The Tayside area is a hotspot for the high-tech hobby of geocaching that caused a bomb scare in Yorkshire.
A street in Wetherby was cordoned off by police for four hours and a man was arrested after he was spotted placing what appeared to be a suspicious package under a planter.
The bomb squad was summoned to carry out a controlled explosion, but the suspected device turned out to be a plastic container used for geocaching.
This involves people hiding small boxes or similar objects and posting the co-ordinates online. Other people then use GPS to find the boxes, which usually contain a log file where they can add their name and the date they discovered it and sometimes small trinkets.
There are said to be dozens of geocaches all over Dundee, including several in the city centre and at landmarks such as Camperdown Park and the Law. Apparently there is even one, a film canister, near the police forensic lab at City Quay and the hider has recounted his experience of putting it there.
He wrote, “As I was preparing this cache a police van drew up right next to my car and two burly cops got out and headed into their nearby labs. Phew! How easy is it to look inconspicuous sitting on double yellows with a reel of gaffer tape in your hands?”
Another geocache is said to be at the junction of Commercial Street and High Street, near St Paul’s Cathedral. Other caches are hidden at or near Caird Hall, Greenmarket, the Unicorn and the Howff cemetery, with the latter described as being “behind a small stone, not at ground level.”EconomyOutside the city centre parks appear to be a popular location, along with parts of the Green Circular cycle route.
Last July, Perthshire played host to a ‘Mega Geocaching Event’. It attracted participants from across the world and was said to have raised around £300,000 for the local economy.
The Wetherby incident has been a major topic of conversation on geocaching websites, with the person who hid it saying he was “terribly upset at the disruption” and worried about the effect it could have on the hobby.
Some participants have said they are opposed to leaving caches in an urban area and one person suggested, “To avoid confusion and alarm when a cache is discovered accidentally, clearly label it as a geocache on the outside of the container.”
A spokeswoman for Tayside Police said the force had not received any complaints about geocaching to date, but she added, “We would ask people to be mindful of where they place items.”