Little Quest - West Midlands

Sunday 28th March 2010

So begins our Little Quest journey today! What is Little Quest (from herein known as LQ), it is a challenge where a cache is placed in all 47 counties in England, in each cache there are co-ordinates that will help you find the bonus cache located in an unknown place somewhere in England. It is one of the hardest challenges in the UK/Ireland....and today we made a start. We have no idea how many months or even years it will take us to go around all the counties, but we are going to have some fun trying.

The journey began in the West Midlands...so if I asked you what you think about when you think of the West Midlands...you probably think of dodgy accents and Spaghetti Junction but this cache took us to a largely unknown part of the county/country and to the village/small town of Meriden, which claims to be the centre of England. It is worth noting that Ordnance Survey say its 11 miles further north...but hey what do they know?are they map makers or something? The fact of the matter is Meridan has the pillar and monument to prove it...and so they must be right and a plaque from 1951, so in our minds this is the end of the matter!

Meriden is a very pleasant village and in some ways hasn't changed much in recent years. We parked on the lane to the left and started the day with another of Mr Shiltonpigs famous sandwiches....to which Mrs Shiltonpig claimed she could eat one everyday, fine praise indeed let me tell you now!. Josh of course was annoying the neighbours by accidentally hitting the cars horn every few minutes and then letting out a little "beep" once it had gone off. I'm sure the neighbours were thrilled when we finally got out of the car and started our short walk to the cache. In fact it was a very short walk. But Josh still managed to dawdle his way there...

It seemed strange to find the cache so easily as we understood that this cache was slightly different. And for a change we found a travel bug a duck from Switzerland. Josh was more interested in the nearby horses...or as he calls them "clip clops". So that was the first cache over and done with and we knocked up a round trip of 46 miles on the first leg of a 48 leg journey. It also gave us the chance to get the standard tourist photo of us next to the pillar. Job done, cache found and photo taken...who knows what the next LQ will be...and where it will take us! 

So the boring bit now for all of you out there that want to know a little bit about the West Midlands...first of all its home to Birmingham City Football Club...surely the best team in the country, and possibly the world? Secondly Balti originates from the West Midlands...and holds the record for having the best curry on the planet. Thirdly it has more canals than Venice...and Fourthly and by far the most important it is the birthplace of one of the greatest geocachers of all time....Mr Shiltonpig! Thanks for reading!