Who would have thought that painting rocks could be such fun and so addictive?

It all started on a very small scale back in early September. I read about the national craze sweeping the country for painting, hiding and hunting for painted rocks and thought what a lovely idea it is. I never thought to join in with this activity until our village Scarecrow festival. With the influx of thousands of visitors it would be fun to paint some stones featuring scarecrows for people to find as they walked around.

As well as hiding painted stones it is fascinating to see who finds them and (hopefully) track the stones on their travels.

To facilitate this, there are many rock hunting groups set up on Facebook and/or Instagram where people can photograph their painted stones, give clues as to where they are hidden and post triumphant pictures of the finders when the stones are spotted. So far to my knowledge, the furthest that one of my painted stones has travelled is from Leicestershire in the UK where I had hidden it in the local park to Majorca where the “Finder” was on holiday.

I belong to four rock painting/hunting groups, the two main ones being #Market Harborough Rocks our local group and #Islastones a group created for a little girl with DIPG cancer who sadly died in July this year.

Of course, when hiding a rock you need to provide details of the group to which you belong so that the finder can post a picture online showing that the rock has been found and where it was found. Not everyone wants to “play the game” and may leave the stone in situ, pick it up and keep it or, in some cases, throw it into the bin or hedgerow. I like to think that most people will join in by following the instructions given on the back of each rock and “photo, post on Facebook then re-hide or keep.” Personally, I always give the finder the option of keeping the stone on the basis that it is because they like it and makes them happy but always secretly hope that a picture of the stone will appear at some stage.

There is a lot more I can tell you about my new hobby and I will do in future posts. Meanwhile here are a few of my stones painted, hidden and in some cases, found over the past couple of months.