Little Quest - Cambridgeshire

Friday April 2nd 2010

Cambridgeshire.....one of Englands old counties...a county that is know thoroughout the world for Cambridge University...and the one half of the annual boat race. Cambridgeshire has won more than the neighbouring Oxfordshire. So in a word you think "Posh" when you think of this county...and thats exactly where we went to today....Posh. Old thicky Mr Shiltonpig had not realised that Peterborough was part of this county...but sure enough it is (for non football fans out there "Posh" is the nickname for Peterborough FC). No offence to Peterborough, but perhaps when they redraw the county boundaries they might be forgiven for drawing a line around it. So before a load of angry Peterboro people start forming a vigilant group and start heading to team Shiltonpigs house, I had better start saying some nice things about the place....on the outskirts of Peterboro, there is a small village called Marholm.

Marholm, was yet another beautiful village in the area that we were visiting this weekend. This is the beautiful things about geocaching, when you look at the normal map that you have in the car, there is no reason at all that we would ever have come here....but yet we have memories that will live with us for some time to come. The caching adventures started earlier than normal, Josh (after all his snoring last night) woke up at stupid o clock. We just don't get it, no matter how much we tire him out the day before, no matter how late we let him stay up, whether its dark or light, when 6am comes around he wakes up and wants to the world to hear his "baa baa black sheep" poem.

The gps had taken us to a mere 500 feet away from the cache, there were a load of trees on either side of a small stream, so Mrs Shiltonpig took the one path and Mr Shiltonpig and Josh took the other. 500 feet later and guess what the injustice of the decade occured, the cache was on Mrs Shiltonpigs side. Poor old Mr Shiltonpig had to tramp all the way around, the grass was muddy and saturated with water and the holes in both his trainers didn't help matters. But the cache was in the bag...initially the cache was located in a village that was very similar to the one in Rutland, beautiful church, beautiful village, rich people....you know the score by now lol.

But this village and the cache owner had a card up its sleeve...no, I don't mean it had some gruesome murders like something from Midsommer Murders. But rather it had the Green Man as modelled by Josh and Mr Shiltonpig in the photo to the right....the Green Man I hear you say? Well like us we had never heard of it either....but click on this amazing fantastic link and you will learn a lot of info in a short space of time. What is more amazing is that this hedge in the shape of a man, has been here for around 100 years...and to be honest we didn't see it at first, but then when we looked at it again we saw what it was.

Its these little quaint oddities that lie around England that make this such a great country to visit. This was easily a cache worthy of being a Little Quest cache. This was a village that typifies all that is great about village life in England. This means on our travels so far in the Little Quest round trip we have covered 154 miles and are thoroughly enjoying it. So with a heavy heart and an empty belly we leave the Green man to entertain some other geocachers...but he will stay in our memories for a long time to cry (sniff, sniff...has anyone got a hankie?)