Mr Grumpy in the Woods

Mr Shiltonpigs other alias

Tuesday April 13th 2010

The black death is an unusual way to start talking about a blog based on geocaching adventures....however you will find more about that later. However we had a guest join us caching in the woods today...Mr Grumpy...some people in the Shiltonpig household may know him by his other name of Mr Shiltonpig....but today he is known as Mr Grumpy. It was one of those days where you feel the whole world is against you...and the only thing that can make you happy is to scratch that never ending itch of geocaching....so Mr Grumpy took the family to Coton Woods....(erm am I the only one to notice that Coton is missing a "t")?

Click to read me...please oh please read me

So as promised its time to talk about the gruesome past of Coton Woods....now the wood was only planted in 1995 (The year Mr Shiltonpig was born). But the residents of nearby Coton in the Elms, couldn't be bothered in medieval times to build their own church.....they were too busy on the internet I was told. So the local residents were a bit annoyed when in the middle 12th century something called the black death came along....and killed off all those that had been in favour of building a church (irony for you). This meant that they had to take their dead all the way to the nearest church was in the town of Lullington, which is 1.6 miles away...and roughly 32 minutes walk.

A shadow is cast over the caches

Soon after all this to'ing and fro'ing the area became known as procession way, where all the dead bodies would be carried. Mrs Shiltonpig said that if Mr Grumpy didn't cheer up soon then the local residents would be carrying another dead body to Lullington....it wasn't the right time to point out that 700 years after everybody else had built their churches the local residents had finally built one....in fact the 19th century saw not 1 but 2 being built!!! Shock horror! So the two caches in question were back to basics caches....meaning a nice walk in a nice wood with a good sized cache. This is where Josh comes in...

Josh comes in handy for carrying caches

Why go to all the work of finding and putting back a cache when you have a Josh to do it all for you....now we are not saying we believe in the forthcoming general election that child labour should be reintroduced (would be nice though wouldn't it.....just kidding!) but Josh is the perfect size for going in and out of hedges and under trees that the giant by comparison Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig have to stoop and go on their hands and knees. So from now on Josh will have to pull his own weight collecting and finding caches! To be fair to the poor wee lad, he whinged less than his father today (and thats saying something). These woods are very confusing as unless you have a gps you haven't a clue where you're going!

Mr Shiltonpigs superior photo skills in evidence

We then walked 0.24 miles to the next cache, everywhere looked the same and we were confused as to where we actually were. After finding the cache, we wondered around the woods, for weeks trying to find the way out...we even resorted to eating Joshs organic raspberry flavoured rice cakes (trust me we were desperate)...but finally we were out of the woods. Mr Shiltonpig was still grumpy but at least he was grumpy and 2 more caches under his belt....perhaps its best that we leave you all on a warm happy glow in your belly....so courtesy of you tube we will finish with this....bet it made you smile!