Pirates and Treasure Chests!
My little boy is crazy about pirates at the moment....and even more crazy about treasure hunts. So you can imagine how excited he was to hear about all the pirate ducks that have been travelling the world and hiding in real life treasure chests as part of the phenomenon of 'geocaching'.So what is geocaching?Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices such as mobile phones. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the cache (container) hidden at that location. Each cache contains a log book or log sheet where you can sign your name and larger ones often contain a variety of small gifts. The custom is that if you take something, you leave a gift yourself for someone else and then carefully replace the cache where you found it. You can find more information on geocaching and how to get involved HERE.
One of our awesome members, Jane , is a big fan of both knitting and geocaching and has now hidden around 100 little ducks in caches around the UK. Obviously the items need to be small so Jane likes to make duck keyrings using the pattern by Shaz Peacock on our website and then attaches one of our tags to them. These are logged on the world map as "Ben's Peebats". For smaller caches she leaves tiny plastic yellow duck keyrings instead which are logged as "Pirate Peebats".
"Geocaching is a real world treasure hunt. It’s great, free, exercise and you get to visit some lovely places you didn’t know existed" says Jane."The lovely thing about leaving the ducks in geocaches is you never know when or where one will turn up on the map. Pirate Rincewind keeps appearing all over the place. In 2015 he travelled around Wales, England and Holland before ending up in Texas earlier this year. I know it’s mine because I can track him through the geocache site. I've seen the knitted ducks in use as bag charms and it always raises a smile."
Last July Jane took part in Piratemania - England's biggest annual geocaching event - which was being held in the Peak District. She made numerous pirate ducks which she left out in the open all around Bakewell, where the event was being held, with the LYD Project tags attached. Jane has made the instructions on how to make pirate eye-patches and neckerchiefs available online for those who would like to make their own versions.Have you ever found one of Jane's ducks? Are you one of our other members who likes to hide ducks in geocaches? Do you fancy giving geocaching a go? Let us know - we'd love to hear from you! .