SOTC#8 - Armchair Traveller Traditional Cache

The Ships of the Culture series is named after spaceships which feature in the science fiction novels of the late Scottish author Ian M Banks. The ships are autonomous beings and choose their own names, which often leads to amusing results.

The series is a small circuit of about 2 miles/3 kms, with a steep climb up Greenway Lane, across Shurdington Hill, then back down. At the top there are views across to the Malvern Hills.

Armchair Traveller is a Mountain class General Contact Unit (GCU). It featured in the novel 'Surface Detail'.

Iain Banks was an author renowned for his mainstream fiction novels, as well as science fiction, and one book, 'The Crow Road', was adapted for television some years ago. He used the middle initial M to distinguish between his science fiction work and other fiction. I was fortunate to meet Iain Banks at the Literary Festival a couple of years ago. He was a very nice man. He died in June 2013 of cancer.

I also have another cache based on another of Ian M Banks' science fiction novels. This is Feersum Endjinn ( GC3MP23 ), one of the Cheltenham Circular Caching Challenge (CCCC) series. The CCCC is a 26 mile circuit around Cheltenham, following Cheltenham Circular Path. Some of the series pass close by in Shurdington.

If you have climbed up the escarpment to the top, you might consider some of the caches nearby, such as Glorious Gloucestershire ( GC18FA ), which last year celebrated 10 years as a geocache, making it one of the oldest caches around.

Greenway Lane is impassable to motor vehicles beyond the cattle grid, unless you have a quad bike or Land Rover. The Lane is steep, rocky and muddy, and was virtually a stream when I last walked up it. It can be slippery underfoot. It is possible to access the Lane from the top, joining the circuit at SOTC#4. There are livestock in the fields, usually cattle out on the Common, with horses in the fields by the farm. Please keep geodogs under control. Some of the paths on the Common can be welly-boot sticky. Please observe the Country Code, closing all gates behind you.