Technical treasure hunting

Digital Planet
Alka Marwaha
BBC World Service

Geocaching is a great way of getting outdoors and exercising

This week the BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme is a special edition all about the geographic web. To mark this event, presenter Gareth Mitchell went on a 21st century treasure hunt with Gill Clough, a PhD student at the Open University in England.

Geocaching is a technological twist on the age-old pastime of treasure hunts, where players swap compasses and cryptic notes pinned to trees for GPS devices and geo-enabled mobile phones to track down hidden treasure.

The treasure is called a cache, hence the term geocaching, and is usually a physical container concealed somewhere in the landscape .

"The geographic web is a cross-over between the virtual and physical world," said Gill Clough, who is studying the implications of geocaching on community-based learning for her PhD.

"People have access to incredible technologies and they are using them to connect not only with other people but with locations," she added.

On the hunt

Participants of a geocache are given a starting location, usually a car park or other easily identifiable spot and then use the GPS coordinates to guide them to the cache.

Details of a geocache closest to where you are can be found by going to one of the many geocaching websites, such as Geocaching.com, and entering a postcode.

The nearest geocaches will then be displayed on the screen, along with the distance they are from the postcode you have entered.

You then click on a geocache listing to display information about its GPS co-ordinates and what type of area it is hidden in.

The challenge and the adventure figure quite highly among the motivations Gill Clough

Once you have chosen the cache you want to find, load the GPS co-ordinates into your device, print out the description and head for the start location.

"I'm just letting it acquire our location and what I'll do is get up the details of the cache we are looking for and find which direction we need to walk," said Ms Clough, as she and Digital Planet presenter, Gareth Mitchell went geocaching on the Open University Campus.

"I've got access to the description on my iPod of the geocache we are looking for," said Ms Clough.

"Previous people who have found it have said that it's underwater sometimes, so there is the chance that we might not be able to find it if the river is high," she added.

The great outdoors

Geocaching is a great educational tool and has been used to twin schools

Geocaching is an innovative way of exploring the great outdoors and Gill Clough's research has shown that people thoroughly enjoy it.

"The excitement, the challenge and the adventure figure quite highly among the motivations, as well as getting outside and getting fitter," she said.

With their GPS systems getting closer to the cache, Digital Planet presenter, Gareth reveals that he is only 50 seconds away from the destination.

"From my past experience of geocaching, this is the point where we need to slow down and just keep our eyes open for a suspicious looking pile of sticks, a log or tree trunk," said Ms Cough.

Fumbling through the undergrowth, Gareth finds the geocache at the bottom of a tree.

Opening the lunch box like cache, he finds a log book, playing cards, a business card a highlighter pen, a necklace and a whistle.

Connecting countries

Going through the log book, there are many signatures with the name 'TB'.

"TB stands for travel bug and it's a particular type of token that you can leave in a geocache," said Ms Clough.

Geocahers buy these travel bugs, as their job is to go on the move.

Lots of schools use these (travel bugs) as an educational aid Gill Clough

They all have a unique number and are linked to a web page, so that their location can be tracked wherever they end up. "You set it up and then release it and leave it in a cache until somebody else comes along and takes it," added Ms Clough.

"If they can move it along on its journey, they put it in another cache and two weeks later and you can track them using Google maps to see how far they have travelled.

"Lots of schools use these as an educational aid," she added.

Digital Planet's reporter Beth Rose went to Dartmoor to meet some children who are releasing travel bugs with a mission to travel to a school in Kathmandu, Nepal.

"We are going to put our people, the King, Queen and Crown Prince of Landscove into the box and then wish them well on their epic journey to Kathmandu," said Robin Smith, the head teacher of Landscove Primary School.

The pupils estimate that it will take about six months for the three travel bugs to get to Mahan Siddhartha High School in Nepal, who are also sending three bugs back in the other direction.

The Geoweb is opening up the door for people to learn about new technology and get a sense of the world.

Digital Planet is broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday at 1232 GMT and repeated at 1632 GMT, 2032 GMT and on Wednesday at 0032 GMT.

You can listen online or download the podcast.