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BIDDESTONE
CACHE
PICTURES
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| Click
here
to see Pictures from the Disposable Camera in the Biddestone
Cache... If there's a picture of you we want to hear from
you. |
It's
cold, it's dark, I'm knee deep in grass in the middle of a field
on the outskirts of Malmesbury with a GPS unit, a compass and a
bag of stocking fillers looking for a hidden plastic lunch box.
And to make it worse I'm looking in the wrong place...
Welcome
to geocaching (pronounced geocashing) the bizarre, new, hi-tech
sport which is sweeping the countryside.
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| The
GPS unit |
The
basics of geocaching are simple, tucked away behind hedges and in
tree stumps all over the world are thousands of treasure boxes or
caches just waiting to be discovered. Actually think less treasure
boxes and more plastic Tupperware filled with kitchen drawer booty.
But treasure aside they are literally everywhere. At the last count
there were a massive 79,000 in over 190 countries.
In Wiltshire alone there are more than 50 within a 15 mile radius
of Devizes and all you need to unearth this Aladdin's Cave is access
to the Internet and a GPS unit.
GPS, or Global Positioning System, use satellite signals to pinpoint
to within a few feet an exact spot on the earth's surface or in the
case of geocaching the exact spot of a hidden stash. On the Geocaching.com
website are published the
X marks the spot longitude and
latitude coordinates and all you have to do is go get it.
What could be easier?
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| The
Castle Combe cache |
Exactly
but with GPS treasure hunting it's not that simple. Yes GPS can
tell you which direction to go in and yes it can tell you how far
away you are but it has a bit of a blind spot where minor
obstacles such as rivers are
concerned. And that's a gaping blind spot as we were to find out
on our first day trip into the world of geocaching.
The
Castle Combe cache
Armed
with enough kit to put an arctic search and rescue team to shame
we decide to tackle an easy cache in the little village of Castle
Combe. The cache ranks as a nice, comfortable 2 stars out of 5,
on the difficulty scale, with 5 stars ominously requiring 'special
equipment'.
With the GPS fired up and the coordinates punched in we head into
town. Within no time the GPS is telling us that we are fast approaching
the stash and it all gets a bit exciting.
>Continued
>>
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