Putting the "Hilton" in Shiltonpig

Thursday April 8th 2010

When you think of the word Hilton....I am sure that you either think of the hotels or that woman who seems to like to be on TV and in magazines a lot. However believe it or not there is a village called Hilton in Derbyshire. Hilton has in recent times become a geocachers paradise with caches popping up everywhere, in fact there are so many of them, you have to push them out of the way as you walk down the street. So let me share with you some interesting things about Hilton.....well supposedly Mary Queen of Scots visited here once on her way to nearby Tutbury....this might be true as there is a pub dating from 1495 opposite where this photo was taken from. I think our favourite quote from wikipedia about Hilton is as follows...."Although ancient, it has undergone a great deal of development."...well go figure huh! However Hilton was the scene of an attempt to break our record of number of finds in a day.

We actually started the day in Eggington not Hilton....Eggington has an amzing history...and for once I am not being sarcastic...just click on one of my amazing links. How can one village have so much history? The caching started with a cache that was next to a tree that was literally falling to bits. Mr Shiltonpig accidentally pulled off a third of the tree thinking there was a cache behind it....oops. Now there have been rumours for many weeks now that a yellow warm orb does exist behind the clouds...and team Shiltonpig can confirm it was out in force today...at one point Mr Shiltonpig even takes his coat off (shock horror!).

So sitting in the sun with daffodils nearby, and birds landing on him, deers appearing to the side of him, Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig start singing this song. Then Josh came with his stick and started chasing them all off lol We then started on the caches in Hilton which by and large were fairly easy, except one. One near the centre looked as if it was behind a pile of rocks, so poor old Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig start chucking all the rocks onto the nearby path and some old aged pensioners who were too slow to miss them...and the cache wasn't there. As we were about to give up Mrs Shiltonpig spotted some fake leaves and the cache was there...Mr Shiltonpig is modelling in one of the photos above.

As regular readers will know Mr Shiltonpig is a bit of a tree hugger, oak trees in particular....and near the brook is the ultimate caching tree...it has like a billion holes, a hollow inside the tree and is suitable for climbing...plus its trunk has grown sideways allowing Josh and Daddy to share a bonding moment together...(hankies at the ready, at such a tender moment). It also has the quickest find we have ever done, we parked the car for some lunch, Josh ate more than his fair share we might add. We switched on the gps, got out the car, gps said we were 10 feet away, Mrs Shiltonpig instantly saw it...it was great...5 second cache...wish all were like that.

We picked up a Travel Bug today that wants as its mission to go from Tescos to Tescos?? whats that all about? at least they could have chosen Morrisons lol We finished off for the morning in Marston on Dove....and what is this villages claim to fame? It has the oldest bell in the whole of Derbyshire...built in 1366 and at about 1pm today we heard it...plus the cache in question wasn't found by the last person who tried...and we found it...team Shiltonpig do the gloating dance...gloat gloat. Josh was about to wipe the smug look off our faces...he had filled his nappy (just how much can one lad wee in one day we ask?) and we had forgotten the nappies...now wheres a Tescos when you want one?