This drive-by series celebrates the seemingly quirky names we Brits
have given to some of our streets and roads. It involves six caches
plus a bonus cache in which you will (among other things) find a
book on British place names. Four of them are micros; the rest are
Tupperware of varying sizes with the usual goodies.
This set is for the dedicated cacher as the caches are not
particularly close together. It will involve a fair amount of
driving (or cycling). That said, the whole set has been done in 3
hours (well done TreasureTrailers!!).
The bonus cache co-ordinates are N52 AB.C18 W001 DE.F81. The
values of the letters A - F are found in the logbook or Geocaching
notice of caches 1 - 6. I had planned to call the set “A
Series of Unfortunate Street Names – Cache the First / Second
/ Third” etc but this style is too long. The only reason I
mention this is that all of the logbooks / Geocaching notices show
this style as the cache name. I’ll update them as the
logbooks get filled up.
Where possible, I have included information about the reason why a
road is named as it is.
The other caches in the series are:
1
Pestilence
2
Dogpool
4
Coldbath
5
Grimpits
6
World's End
The Bonus
There are loads of books about place names and street names.
There’s probably one for your area. In the meantime, and to
whet your appetite, follow this link enter your postcode
and enjoy the results.
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Poverty
I spotted this when out on one of my bike rides and was so
struck by it that I had to stop, turn round and go back to check
that I’d read it right. Poverty is not quite a road. Perhaps
more of an alley. But what an extraordinary name!
As of 15 August 2011, the cache is a magnetic micro with just a
logbook inside. There are one or two houses with windows
overlooking the cache site so please be careful. The logbook gives
the value of C. Don’t forget to make a note of it! You can
park at the side of the main road near the entrance to
Poverty.
At the time of publication I had no idea why the alley had this
name. I have since (22/3/08) come across a walk
which suggests this:
"The first footpath used in this walk has an unusual name. It's
called Poverty, and is perhaps a reminder of the days when Astwood
Bank was mainly an agricultural community where people often
struggled to scrape a living. In the past, it was customary for
each field to be given a name: maybe the path called Poverty once
led to an unproductive field of the same name."
Zntargvp zvpeb oruvaq fvta.