Geocaching - what is it?

Geocaching is a high tech treasure hunt where you use a global positioning satellite receiver (GPSr) to find “caches” that other people have hidden.

It started in 2000 when the USA Department of Defence took the “wobble” off the satellite system. All of a sudden they were accurate to within a few feet. The day after an American called Dave Ulmer hid the first cache and put its location on the internet. Geocaching had been born. Now there are now almost 800,000 caches located in nearly every country in the world.

So what’s in a cache? Its normally a plastic box or old ammunition box with a log book inside and lots of inexpensive trinkets (normally aimed at children). Caches are hidden, sometimes very ingeniously, but never buried. All the locations are on the website:

For more details click www.geocaching.com

The aim is to take the location and clue from the website, load it into your GPSr and find the cache. Sign the log book, take a trinket out of the cache replace it with something different. At the end of the day you log your finds on the website.

In The United Kingdom there are (in 2009) over 43120 and hundreds in Shropshire.

There is an easy way to try this new craze. Just go to the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre and they will hire you a GPSr, show you how to uses it and give you the leaflet for one of their own geocaching trails.

For more details click http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/arts.nsf/open/36D56B4B41A313518025753D0042918D

There are geocaches all the way along the Shropshire Way and they can be identified by clicking on the following links:

• Route 1 - Bridges to Bishop’s castle
• Route 2 - Bishop’s Castle to Clun
• Route 3 - Clun to Craven Arms
• Route 4 - Craven Arms to Ludlow
• Route 5 - Ludlow to Cold Green
• Route 6 - Cold Green to Wilderhope
• Route 7 - Wilderhope to Church Stretton
• Route 8 - Church Stretton to Bridges
• Route 9 - Longmynd to Hopesay
• Route 10 - Craven Arms to Wilderhope
• Route 11 - link to Severn Way