Lets go for a "Wash"



Thank goodness for a gun shelter



Sunday August 29th 2010

This glorious country can be so infuriating at times….for example, we drive 2 hours to the coast, it’s been sunny all the way here and then just as we arrive at the cache site, it absolutely tips it down with rain and the wind picks up like never before. I am convinced that we are not the only ones to experience the problems that you I have just described. Anyway enough moaning and whinging it’s time to tell you about today’s caching adventures.

Pilgrim Fathers memorial

Today team Shiltonpig descended on a strange place in the UK known as the Wash. Name the name “The Wash” seems to imply that the place is dirty, but in fact it’s nothing but dirty. It is flat however and has a series of salt marshes across the area which makes it a rather bleak wilderness in our humble opinion. The couple of caches that we attempted first took us to two historic places. Firstly a second world war gun shelter which actually came in very handy. As we walked to the cache site, the heavens opened up again and Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig took it in turns sheltering there with Josh while the other looked for it.

erm Josh...thats not a horse

It’s strange to think that a world war 2 relic actually came in handy for us. Next up was a monument that was set up to commemorate the failed attempt at the Pilgrim Fathers trying to set sail to “the new world” back in 1607. If you click on the photo you can make out the memorial, if you get distracted by looking at Mr Shiltonpig and Josh you wouldn’t be the first and you won’t be the last!!! So these pilgrim father type people wanted to flee England and make for Holland, they chartered a boat and then the captain betrayed them, making them suffer a month in jail.

Stinky stinky cauliflower

But the story did not end there in 1608 they made a second attempt and succeeded, but after 12 years of eating edam cheese and wearing clogs they decided enough was enough. They wanted McDonalds and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, so they set sail for America and founded what would be become the city of Boston. With two caches in hand it was time to set sail for another couple of caches. One of the surprising things about the wash is the amount of flat farmland there is, and growing in all that farmland are all kind of manner of vegetables. Another cache in the area took us to the site of a walnut tree, perhaps we have been sheltered before but again team Shiltonpig had never seen a walnut tree before. The photo will show Mrs Shiltonpig demonstrate what a walnut fruit looks like! To be honest though Mr Shiltonpig has always thought she was nutty (oh come on, you must have seen that joke coming a while away, my only defence for using this kind of joke is that the old ones are the best). For some reason this cache took some finding and caused no manner of stings from the rather enormous stingers in the area, I believe they were the size of giants, that would eat you alive if you looked at them in the eye. So all in all the Wash gave us a chance to look at very unusual part of the world and of course continue our push for geocaching world domination!



Nutty Mrs Shiltonpig