We have been meaning to share this with you for a little while but we have been in The Hull Hub for our love of Geocaching.
Here it is:
Here is what we wrote about Geocaching in Hull…
Back in May 2017 my family and I discovered the world of Geocaching and the five of us embraced it, it has been something we have taken with us on holidays and has saved us a lot of money as a family. The photo of us was taken on our first ever trail.
What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor adventure that is happening all the time, all around the world. To play, participants use the Geocaching app or a GPS device to navigate to cleverly hidden containers called geocaches. There are millions of Geocaches in the world waiting to be found.
Some are as tiny as a thimble and some as large as a caravan, there are clues on what to look out for or how to open it, using your problem solving skills. Once you open it you simply sign the log with the date and your username. If a Geocache is large enough you may find some ‘swag’ which are small toys/items, the idea behind this is that you swap an item for something of the same value or greater.
For us Geocaching has helped us discover different places and seen things we wouldn’t have seen without it. Some cache hiders like to give historical information and place their cache at a location linked to this.
City Centre caches are more urban and hard to discover because you are not meant to be caught finding them by muggles, which in the context of Geocaching are people who don’t know about the hobby.
What Geocaches are in Hull?
Here are a few with the GC codes if you want to find them on the app and discover them for yourself. There are 2,191 Geocaches around Hull.
We have some fantastic caches in Hull and if we take the City Centre alone there is a Hull Culture Cache Trail (GC7035W) placed in 2017 for Capital of Culture. Theres also a Historic Hull Trail (GC71D5) which is a short multi cache trail in which you have to answer questions at certain locations to gain the information to find the cache’s location. Another multi-cache in the City Centre is A Trip Around Town (GC2FNJX) which took us the best part of a day to complete as you walk a quite a bit but we enjoyed it and it cost us nothing extra to do.
How do you start Geocaching?
You can get a Geocaching account for FREE and if you want to go the extra mile then you can get the premium membership for £25 a year which unlocks the whole of the Geocaching world. It has saved us money as a family, it’s our go to weekend or holiday activity. No longer are we scraping our heads on what to do without spending a fortune.
Simply download the app and away you go.
Final thoughts
Geocaching has provided our family to rediscover places we loved and has helped us with our own mindset, giving our walks purpose and giving us an adventure. I haven’t pin pointed where the photo’s are taken in and around Hull, but you can see some of the caches and get an initial feel for what it could be like. Rob (my husband) and I will go out on our own at times and we enjoy it just as much with the kids. Robyn (my youngest) found her first cache late last year and now has the competitive streak to find it first when we hit the next Geocache location.
You can also read it in Issue 8 at www.thehullhub.co.uk
The Gilmours