GC17DK9 Nostalgia Trip: Coal Not Dole (Traditional Cache) in North West England, United Kingdom created by muttoneer adopted by Ian Titanic

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GC17DK9 ▼

A cache by muttoneer adopted by Ian Titanic Message this owner

Hidden : 11/10/2007

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

Nostalgia Trip is a series of five caches not far from the A580, East Lancs Road. As well as a journey through South Lancashire it is also a journey into the past... more specifically the early 80's when I were a lad!

The five caches in the series are:
Nice Cup of Tea
Coal Not Dole
ZX81
The Adventure Game
When All This Were Just Fields
It is strongly advised to do them in this order. You will need coordinates from the first two caches to find the third and fourth, which in turn contain the coordinates for the final cache.

The second cache in the Nostalgia Trip series takes us to Astley Green. The cache is located just outside Whitehead Hall Meadow, a pleasant Millennium Green lying between two very different mining landmarks.

The first, to the north on the other side of the Bridgewater Canal, is Astley Green Colliery Museum, a listed site containing the only surviving pit headgear and engine house in Lancashire. You can see the headgear from miles around. The museum is currently open on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

The second, to the south, is a former huge open cast mine which is now used for landfill. You'll have a good view of the boundary fence from the cache site!

The cache is here because some of my earliest memories are of old pitheads and spoil heaps, of striking miners and protest songs. The Lancashire coalfields aren't my patch though - I come from the Welsh valleys. My father worked in a mine and so did his father before him. I suppose that, had our mining industry not collapsed when I was young, I might have ended up down the pit myself too.

I would recommend parking on Lower Green Lane in Astley Green village and taking the public footpath east to the cache site. You can then either return to your car or cut through the Meadow to meet the canal towpath. A short walk, but a pleasant one.

Don't forget to jot down the number "B" which is given in this cache. You will need it to complete the rest of this series!