Spice up your walking with Geocaching.

Geocaching an interesting activity for walkers
Geocaching is an activity which combines a love of the outdoors with the use of modern technology. Basically geocaching is like a traditional treasure hunt, but instead of having a paper map with an X marking the spot, "cachers" use a handheld GPS (Global Positioning System) to locate positions on the earth's surface.

Geocaching uses this functionality to enable cachers to place some treasure (a cache) at a particular location and then share the coordinates with the rest of the geocaching community through an official geocaching webpage. Other cachers can then programme these coordinates into their GPS and go hunting! When they find the cache they can log their visit in the logbook and exchange an item in the cache for an item they have brought.

Geocaching has been around only since the beginning of the century and has a world-wide following.

In Ireland there is a website for geocachers at http://www.geocachingireland.com/ which has various features like an introduction, FAQ, guidelines. As of Dec 2007 the section with the most recent activity is the forum.

The site has useful information about GPS units and where to buy them. Geocaching could be useful for many as a way of practising use of a GPS without necessarily depending on it in a life threatening situation.
Geocaching ireland