Nottingham to Nottingham Travel Bug Race

Trackable Week presents a new story Monday through Friday this week about creative ways to experience Trackables. Geocaching.com Trackables allow people to tag and track an item from geocache to geocache. Trackables typically come in three varieties, Geocoins, Travel Bugs® or Promotional Trackables like the Find the Gecko, Geico campaign. (Watch a video on Travel Bugs)

See the bottom of this article for a place a share your Trackable stories, links to other Trackable stories and a limited time special offer for 30% of individual orders of Travel Bugs this week only (US costumers only). Check out Monday’s installment for Trackable Week:

Nottingham to Nottingham Travel Bug Race

 

By Kelly Ranck

The geocaching community is becoming larger every day, but the global community is using geocaching to make our world increasingly smaller.

EyeD1OT 4th2, U.S. Travel Bug competitor

Take the Travel Bug, for example. Grab a small item, attach it to a Trackable keychain, assign it a destination and watch it travel across the globe as it is passed from geocacher to geocacher, most of whom are strangers to one another.

As a way of bringing the geocaching community ever closer, Jacaru and Balrgn have created a Travel Bug race. The race challenges cachers to send Travel Bugs between Nottingham, United Kingdom and Nottingham, New Hampshire, United States. They organized a race which began over the weekend. It involves more than 90 Travel Bugs.

According to Jacaru, the originator of the race, “It came about as I had been thinking that it would be good to organize a race between Nottingham here in the UK and another one abroad. We could then become the geocaching equivalent of twin towns.”

Jacaru emailed a few geocachers in the Nottingham, U.S. area with his idea. Balrgn responded that he would gladly like to help out. Both geocachers worked with local reviewers to establish a Travel Bug hotel cache in each location.

Cameron Tiede2, UK Travel Bug competitor

These Travel Bug hotel caches are the starting and finishing points for the race. They then started contacting local geocachers and asking whether they would like to enter a TB into the race. According to Jacaru, “Word soon got round and I had quite a few locals wanting to participate. The same happened over in New Hampshire.” By race day, they expect about 30 entrants from both locations.

The organizers have created a Nottingham to Nottingham Travel Bug race blog where, once the launch promotional events finish and the two hotels go live, owners will be able to track their Travel Bugs as they race across the globe.

“Entrants can go and find the hotel as a normal cache and pick up a bug. However, they cannot pick up their own bug,” says Jacaru. “The first bug to arrive at the UK hotel, and vice versa will win its owner a new specially designed Geocoin, only two of these coins have been made.”

Nottingham, New Hampshire, U.S.
Notthingham, UK

For more information, Jacaru and Balrgn have also created a Facebook page, where geocachers will receive weekly updates on the race.

“This is turning into an exciting race that has really taken shape now and inspired people to join in,” says Jacaru.

This is just one of the many examples of the ways in which geocachers are working to creatively build the geocaching community and promote involvement, with a hint of friendly competition.

Quick tip alert: If you are racing several bugs at once, check out this helpful hint in our Knowledge Books. It gives you a code so that you can view the status of all of your TravelBugs on the same page.

Click on the image for a 30% savings on orders of Travel Bugs (U.S. customers only)
Additional Trackable Stories:

Watch a soldier receive a Travel Bug tattoo.

Read about a Travel Bug Rescue program.

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