the different type of SatNav you're now using, you can end up running round in circles getting nowhere
3. It probably helps if there are some lights if you're going to look for a wee canister in the dark

Then, on Sunday, I was going to give it another go and identified a cache near the route I was going to run anyway, then decided not to bother since the SatNav was in the car. But then, while on the run, I remembered the rough location and the clue so decided to take a quick look and found it quite easily without the SatNav. My first cache. It felt good and I think I'll plan some more long runs near caches. I might even try and get a proper hand-held GPS, but I hope that I will never refer to non geocaching folk as "muggles" - I think that's another reason I've never really got into it.

(p.s. Sorry if this blog post is as boring as Vikki thought it was going to be.)