An Historic Geocache - Classed as 'Old' (2003)
Read more about The Historic Geocaches' campaign.
Chess themed Geocache No.1 - BLACK ROOK (Bucks)
Drive into the village of Stone, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. You'll see a side-road signposted 'Eythrope only'. Drive down here and park somewhere before the gates - around N51°48.480/W00°52.352 - where there is a 'Private Road' notice. You shouldn't drive beyond this point but it is a public right of way, I've checked. (Edit: Actually it seems people generally park down the hill a bit, beyond the sign. Dog walkers and the like. I can't recommend you do this though...)
Walk along this road for about half a mile, down the hill, around a bend, to a junction between an automatic gate and a bridge next to a waterfall. Turn right here and proceed towards N51°48.700 / W00°52.300. You'll pass a strange character on the river bank - The White Knight upon a quest perhaps? - follow a causeway, climb a stile and pass a fairytale house with dragons on its roof. Here you need to note the NUMBER OF PLANKS ON THE BRIDGE, as you'll be using this figure later. Now, continue along the river, dodge cowpats to pass through a kissing gate, until you reach what was once a spooky tree. It's now a spooky pile of giant logs. Turn right here, through another kissing gate (kiss anyone in your group it's appropriate to kiss) and take the obvious route to your target, the 'dark castle' of Burn Hill.
Once there you'll find that one of the trees has some numbers and letters carved into it (not by me!) starting 03, which, for the following to work, you should ignore. If A=1, B=2, etc, then Line1-Letter1 is X, Line2-Letter1 (not a 'G') is Y and Line4-Letter1 is Z.
Your final target, the Cache, is located at:
N51° (PLANKS+X).ZX0 - W00° Z(Y-1).(X-1)YY
There is a bridleway near the 'dark castle' that will take you in the right direction. Happy Hunting!
The cache originally contained:
1x Cadbury's MiniRolls™ 'Safe' (basically a small empty sparkly orange plastic box)
1x Metal HP Keyring
1x Yo-Yo (The plasticy, stringy kind, not the yummy chocolaty kind)
2x Tealite candles
2x RobotWars stickers
1x Chiltern Sculpture Trail leaflet (I'm in the process of doing a web site for them, which is how I was introduced to Geocaching as there's one in the same wood)
1x Audio CD. No adult lyrics. I checked.
Plus the usual: Cache notice, log book, pen, pencil.
Things to enjoy while searching for this cache:
This cache (my first!) has achieved a maximum five star rating at Dan Wilson's buckscaching.co.uk [now defunct] web site!
While you're in the area, I suggest you check (another vague Chess reference there. Did you spot it?) out Dan & Pid's excellent caches, Egyptian Springs and Black Magic. They're both within energetic walking distance.
If you enjoyed finding this cache please remember to add it to your 'Favorites'!