When a castle isn't a castle....

Saturday April 10th 2010

Some days no matter where you take your photos you end up with good photos...Elvaston Castle and Country Park is such a place. Of course the temptation to pick up 2 caches along the way is a mere bonus....this castle...which isn't really a castle has romance at the heart of its tale....in fact if love hadn't entered this castle it would not look like it does today....imagine for a moment its the mid 19th century....people wear bowler hats, oliver twist is still in his nappies...and football isn't around (what a terrible time it must have been). Two people fell madly in love with 1 another.

One happened to be an Earl who was 50 years old, he married a woman aged 33, and this for some reason was hugely frowned upon. This led them to live in the castle and for the large part led secluded lives...the Earl decided to make the castle a haven and paradise, and rather than wait for saplings to grow, he bought full grown trees to be uprooted and replanted in the gardens....something unheard of at that time. The whole place was built in gothic fashion, hence the types of follies seen all over the place as the one Mrs Shiltonpig and Josh are modelling in the photo. While its sad to think that these two people had to live in private because of gossip, people in 21st century now have a legacy to enjoy.

We love hedges...hedges we hear you ask? yes hedges...especially the ones here...they come in all shapes and sizes and the one Mr Shiltonpig is modelling comes in the size of a crown....Mrs Shiltonpig thinks that the crown is still too small for Mr Shiltonpigs head! The cache in question was one of those multi caches, that sends you all around the park looking for how many tyres are in the kiddies play area or how many slices of salami do you have in your sandwich. It was sunny, it was hot and we didn't care where the clues sent us as we were having a good time....but this is where we have to get serious

It has come to team Shiltonpigs attention that some people are coming to the park and upseting the hedges....they are calling the hedges names such as "your too small to be a tree" or "leaf us alone" or "ooh what could I do to you with a pair of clippers". Please folks, hedges have feelings, they are very sensitive and need looking after, its not nice to be nasty to them....so team Shiltonpig fully endorse the local council initiative to "Respect the Hedges". Yes be nice to hedges! Next up the clues led us to some gates...even these gates have a story to tell. Believe it or not the gates that Mr Shiltonpig is doing a poor impression of being in a prison cell were actually once in the amazing palace of Versailles.

It seems that the gates have seen better days though as now they are rusty and need a good coat of paint. It seems the Earl picked up the gates on ye olde ebaye for a mere 10 shillings....a bargain by any standards. Finally though we had our last clue and we had to walk about a mile to where the cache was located...it was contained in an ice cream container...this was a clever subliminal message by the cache owner (were convince they have shares in an ice cream company)...so of course we then set off for an ice cream...they didn't sell Mr Whippys? whats that all about? but we did have a flake so that kind of made up for it.

This is an excellent place for a cache....an excellent place to take the family and was a wonderful day. Elvaston Castle has it all...romance, intrigue and most important of all toilets, With our 250th cache in the bag...it was time for a quick kip by the river and then off home to confuse all our neighbours by being the first in the street to have a BBQ and a beer...great stuff. Some days its good to be alive!