Family Geocaching Fun with Kids at Ford Hall Farm, Shropshire: Our First Trackable

Today Dad was off out mountain biking with a friend, so myself and the boys grabbed our bags and water bottles and headed out on a local adventure!

Geocaching

I’ve touched upon geocaching before in a previous post. It’s like a treasure hunt outside in nature! Other geocachers leave caches, in various shapes and sizes, hidden around the place, and log the coordinates on the Geocaching site. You can then go and find them, and log whether you found it or didn’t – some of them have little trinkets in, which you can swap for something you have on you, but all should have a log where you can write your name and date before sealing it up and re-hiding it in the same place. The geocaching app has a map with all the geocaches on, and helps you locate the area it should be. Unfortunately sometimes they don’t seem to go back where they should, as we discovered with in cache today that we never found, but most of the time people are pretty good 😊.

One of the caches we found today included an old penny, which my boys got really excited about, so we did our first swap. We keep a tiny pot in our bags with ‘swappables’ for just these sorts of occasions!

Trackables

We got excited today because a hidden cache in/near a fallen tree, that we had tried to access before, and was completely covered in nettles, had been cleared, so we decided to have a search. We found it – and it was quite a sizeable cache. Ones we’d found previously were small – from an old wet film canister, to a takeaway container, but this one was a fair sized lunch box! And I’m so glad we had a look because inside we found our first ever trackable!! I almost dismissed it, as I thought it was a swappable – it was only because my youngest pulled it out of the box to show me, and I saw the writing on it!

Trackables usually have a destination or objective tied to them: this one has a dream to get to the Amazon jungle! Trackables should be relocated within 2 weeks, and if possible in a place to help with their mission! With the summer holidays now upon us, I’m sure we can move it somewhere much further away… not sure where would be best to get to the Amazon though haha 🙂