Rockingham around the clock

Josh takes on the castle

Sunday 29th May 2011

This whole area has history coming out of its nose. Everywhere you look you just come across a castle here or a stately home here. Team Shiltonpig rode their cachemobile straight to Rockingham Castle, and yet again we were here on the trail of treasure of the gold variety. Legend has it that King John in the 13th century lost his crown jewels in the Wash (see our blog from last year). However 100 years ago at Rockingham Castle, one of the owners held a seance and was told the treasures were buried in the moat of the castle. Team Shiltonpig wanted a piece

Stop looking! I'm on the toilet!

 of the action. Rockingham castle has some incredible views and must be one of the few places in the country where you can see 5 counties from the top...in true team Shiltonpig style can you name the 5? Another impressive piece of information is that the great hall in the castle saw 10 kings dine there...yes you read that right 10 whole kings. In another moment of awe this weekend, we dare you to wander in that room and not feel something special, imagine all the conversations that have gone in the past. Oh to be a fly on the wall! The guides in the house seemed to have taken a page out of Lyddington English Heritage guidebook. They only

Mr Shiltonpigs current favourite photo

had to see Josh and they would panic. Be careful of this and careful of that. We think some of these places need to remember that children (and most of the adults) want to look AND touch the objects. Anyway rant over you will be pleased to know. Whats that I hear you say? you want more history...well how about this Charles Dickens was also a regular visitor to the castle and actually used the castle as part of the story in the famous Bleak House. You can see his letters in the upstairs rooms. The Castle is still a living house, the lawn outside had 2 goal posts, a reminder that a teenage boy lives here. Its hard to comprehend growing up in

Romeo, Romeo where for art thou?

a castle compared to the lives Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig grew up with. The children are very fortunate. The gardens make for a nice walk and the guided tour helped make it even more interesting. It was here that we got to hear more about the crown jewels and the treasure. I am sorry to disappoint you but 100 years ago they digged and digged and digged to try and find the treasure but alas there was none. Although the guide did say...perhaps they didn't dig deep enough. They display what they did find in the castle itself, but you will have to visit to find out for yourself. So team Shiltonpig had to make do with the only treasure we will ever find,

Mr Shiltonpigs attempt at art photography

geocaches....and there were a couple nearby. At one of them after we had just arrived, a pushbike pulled up and a young Polish man gets off the bike, turns out we bumped into another geocacher! And its a good job we did bump into him because it took the 3 of us to find the cache after 10 minutes, and it was him that found it! He commented that in Poland they use opencaching.com rather than geocaching.com and that the caches are easier to find! Perhaps a trip to Poland is in order!!! So all in all a great visit to a lovely castle steeped in history and some nice caches in the area! Encourage you all to visit one day!

Bowl us over Castle.....

We know how Gulliver feels now!

 Saturday April 30th 2011

Scaffolding is the bain of our lives, a real pain in the neck. It seems that no matter what castle, stately home, cathedral, church or other major attraction we go and see it is there! So here we are then team Shiltonpig turning the clocks back a couple of weeks to tell you about a nice day out we had at Bowl us over castle (for all you pedantic types out there, you may in fact want to type into Google Bolsover Castle). Bowl us over castle started its life several hundred years ago in the 12th century, around about the time Mr Shiltonpigs mother in law

Ride 'em cowboy

 was born. Its seen some wars over the years and looks a bit worse for wear, for example it doesn't have a roof for the most part. Now forgive me for saying this but, roofs do tend to be handy little things especially in these parts as they keep that annoying thing called rain from your head. Its owned by the English Heritage which looks after the place now, which is jolly nice of them if you don't mind me saying! It is home to the oldest surviving stable in the UK, however I am sorry to report that we saw no horses. Josh on the other hand found a hobby horse which he was able to pretend that he was the Lone Ranger.

Great views

 The other reason this castle bowls us over is the views. It is on a hill, a big hill and you can see for miles, photos never seem to be able to do it justice. They had a medieval day today where you can see a couple of men pretending to be knights practice jousting. For their sakes its a good job that they were born in the 20th century as their jousting skills would have got them killed centuries ago, both of them seemed to really struggle to kill off the cabbages that were on top of the spikes, but Josh loved it and thats all that counts. We only did the one cache today and after a lovely walk around the castle, we then made a dash for the cache!

Josh wishes they would hit the cabbage just once

 Using the new iphone app, we navigated a cache that was just a few metres away, a few metres turned into a few hundred metres and it was all downhill from there....literally. Mrs Shiltonpig was giving Mr Shiltonpig the evils as they both knew that for every step downhill we took, it meant one step uphill on the way back up. The cache was in a great location, in the middle of an open field with wide stretching views and of course one of the best views of the castle...granted even with the scaffolding surrounding some of it. Clever little cache it was too as for some reason it had a wooden swan attached to the nearby branch.

Scaffolding the pain of our lives!

After Mrs Shiltonpig finally accepted that the only way to get back to the car was to walk uphill we made our way back. Of course things were made easier once Mr Shiltonpig promised the family an ice cream, in fact to be honest Mr Shiltonpig has never seen the family move so quick! So another day and another cache!For more info on Bowl us over Castle click on the linky poo.

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!