Tut"berry"



Finally Mrs Shiltonpig where I want her...



 Saturday August 28th 2010

On a recent topic in the official geocaching forums team Shiltonpig raised the questions of when do you consider yourselves not to be newbies. A whole range of replies came in, some sensible, some not so sensible. But it was clear that one way you could be considered not to be a newbie was to introduce somebody to the sport. Up until today we have never been able to show anybody, which is a bit of a poor showing after 3 years or so. But hey Mr Shiltonpigs father was dragged along to experience what geocaching was all about.


11th Century Church doorway

  There are 2 caches in Tutbury itself, one a nano in the local car park and another multi cache which provided us with some local history to take in. But first perhaps we should tell you about the history of this little village. Firstly team Shiltonpig nearly moved here a few years ago, we walked into the small housing development and walked straight back out again when we saw the price. Like nearby Ashby de la Zouch having a castle in your town seems to effect the price of property! If we had of moved here we would have been in good company, none other than 


Mary Queen of Scots was jailed here

  Mary Queen of Scots spent lots of time imprisoned in the castle here. The poor woman hated it here by all accounts, she said it was damp and cold. Now not that team Shiltonpig want to be seen to be disagreeing with Royalty (even royalty that has been dead 423 years) but let’s face it, there isn’t a place in the UK where you couldn’t describe as damp and cold. But there again team Shiltonpig didn’t live in the 16^th century. It also seems recently that no matter which stately home, castle, palace or other place of


Tut"berry"

  abode that we go to at the moment, Mary Queen of Scots seems to have been there! I mean was this woman always on the move? Did she own a car? Or perhaps a helicopter?Because let’s face it had did that woman get around everywhere. Now Queen Mary may have been interested to know that the castle she despised so much is now really a ruin. But makes a great place to do a geocache. The multi cache took us several places around the village, including a museum which we sadly didn’t get chance to enter as Josh was with us….and trust me when I say Josh and museums don’t mix.

Mr Shiltonpigs father

 The cache hunt then took us to a nearby church where we saw remnants that dated back to before the castle. No, no I’m not talking about the local vicar, but the church dates back to the 11^th century. You may be interested to know that as we approached the castle on top of a hill (aren’t they always on top of a hill), that we were walking a path that people that been walking 3000 years. You may be pleased to know that Mr Shiltonpigs father was still with us and still very much appeared to be enjoying himself. But this is the point in the story where Tutbury became Tutberry, after our recent adventures picking fruit in the wild, we had been on the lookout for more fruit. We came across a big old tree full of lovely berries coloured blue. We at first mistook them for blueberries, and started to get very excited as they were everywhere, sadly once we opened one of them up we saw they were green inside. A big old berry disappointment, oh well we were left to blow raspberries, rather than eat any! But the best bit of the day was yet to come, team Shiltonpig had to split up, the pushchair wouldn’t go down the hill in the direction we had to go to get the cache. That left Mr Shiltonpig and his Dad alone seeking for the cache, obviously I can’t tell you exactly where the cache is, but in order to finish off the story I will have to admit that the cache is somewhere in the vicinity where water is. When we reached the cache location, we obviously started looking for it, but instead we looked up to see some young women stripped down to the bare essentials going for a swim. I tried to point out to my father that this doesn’t happen every time and was not the reason why I enjoy caching so much….I am not sure he believed me. It took far longer to find the cache than it normally did due to the distractions around us (only joking, before Mrs Shiltonpig hits me). We may have forgotten to tell Mrs Shiltonpig what we had seen, although she was too busy trying to stop Josh eat the poisonous berries! So our attempts to teach somebody new about geocaching didn’t go quite to plan, but it was a nice day out none the less.