Bullseye!

Friday April 2nd 2010

No, no, no we are not refering to the legendary 80s gameshow if we were we would have done a blatant link to the official website...(blatant link to official website). We are in fact talking (or actually in this case writing) about the cache with a rather bull theme to it. Yes folks we could only be in one place....Stamford. Stamford is in one word...truly great and amazing (ok so thats 4 words, but whose counting?). Stamford has so much history and is full of charm and is certainly one of the best towns in the country. If you haven't been yet? ask yourself why not?

In fact we did one great cache here, and in Mr Shiltonpigs opinion, a contender for top 10 caches of the year! First up however was a cache by the railway station, Josh was busy going "choo choo" when an actual train did go past, and the train driver saw him and decided to sound his horn....much to all our delight. Good way to start the caching adventures....but it was dinnertime and we ended up in "The Golden Fleece", not really impressed, knocked over a coke on the floor...we will blame Josh for that (though it was really Mr Shiltonpig) and the waitress saw and didn't even ask if we wanted a refill....does she have it in for us poor geocachers?

So why then do you have a photo of "The Black Bull"? when in fact you had lunch at a different pub...well were glad you asked. Until 1837 Stamford used to have a bull running festival on November 13th every year, when it was deemed cruel. This dates back even further to an age when there was no TV and internet and so they had to entertain themselves in other way...basically 2 bulls ran into town by accident, someone wealthy chased them to catch them, they liked it so much they made sure it would always happen and the rest is history. Now team Shiltonpig only know this because of the bull related cache....

The cache takes you on a multi stage journey around the town, taking in many buildings and places you would not see otherwise...then using numbers that you find on graves and plaques and other bits and pieces you get the co-ords for the final cache....thoroughly enjoyed it..really gave you a sense of the towns past. But team Shiltonpig isn't all about the wonderful, beautiful places...we can get down and dirty with the best of them...within minutes of finding the one cache, we were at the back of Morrisons supermarket looking for another cache, and sure enough we found that too....we also found lots of Bugs Bunny type holes....but sadly Bugs was too busy to see us!

We were able to discuss over cake and coke the cache that had taken us all afternoon to do...for once I am going to copy straight out of the cache page to tell you more "Stamford is part of a huge astrological calendar centred on Stonehenge. The large prehistoric bull-shaped earthwork that once stood there has since been built over. However the construction of Christian buildings on ancient pagan sites ensured that the outline of the bull was retained." Very interesting indeed. So all that remained before we headed back to the hotel, was show Mrs Shiltonpig the hotel Mr Shiltonpig had stopped at some time ago....the famous George Hotel. The plaque at the hotel reads "In medieval times when the house of the holy sepulchre stood on this site, knights of St John of Jerusalem were entertained here. In teh garden in the rear, crusaders in their black robes with white crosses walked and talked....At least 3 kings and many famous travellers have stayed here." One day when Mr Shiltonpig is long gone....the plaque will have added to the last sentence "including Mr Shiltonpig the world famous blogger and geocacher"...yeah right in my dreams!