I love treasure hunts and this past week I’ve been introduced to an alternative sort of pursuit. In fact I’m not sure it is really treasure hunting at all, but it did involve clues, searching and finding things or sometimes not finding things.
We have prided ourselves in knowing quite a few of the major ‘must see’ visitor spots round and about and also some of the hidden gems, but suddenly last Saturday afternoon we found ourselves guided to places we had never been to before by my visiting sister-in-law and an iPhone app. At first this was a case of making unplanned detours on our journey to hunt out special locations which led us to an area called ‘ground zero’. First stop we found ourselves in a children’s park by an ancient medieval church. While some were intent on a hunt for a hidden canister, I wandered over to the pretty stone building and drew back the heavy bolt on the ancient wooden doors and stepped inside. It was lit by a soft glow of candlelight from small tea lights on a rough table with bowls of charcoal and bottles of incense and oil piled around in a homely state of untidiness. In front of the pale stone walls there were easels and tables scattered around with gilt framed icons, while some paintings were fixed on the walls. Further in I noticed ancient crumbling frescoes in blues, greens and reds still visible on the walls. In a darker area of the church, not penetrated by the candlelight, a pair of frescoes were just visible through the gloom. We all spent time peering at the worn paintings and images, captivated by this little ‘jewel’ on our doorstep. It was a fascinating little church and it is only about a mile or so from our house, but we probably wouldn’t have gone there without the ‘treasure hunt’.

The next day we ventured into our favourite walled city for a ‘frappe’ and a wander and here too were new discoveries. Following the arrows on the iPhone we climbed the mountain of steps without a hand rail to the top of the ancient Venetian-built walls. Here they were as wide as two cars parked end to end, and at the far corner there were views across the city and out to sea. It was beautiful and there also happened to be another hidden cache somewhere up there amongst the gaps in the walls.

Other searches involved looking underneath medieval canons and picnic tables, peering below low hanging branches and just generally scanning locations for clever hiding places. It’s probably obvious to some of you that I’ve been learning about ‘Geocaching’…it’s been fun and frustrating at the same time. I’ve enjoyed the way it’s taken us off the beaten track to a sunken church on the edge of a reservoir and remote paths to surprising viewpoints. But I’m slightly disappointed by the ‘treasure’ at the end of the hunt. At the very least I was hoping for a message in the hidden cache pots.

We found a message in a bottle once. We were on an island at the time and it was very exciting when we first spotted it bobbing near the shore. We waded out into the water to rescue it very intrigued about what might be inside and what secrets it would reveal…when we fished it out we saw there was a message inside. I thought it must be from a shipwrecked sailor and was all set to dial 999, but in fact it was a bit dull….so dull I can’t remember what it said, except that no one was in danger and I think someone had just thrown it in the sea to see if anyone would pick it up. We scrawled our own message and threw it back in the water further round the coast and tried to make the message slightly more dynamic.

Geocaching is a bit like this unsatisfactory experience…there are no mysterious messages to solve once you find the little box or container, you simply sign the paper inside and move on. The biggest excitement is finding a ‘travel bug’ which is a trinket that can travel round from cache to cache, so you don’t even get to keep it! Rather like a lot of things in life – the hunt was more exciting than the end result. Now if geocaches contained clues or maps to a small pot of gold or hidden jewels I could get into it… and then it really would be treasure hunting.