When visiting the amazing country of Scotland, we started our journey off in Edinburgh. We were really looking forward to exploring The Royal Mile in Old Town and what else Edinburgh had to offer. Before acquiring our Garmin GPS handheld we would, and still do, use my Geocaching App for finding geocaches. We visited Edinburgh during the beginning stages of our international Geocaching passion, and so not to incur international roaming charges, we would “borrow” wifi to be able to search for geocaches; but now I understand how pocket queries are your friend.
** Pocket Queries are pre downloaded geocaches. You are able to make a list based on location or the country you are in to search and find the caches. This downloads to your smart phone or GPS unit.
READ – Getting Started with Geocaching App & Profile
Since we didn’t realize this yet, we were having fun hunting down free wifi or stopping by the occasional hotel to download coordinates and search on the map to find nearby geocaches. We started off the day by waking up in one of the coolest hostels we have stayed at around the world, Castle Rock Hostel. With an amazing view of Edinburgh Castle right out the front door, it was exciting to know that a full day waited us in this city.
After exploring The Royal Mile and Edinburgh Castle (which was tons of fun to explore) we needed to get our geocache fix. We made our way to a popular restaurant on the Royal Mile that served everything fried! They recommended we try their famous Fried Mars candy bar…yes, a delicious heart-attack waiting to happen! As we rested and ate our sweet fried treats, we hopped on their wifi to see if there were a couple of caches nearby that would be cool to grab.
**Possible Spoiler**
We found a geocache on the map outside of Old Town, near a park. It had a lot of favorite points for creativity, so we went over to explore the park and see what was so clever about this geocache. It was a beautiful sunny (but windy) day to wander the city of Edinburgh. While we made our way over toward the park, we used our phones to read about the history behind the park and to do a bit of people-watching. When we arrived at the location we were puzzled. We searched and searched, but had to refer to the hints, comments, and description to figure this one out. Then we finally discovered this clever cache. First cache in Scotland down. Clever indeed.
We were tempted to relax in this park for a while, but this unique geocache got us pumped up. So we decided to go find more wifi to locate another geocache. Then we remembered that the city buses in Edinburgh had free wifi (which we learned while riding the bus into town from the airport), so we figured that would be a good place to start; and we headed to the nearest bus stop.
While we were searching for nearby caches, we thought it would be nice to get away from town for some good views of the city from a distance. So we were excited to see that there was a cache located on top of a mountain opposite the city. Perfect! And we headed out in search of our second geocache.
After quite a bit of hiking, we finally near the top of a winding road and see a monument. “I bet thats it”, said Liz. We made our way toward the monument and reviewed the description, hints and comments. Once we figured out that we were looking for a micro cache, we were able to locate it pretty quickly. We signed the log and marked another down.
After signing the log and replacing the geocache, we turned around to enjoy an amazing view of the city. We had a double adventure that day; not just in finding the geocaches, but searching for the wifi so we could use my iPhone to locate them. We had a great time in Edinburgh. It was an awesome city with incredible history, and some great geocaches! We look forward to returning in the future. Cheers!!
