Trans-Channel Family Caching

It's been a great week with family and of course Geocaching had to be involved!

First up was a traditional and an Earth cache around Rochester in Kent with twigletcaz. We then travelled across with my parents to visit other family in the Netherlands and we logged some caches over there, including an earth cache and our first letterbox cache. The letterbox cache is a bit like the hints on a treasure map, walk 100 metres along the Germany - Belgium border, for instance, which has us starting in the Netherlands looking for border posts before wandering over to what was once Neutral Moresnet - something in all the years I've been going to Vaals I never knew about. Vaals is commonly known for its high tower at the Drielandenpunt (3 land point), the place where the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet. In the past there was a small area of land that was in dispute with many countries wanting ownership due to the large concentration on calamine in the area, making Vaals the place where 4 'countries' used to meet. This issue began in the 1800s and only ended when the mines were depleted and officially the land was given back to Belgium after World War 2.

It is here, not far from the highest point in the Netherlands, that we find the gigantic trackable, Belgium Cycling. He started over in the US and wanted to attend Belgian cycling events. He's been on the go since 2006 travelling around the Netherlands and Belgium, so we thought he wouldn't mind a quick trip over to the UK.

It's times like this cache that friends and family can really get an idea about geocaching. A really interesting letterbox cache and a cool trackable help so much with communicating what it's all about. It gets the word out and our family begin mentioning geocaching to their friends and find out that they are cachers themselves!




We did some caches, including an earth cache, with my parents in Bruges and then made our way back across the Channel to England.

We've placed him in the Gateway to Europe travel bug hotel, that we found with twigletcaz and he was almost immediately picked up! I hope he enjoys the UK leg of his cycle tour! Quite exciting is that twigletcaz now has her first trackable: Slushy the snowman.

What a successfully family trip, so far 9 caches in 3 countries and hopefully a few more with twigletcaz tomorrow. This means that we're up to 245 caches and will soon be reaching the milestone of 250 caches. Awesome.

Thanks to our family for joining in and helping us get so much additional enjoyment on our family trips - hopefully they found enjoyment in it too! :)