If you've always liked the idea of hunting for treasure, why not enlist the Global Positioning System to help you out? Anna Carey reports
In 1979 an English artist called Kit Williams produced a book called Masquerade. It was a picture book, filled with 15 strange and wonderful paintings. But it was also a treasure map. Each of the 15 paintings contained complex visual clues to the location of a very special treasure: a gold hare that Williams had buried somewhere in Britain. I was obsessed with the book as a child, although like most fans I never came anywhere near to solving the puzzle. What entranced me was the idea of going on a treasure hunt, of following clues that would lead me to a hidden trove of dazzling wonders. The characters in my favourite books were always going off looking for mysterious amulets or ancient magical maps. Why couldn't I? A quarter of a century later, I'm finally going treasure hunting, but my guide couldn't be more different from the whimsical illustrations of Masquerade.
I'm using a hand-held Global Positioning System device, which is registering my location through 27 satellites orbiting earth. I've entered the co-ordinates of the spot where, according to Geocaching.com, a cache of treasure is concealed. A compass with an arrow appears on the device's tiny screen, pointing towards the treasure and telling me how many meters away it is. All I have to do is follow that arrow. This is geocaching, a very modern form of amateur treasure hunting.
The Global Positioning System, or GPS, was developed by the US military, which at first operated it as a private navigation system, but in May 2000 Bill Clinton removed the restrictions on civilian use. Suddenly anybody with a €100 GPS receiver could pinpoint the co-ordinates of any location on earth. Two days after the restrictions were lifted, the first geocache was planted in Portland, Oregon, by Dave Ulmer, who hid a trove of goodies and posted its co-ordinates on a GPS mailing list. A global game was born.
So how do you play? It's surprisingly easy. Geocachers hide waterproof boxes filled with trinkets in interesting locations (which are never on private land), then go to a geocaching website such as Geocaching.com to register the cache, its longitude and latitude, and directions to the general area. By entering the co-ordinates into a hand-held GPS device, anyone should be able to track down the treasure. The rules of geocaching are simple. You take something from the cache, leave something in it and write a note in the cache's logbook, which shows how many other adventurers have discovered it.
Eoin Fegan, a founder of www. geocachingireland.com, discovered the joys of geocaching two years ago, when his parents gave him a GPS device for Christmas. "I didn't really know what it was," he says. "But then my brother told me about geocaching - he'd met someone in America who had a GPS - so I investigated the Geocaching website, and a few weeks later I went on my first geocache, in the Wicklow Mountains. I had no idea whether I'd find the cache or not, so it was a thrill when I did. And after that I was hooked."
Geocaching may be a new activity, but it has been embraced by a wide range of people, from retired couples to young families looking for an exciting day out. This may be because it's a fun, and surprisingly easy, way to see the country. "It's an incentive to go to places you mightn't go to otherwise," says Fegan. "I don't think I'd have ever gone out mountain climbing or hillwalking until I got the GPS. But geocaching has given me a push to go out and explore the country, and I love it." He also enjoys going off on a light-hearted quest. "I love the idea of going out looking for treasure," he says. "It's the sort of thing you want to do as a child, but you never have the opportunity. Geocaching gives you the chance to go off on an adventure."
He's right. As the distance between the cache and my GPS device grows smaller, I feel as if I'm in a Famous Five book, searching for smuggled treasures. And then, after half an hour scrambling through potholes and wet grass, we're here. A quick search in the undergrowth reveals a metal box hidden in a hollow beneath a stone. We eagerly prise it open. The contents don't have much in common with the sparkling secret of Masquerade - there are stickers, a notebook, some small toys and the inevitable logbook, all protected in Ziploc bags. But there's something exciting about opening the heavy, rain-covered box and going through its shiny contents. It may not be a dazzling jewelled hare or an Arthurian crown, but somehow I still feel that, at last, I've discovered buried treasure.
For more information, visit www.geocachingireland.com