Treasure hunt

A brilliant app can help the whole family engage with natural Dave Hamilton investigates EarthCaches landscapes.

- Dave Hamilton

On most normal days, I would despair of my kids being glued to a screen when visiting somewhere as beautiful as Lulworth. Today however, I am actively encouraging it.

Smartphone in hand, my two boys followed the app up a hill to a grassy ledge where the 150-million-year-old rocks of Lulworth arch around a calm, sunlit shallow bay of water. For once, rather than standing in the way of an experience, technology was helping us engage with the landscape in a way we may not have without it. Normally more interested in Minecraft than the Mesozoic, they were fascinated by the different ages of rock circling the bay and what the world might have looked like when they were laid down.

My boys were taking part in a type of geocaching - a treasure hunt for the smartphone generation. Like letterboxing or orienteering, it involves navigating to a specific point but, rather than using maps or guide books, participants use a GPS device, normally a smartphone, to find a hidden 'cache' or container. Most geocaches have a piece of paper or a small book inside to say who found it. Some also contain small trinkets (think cracker toys) to swap, but regardless  of what is inside, the main object is always finding the cache itself.

The initial spark that founded the geocaching movement came from a computer scientist called Dave Ulmer. In May 2000, Dave hid a bin full of goodies in a woodland in Oregon and posted the coordinates online. Two people found the bin, prompting the online GPS community to hide more caches. A website was soon created to standardise and collate these caches and, thanks to a string of articles in the American national press, the following months and years saw geocaching steadily snowballing into a worldwide movement.

SIMPLE FUN