Hi-tech treasure hunters head for Wick
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TREASURE hunting on a global scale will be taking place across the Caithness countryside this weekend as amateur adventurers from around the UK attend the launch in Wick of the Haggis Highway.
Stretching from Braemar to John O’Groats, this unfamiliar route is the new haunt for trailblazing outdoor activity enthusiasts participating in geocaching.
The pursuit is the latest craze imported from the USA where participants attempt to hunt down a hidden store often in places of natural beauty or historic interest using the space-based satellite Global Position System (GPS).
Thanks to one Banffshire enthusiast and his wife – with a lot of help from his friends – Caithness now has hundreds of these hidden stores or caches that can be tracked down with the orbiting satellites.
Instigator of the Haggis Highway, John Wilson reckons that the recent addition of 1082 caches brings the total treasure stores along the 1200 mile meandering backwater route ending in Caithness to around 3500.
“Essentially it is a cross of orienteering or a traditional treasure hunt with a bit of technology,” he said.
“Generally people will use an iPhone or an Android phone as a navigation tool.”
The premise is simple: register with the official website (www.geocaching.com) for free, download the co-ordinates of the selected cache to your GPS-enabled device and off you go on a hi-tech version of orienteering.
Geocachers – as the participants are known – then trek, drive or use any other method of transport to hunt down the cache with the GPS and write in a logbook and log their find on the website.
“It brings geocachers or tourists to areas of natural beauty or relevant to history that they may have never been to before,” said Mr Wilson.
“Often it has personal significance or is of general interest and there is always someone who knows more about the cache.”
“There is usually a couple of things in a geocache including a logbook that they have to sign and a few other bits and pieces.”
This can take the adventurous across the world, with one notable geocache secreted on top of Ben Nevis and another on the International Space Station currently orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour, 250 miles above traditional treasure seeker’s heads.
Evidently, some are harder to reach than others, said Mr Wilson.
Various types of geocaches exist, from drive-bys, where you drive to a parking place at, say, a forest and walk a short distance to use a GPS device or Smartphone to locate the stash, to the more well-hidden such as on an island, underwater or up a height.
This latest trail was designed to bring more new geocachers to the far north as it is currently one of the fastest growing activities in the UK.
Mr Wilson and his wife Bente asked around 20 of their friends to help put out hundreds of caches across the region to make this latest route.
In Caithness, there are around 15 to 20 individuals already involved in the activity.
“There’s a lot of interest in this trail being shown from geocachers in England, Germany and other bits of the continent as well as people in America and Canada who are planning to investigate it next week,” said Mr Wilson, who has been geocaching for around two years.
“We would envisage that from next spring there will be a lot more tourists who notice that there are a lot more geocachers up here.
“Previously they tended to stop at Inverness.”
The new trail will be launched on Friday with a meet and greet at 7pm at the Nethercliffe Hotel in Wick, with a similar event on Saturday night at the same time in the town’s Norseman Hotel, where the experienced geocachers can catch up with one another’s exploits.
Complete beginners and any other interested parties are invited to come along on either night for a friendly chat about getting involved with this increasingly popular pastime.
The activity evolved in 2000 as GPS devices became more mainstream accessible and has been growing ever since.
Are you involved with geocaching or are planning to traverse the Haggis Highway any time soon? Get in touch - e-mail editor@nosn.co.uk
