Sunday, January 07, 2007

X Marks the spot

Something I could have mentioned yesterday, had I not felt that the joke about EastEnders was so much more important, was that during this Scottish sojourn I've been introduced to the wonders of geocaching.

It's a strange hobby involving tracking down hidden 'caches' by means of given co-ordinates and a GPS device. So this is a pastime combining healthy outdoor exercise with the latest in modern technology, and as such is something that I wholeheartedly approve of. On Saturday, we went to the extremely picturesque little town of South Queensferry to find three hidden containers - one of them we had to go on an educational treasure hunt to piece together the co-ordinates from dates on buildings and information boards; another, hidden near the Forth Rail Bridge, was a box containing not only the obligatory log book for everyone who finds it to sign, but various trinkets to swap and 'geocoins' to exchange. We had a delicious lunch in an extremely picturesque little cafe in between hunts, got lots of sea air and walking, and then came home to find that a brand new cache had just been hidden not far down the road, so had to rush out again to be the first to find it.

There's a whole huge community of people who hide and seek these little tupperware containers and the things inside them. Now that's the kind of subculture they should be making documentaries about! I find it fascinating, anyway, and I might just have to splash out on the technology and go treasure hunting around Derby when I get home.

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