While I was house bound geocaching was one thing that I research loads and only dreamed of getting out there and exploring. With it being such a worldwide adventure to have I decided to start of simplistically with caches close to home. Me and my boyfriend did our scouring and finally settled on heading to Tredegar Park to get exploring. Easily accessible by car or in our situation you can get to the park with the number 30 bus and just a 10 minute walk to the entrance to the park.
So we both had downloaded the app on to our phone one being an android the other an apple phone. I would use an android phone due to the access and greater information available to you, as apple charges for their full access which you have renew each year. The other alternative is doing your research before you go, by decoding the hints as well as writing down the co-ordinates. The app uses GPS to track where the capsules are located and can be in a 30 meter area of that location. Do make sure that you full charge your phone as the GPS does drain your phone a fair bit.
When we got to the park the first one was situated just near the gate entrance to the house, once we decoded the hint we finally knew where to look. We walked back and forth the length of the gate for a while yet could not seem to find a glimpse of the capsules. While searching we bumped into a couple of pensioners who were complete experts in the art of geocaching having found several hundred caches. They then found the cache we were looking for so went we decided to let them place it back and we would come back and search later.
As we carried on there were several locations across the park, we decided to follow the path around by the park in a circle checking out each cache as we went along. Just near the entrance to the caravan park there is meant to be a cache with the hint in relation to speed. With there being a speed road sign I thought that it would possibly be situated near there. After prodding bits of stone to see if they moved and looking in bushes we gave up and moved on to the next one.
The next one was a bit further along the path going into the forest.We looked up to see what the capsules looked like and knew this would take some time. What we were looking for was a small log hollowed out with the cache inside it; in the middle of a load of trees this was going to be interesting. Digging through all the trees high and low, finally I came across it wedged in between a tree. I was so excited to actually find one, we went on to open and sign the log to say we had found it. After closing it back up we made sure to replace it in the same place we found it for others to find.
As we went along the path we attempted to find many others, looking under rocks, rolling logs as well as in looking in bushes. In hindsight we think doing a lot of research would be a great idea beforehand , looking at all hints as well as possible locations. We finally went back to where we started looking back along the gate when there it was staring us in the face all along. Using a bottle cap and a covering the cache was very cleverly made just being able to fit the log in.
Overall geocaching is a very enjoyable experience yet you have to have a lot of patients when searching some are a lot harder than others. I will be sure to be returning to look for the hidden caches that we did not find as well as searching for many more in other places. If you are thinking about going on a hunt yourself either download the app or you can visit the link below.
https://www.geocaching.com/play