SAY the words treasure hunt and generally what springs to mind is the good old days of 1980s show of that name along with Anneka Rice's bottom or brown, torn, and flaky looking maps which are used by pirates to locate long lost jewels.

But these days treasure hunting has gone hi-tech and a new craze which is sweeping the world, and has not escaped the Highlands combines searching for hidden gems and orientating with state-of the art gadgetry and it's known as Geo-caching.

Instead of following basic clues and a map, participants use GPS co-ordinates and signals to locate the riches.

But for Emma MacAulay and Keir Ferguson, of Cradlehall, Inverness, the game will always hold a heartwarming memory, as Keir used the activity to pop the question.

Keir (27), who works as a recruitment consultant for the Nimrod Group, explained: "The proposal itself was the culmination of one week's planning, treasure hunting, cleaning, plotting, hiking, driving, and just general scheming behind Emma's back in order to make it all go to plan.

"I arranged with Emma that we would spend that particular Saturday geocaching. It's a good game and we'd done it a couple of times before.

"However, this time I visited the boxes the day before and placed carefully selected items for Emma to find. There were four separate gifts in total and they all provided a clue as to what the fifth geocache would be which ended up being me down on one knee proposing."

Keir first placed a gift in Daviot Woods. It was a keyring with the Letters E & M with the last person signing the notepad being Margaret E.

"Emma suggested the initials must be M & E," explained Keir.

The second geocache Emma found, was located the Findhorn viaduct and was a purse shaped like a sheep or a ewe.

The third was at Docharn Wood at the site of an old house.

"We found the geocache, there was nothing exciting in the box but when we had a look round the old house there was a random magazine on the roof, when we pulled it down it was a Marie Claire magazine," explained Keir.

And the fourth geocache was near Boat of Garten. "Again there was nothing exciting in the box but the last person to visit the geoecach was Will Smith."

Keir added: "The fifth site we went to was Newtonmore train station, the place I would get down on the one knee.

"Newtonmore represents a special place for us. On arrival I gave Emma the last clue, and predictably she bolted out the car to find the geocache, unaware the clue was fabricated and there was no geocache. She went straight for the desired spot that I had planned to do it.

"When I got there I told her I found the geocache at which point I heard her tut with disappointment, however when she saw what I was holding she changed her tune!

The day had gone exactly to plan, and fortunately she hadn't cracked the riddle during the day, leaving me to spell it out.

4th Geocache: Will

2nd Geocache: Ewe

3rd Geocache: Marie

1st Geocache: Me"

Emma (28) who works for Visit Scotland in the publishing department said she was surprised Keir had gone to all the trouble as normally he "is not romantic"

She told the Highland News Group: "I was totally taken aback. I didn't believe it at first, he exceeded all my expectations."

She added: "I really got into this through word of mouth. I downloaded the app to my phone and once you get into it, it's quite addictive. It does get really exciting."

Emma explained that the finds can be varied: "It is totally random. Keir chose keyring as my first gift and that's not unusual. You can get all sorts from rubbers to hand wash.

"There area also things you can get from the geocache website called travel bugs, and once you find one of them, you can hide it in a different geocache and there is potential for them to go all over the world.

"You can track their progress online."

Emma and Keir combine their geocaching with walking their dog: "It's a great way to find new places to walk," enplained Emma. "There are hundreds of them in this region. There are a series of caches in the city centre on the bridges. They are all over he place."

Asked whether the couple plan to combine their honeymoon with geocaching, Emma remained open minded.

"At the moment we just use an app on the mobile but we are thinking of getting a GPS system. If we do that we could combine it with the honeymoon.

"There are geocaches all over the world, so there would be no reason why not."