From the i-phone app

Map of local area.

Green ones are to find!

A Brief description

Where to go!

How far to go!

A Hint!

During this trip I have really caught the Geocaching bug.  It is great to go out for a lovely walk with a purpose.  Caches are hidden in some very unusual places and you get taken to places that as a tourist you might not ordinarily find.  To start off with I downloaded the geocaching app to my i-phone.  The first page shows you the caches that are available to find in your area, and  if you highlight one of the icons on the map it will give you a description and a location of where to start your hunt.  On the example above the yellow smiley faces are ones that I have already found and the green ones are ones that still need to be searched for. The Lost Mine, for example, was one that I was heading for on this particular day, and on the bottom left screen shot you can see a blue dot, which is your present location, and the orange line is the most direct route as the crow flies  to where you need to be. This is not always the best way for you to get to your goal as rivers and lack of roads can really hinder your progress!  The green compass tells you how far, and in which direction, you need to go, and the last screen shot shows you one of the hints that are available for this particular cache.

The distance on the compass shows that this cache was 2.8km away from our present location…………. but by the time we had walked “around the houses” it was a lot longer……. you can just about make out the deserted buildings in the far distance!

We were advised that the cache wasn’t hidden in any of the tunnels ….. as if !

Well, I suppose if you had Indiana Jones with you then anything was possible!

This cache was found under a few rocks beneath a sink in a crumbling wash block.  (Now that I am geocaching more often I have treated myself to a Garmin GPS which works when there is no phone signal.)

This is Kev surveying the area, and he really wanted to explore in the mine entrance and beyond, that you can see in the distance.  I wasn’t so sure, and besides Jane has told me I have to behave myself, and not get lost…..well I think thats what she said!

The view back down the valley to the sea was well worth all the effort, however Kev did point out to me that if I had studied the map a little more thoroughly then we could have saved the “around the houses” part of the trip and driven a lot closer and saved a bit of effort……..well I am still learning……..from the master!!!

We have now done many early morning trips to explore the local areas close to our campsites, which gives Jane and Val plenty of time to “do” their hair and get ready for an action packed day!

It’s amazing, during a 4-5 mile walk early in the morning, how many of the world’s problems we can solve!

Then every half a mile or so we stop to find a cache hidden in a log………..

Or by a crumbling shed (we didn’t find this one due to a recent landslide!)

We couldn’t find this one either.  Well, there is always tomorrow!

As I said earlier you get to see places a little off the beaten track and very often get rewarded with some stunning views!

And plenty of photo opportunities along the way!

And if you can’t get the whole trail done in one session, you get a chance to do a bit of off-road driving the next day so you can finish off your hunt!