High Noon - Shiltonpigs 2nd "1st to Find"

Mr Shiltonpig struts down Swadlincote High Street

 Thursday April 15th 2010

The wild west.....cowboys....indians....and of course sheriffs looking cool and mean all at the same time, walking calmly down the street. Yes....this was High Noon....National Forest style!! Finding a cache before anyone else can be a very competitive thing....so team Shiltonpig left the house with the usual equipment gps, nappies and a couple of .45 revolvers just in case we met any fellow geocachers who stood in the way of us and that precious reward "a first to find"!! John Wayne.....Clint Eastwood...they have nothing on these bunch of cowboys!!

An info board that we blatantly have used info from for this blog

Psssttt...shall we let you into a secret? actually High Noon has nothing to do with the famous film of 1952 starring Grace Kelly...instead it has to do with the sun and the time of day.....basically the National Forest is split into 6 regions....and some clever bloke designed 6 statues or pillars that have holes in them (whats clever about that?...well hang on, hang on...I'm typing as fast as I can to tell you) each statue on midsummer and midwinters day allows the sun to shine through the hole at 12.03pm in winter and 1.03pm in summer. Pretty neat ah? Some of you may be thinking why didn't the artist just buy a watch to tell the time....

Mrs Shiltonpig was unavailable so this "tree" had to make do

But that would be missing the point wouldn't it? Plus it would be hard to carry a 30 foot statue on your wrist on midsummers day wouldn't it? Anyway back to the story....team Shiltonpig love going for first time finds....our last attempt saw us going out in the snow on a cold Friday evening in February. This time it was a Thursday afternoon, we jumped out of the car and started walking like there was no tomorrow. Nothing can prepare you for the thrill...the buzz of hoping, praying that you get there first. But alas there was a problem....we found the co-ordinates easy enough...but where was the statue, we couldn't see it?

 But we did find a black bra attached to a nearby tree? We wondered whether the cache owners had been getting a little carried away when they were here last (Mr and Mrs Ashby Bells...tut tut lol) But black bra's weren't what we were after...so we kept on walking around and around for what seemed like an eternity, until we heard a little squeak from Mrs Shiltonpig "squeak, squeak"....roughly translated as "I have found the statue". Then we kicked ourselves as you will see by the photo at the end of this blog, the statue is so large that you wonder how on earth we could have missed it in the first place! In fact the statue was crying out in a loud voice "here I am"...we felt slightly foolish...so we went back to the black bra....(Mr Shiltonpig tried it on....not really)...and then started looking around. Josh pointed out "plane" and sure enough there was one....erm haven't they heard of volcanic ash? or the fact they shouldn't be flying? Josh was about to ring the civil aviation authority but then realised he can hardly talk...other than say "plane" so left it.

Vogue won't be calling any time soon

Mrs Shiltonpig then pointed to the place where the cache was....and then we held our breath....as we opened the lid carefully...(we passed out, and don't recommend to anyone holding their breath...) and wondered if anyone had been there before us.....if you haven't guessed by now (the title of this blog entry kinda gives it away) we were the first and there was a lovely keyring with a photo of the statue in the cache, which Mr Shiltonpig is showing in the nearby photo...with a particularly cheesey smile If I may say so myself....

James Bond Wild West style

 So in order not to disappoint all you wild west fans out there Mr Shiltonpig re-enacts some kind of scene for you at the high noon statue (some may point out that it looks more like James Bond.....but you would just be nit picking....this is a low budget blog production and don't have the millions Hollywood has to spend....however if you would like to invest our account number is.....). Hopefully you wild west junkies are satisfied??? If not we have 5 more of these to find....so watch this space. So if you are looking for a good cache or just a place to pick up a spare black bra then pop on down to the National Forest in Grangewood. Bring on the other high noon caches!