Another a"moo"sing tale!

Cowpats with love

Monday April 12th 2010

You would be forgiven for thinking that the cows near the ancient forest of Charnwood were friendly...simply because cows are generally regarded as placid and grass eating. Your view would be strengthened when as you walk down a field, you find freshly laid cowpats laid with a purple heart in the middle of them....but you would be wrong....the cows of Charnwood have you deceived. Imagine if you will 3 inncoent geocachers by the names of Mr and Mrs Shiltonpig and Josh, who just wanted to go happily on their way to their 1st and second letterbox hybird caches (more on that later).

Cows attempt a pincer "moo"vement

But the cows had other ideas....oh yes they allowed us to enter the field and have a look at the beautiful reservoir of Blackbrook...but when we tried to leave, they had us surrounded. Using tactics not seen since the English Civil War...the cows attacked us from both flanks, they had even broken down a nearby fence hoping to trap us....all seemed nearly lost, the 3 of us huddled together and wept bitterly (well actually, that was just Mr Shiltonpig)...when all of a sudden we noticed that one of the wooden planks around the footpath was missing....while Josh starting distracting them singing "baa baa black sheep" we climbed over the fence and onto freedom....just as we got far enough away we shouted back at them "were off to McDonalds"....

Mr Shiltonpig is a stamp collector

In 1796 some blokes decided that it would be a good idea to build a reservoir here, they put an awful amount of time and effort into it...so much time and effort that 3 years later the dam burst and within 11 minutes the water was already in every house of nearby Loughborough, with screams and moans of all the local residents....oops! In 1957 an earthquake measure 5.3 in the area made more cracks in the dam...will somebody just take a hint and just admit that the valley just doesn't want a dam. The caches here are letterbox hybrids, which means that they have their own stamp book and inkpad. We stamped Joshs hand..though he immediately tried entry into the local nightclub....with some fake ID.

Err...whats that?

Charnwood Forest is an interesting place...coincidentally in the same year as the earthquake a schoolboy discovered a fossil known as a charnia, and it shattered the scientific world as it became the first fossil found from a really really really long time ago. These days strange looking creatures also can be found in the forest, just look at the strange one on the right...no, no, no not Mrs Shiltonpig, the mushroom on the tree. The area however is adjacent to Mont St Bernard, the only monastery of its kind left in the whole of England....these guys have it easy though, they get up at 3.15am and go to bed at 8pm...thats 7.25 hours sleep a night....thats double what we get having Josh in the house!!

Leicestershires answer to Rio's Christ the Redeemer

The abbey itself looks like its missing a roof....which is kind of weird....but a short walk to the side shows Leicestershires answer to Rio De Janerios "Christ the Redeemer". Inside the abbey is a wealth of bible related literature and 1 booklet dedicated to its opposition to 1 religion. Interesting. There are more caches in the area and we are all glad, firstly because it gives us a chance to get our revenge on the cows and secondly because there is so much history here that we can learn about. Oh and spare a thought for poor old Josh today...he bumped his head and has a little egg in its place.

Geocaching 1987 style!

Summer 1987

I was so chuffed, I had my first cassette Sony walkman in black....my sister had one in red, it was ace, I could listen to the Pet Shop Boys all day and my sister could listen to Rick Astley. This was an age before ipods, cds, dvds, mobile phones, internet, xbox and of course the good old gps...yes this was an age when Mr Shiltonpig was Master Shiltonpig, an age before the electronic revolution had begun! It is only recently upon discovery of the photo to the left that I realised that my love of geocaching was based upon a childhood memory...

On our annual summer holiday in Dartmoor, Devon, Mr Shiltonpigs father took the family to an area outside of Okehampton. He must at some point have come across letterboxing. Letterboxing is the 19th and 20th Centuries form of geocaching...basically a man by the name of William Crossing in 1854 (around about the time Mrs Shiltonpig was born) wrote in his Dartmoor book that another man James Perrott had placed a bottle for visitors cards at a remote place. This single event led to more boxes being placed in remote places and by the latter half of the 20th Century Dartmoor was full of them...well not quite full otherwise you would be tripping over them as you walked over the moor. Using a map (for those of an age that cannot remember a time before gps, a map was a piece of paper that you could carry around that helped you locate yourself on lol).

My father decided to take his family on a trek through Dartmoor to the site of the first letterbox, a place called Cranmere Pool. Now you can read more about Cranmere Pool at one of my great links and its well worth it....for a start Cranmere Pool is described as "wet, boggy tract of land with possibly a pathetic muddy pond or a dried up peaty mess, depending on the rainfall". Just the place to take the family on holiday!! Now the first time we went through (please note the emphasis on the word first) we got lost, we went off course and lets just say the wellies that you see in the first photo came very much into force. It was cold, it was raining, it was misty and we were damp.

Now before I get told off by my dear parents, I have to say that some parts of this story have become a little vague....but why let the facts get in the way of a good story. So after the first time and getting so lost and wet, what was the sensible decision to make? Yes thats right a few days later we tried again....this is where we came across the army, for some reason they were also in the area and on their way to Cranmere Pool. The Sergeant Major was very nice and pleasant and his map reading skills were better than ours and so we finally got there....and when we did, what did we see? Yes thats right the photo on the right, an old battered Victorian Letterbox, which incidentally is still used as a post box. Why do I know that? Because we sent ourselves a postcard saying "we made it"...not sure why we did that as it was no surprise a week or two later when we received a postcard saying "we made it"...however the very nice General (he had been promoted I'm sure of it) had written on it "So did we".  And that was the end of the adventure to a cold, wet, waterless pool in the middle of nowhere.

However 20 years later the fun we had had as a family looking for this letterbox was brought back into the fore when I came across geocaching and wanted to recreate more of those memories. So now I have my own family and history repeats itself as I carry Josh on my shoulders and get Mrs Shiltonpig lost in the middle of nowhere on a cold wet day, but just like when I was a kid, we have lots of fun together and I wouldn't have had it any other way then or now. So while I have ditched my Sony walkman for my ipod (though I still listen to Pet Shop Boys occasionally, yes sad I know) and my map for a gps...I still pose looking stupid in photos....some things will never change!