Geocaching – More than Just Fancy Footwork

Train Travel = Geocaching

Here’s some (fairly) simple math.  Geocaching = Hiking.  Right?  Well, the answer is yes and no.  Welcome to the “new geocaching math.”

Besides foot travel there’s a few other modes of transportation that invite geocaching adventure; kayaking, hot air ballooning, off roading, and space travel aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

All these means of transportation have been exploited to take geocaching to a new level  – or out of the atmosphere. But how about caching by train?  It’s how the savvy wild west pioneers would have geocached.  Now one of the finest examples of powering caching by train takes place, not in the wild west, but in Merry Old England.

Geocacher “Steve-e-b” brought his interests and talents to bare on the task.  He launched a website detailing geocaches around 94 stations around Birmingham, England.  You can use a drop down menu to access nearby caches for each of the stations.  Train + Geocaching = Adventure on a time table. How about that for using simple math to plan your next geocaching adventure?

Steve-e-b and I exchanged a couple of emails.  He says he never set out to merge train travel and geocaching, it’s just something that happened. “… so many of our first caches were found during shopping trips (or, as my wife would say, during “craftily planned trips designed to avoid shopping”). We always traveled into the city by train or bus, and so geocaching by train evolved from there.”

He says he hopes the map inspires those visiting or living in the West Midlands to plan a geocaching journey.

But what have I missed?  What other forms of travel combine so well with geocaching and possibly the shopping experience?