Coin in the pocket

One of the things about geocaching that I find most interesting is the trust factor.  Cachers from all over the world leave and swap sometimes valuable gifts in caches.  The concept of fair swaps is almost universally accepted.
Geicoins and travel bugs have a purpose and often destination and complete strangers move them on with relish.  As we started this whole adventure the idea of finding gifts in a cache and swapping things was exciting.  Coins and bugs from all over the world are right beneath our feet and the unique code means we can track the path of them on their journeys. 
So far we have moved on half a dozen coins and bugs, logging them as we go.  At first not realising quite what to do we had to go back and log them so as to keep the game pieces in play.  Now we look not for the coins or bugs but for their goals, if we can help them we move them on, if not leave them be. 
Although some are very pretty we move them on, they are no good out of the game after all. 
This weekend we have a coin to move on its way to Loch Ness, we will plant it and hope others too play this global game fairly!

We are Trackable!

We have taken the plunge and become trackable, well actually we have a trackable travel bug on the Transporter but it is driven around by us.

It has been active a few days and now we are keen to get noticed, no joy so far but fingers crossed we will be spotted soon.  

The aim of our trackable is simple, we travel around in the van caching and camping so let's see who spots it.  I do find this side of things facinating, we are always happy to help a geocoin or travel bug along to a goal whenever we can.  Recently we were so keen to help we took a lighthouse coin to one of the most famous lighthouses in the world, Portland Bill.  

Now we just await a first to find I think and until then we will just keep on trucking!!

Living the dream...

A few days away, that was what we decided.  Some time away from all the goings on and some fresh air and a little caching too.  Dorset will do just fine, just a few hours away and we love the seaside.

We packed up the car with roof box and doggies and we were away....  Portland on a late booking of a little house will do us just lovely, dogs excited and humans too.  A few stops on the way for doggie relief and a snack for us, arriving in good time for sunset.  Luckily we brought the weather with us from Kent, wet gear on we set off on a quick scan of the beach and Chesil beach is just amazing even through the rain drops.

On the first full day, rain again, wet gear on and around the little island we tootle to get our bearings.  Now the thing is we rely heavily on mobile apps for caching in Kent where our signal is good all around, Dorset was going to be a little more challenging and back to basics.  Some days the best we could do was paper and pen coordinates and the good old GPS.  We did the rounds of various pretty sights and made the most of it when the signals were almost non-existent.

A Portland Bill find

Portland Bill 

The moral for this trip was plan better for better caching, even though the weather was against us most of the time we racked up about 40 caching miles for a 10 days and loved all of it.  We have the wet gear and the right shoes now we need to up grade the tech to make the most of a trip like this.