Hillside Hollow Traditional Cache
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There are two starting points for this walk which heads up/around "The Nebit". One starts off from "The Ochil Hills Woodland Park" in Alva. If you choose this route you can park in the car park there and walk up through the woods, go across the little bridge over the "Silver Burn" which takes you completely out of the wooded area and onto the open hillside and well defined paths that lead to the cache. If you do decide to go this way, please note that there is a stile to negotiate. We managed to get our Lhasa Apso lifted over it but bigger dogs would be a bit of a struggle. It crosses over a barbed wire fence but plastic coating/tubing has been applied to cover the area immediatly next to the stile.
For the other walk to the cache (this is our preferred route) you would park in the car park at the foot of "Alva Glen". From there make your way up through the glen.... head up the steps after the waterfall, once under the old water pipe bear right to reach a small metal gate. Go through it and onto the open hillside. Depending on the route that you choose from this point YOU CAN MISS THE STILE completely that I mentioned above. If you want to do that, then you have to take the steeper/higher of the two pathways leading from here (keeping the fence to your right hand side). However if you take the lower, narrower pathway that winds through the gorse bushes you will still need to negotiate the stile further on.
Out of the two routes we would say that the "Alva Glen" starting point is probably the easier of the two because the route that winds through the pathways of the "Woodland Park"/"Wood Hill" is very steep in places and we needed to find our second wind many a time - mind you that's not unusual for us as we aren't the fittest of cachers, (and that's putting it midly to say the least!!). Both routes have well defined pathways to the cache site.
I love the views from up here, but then again I'm probably biased because I grew up in Alva and have a lot of happy memories of this walk/area in particular.
Dogs should be kept on a lead at all times on the hillside because of the sheep and great care should be taken if you have children with you as (whatever route that you decide to take) this is quite a steep walk in places. You'll also need adequate footwear for being on the hills.
The cache is a medium sized (camoflaged) "Lock & Lock" type container, well hidden in a "triangular shaped" natural rocky hollow in the hillside about 40 feet "up" off the pathway. Could you please take care to hide it exactly as you found it. At the time of placing the best reading that we could get from the GPS was within 9-20 ft of the cache. If needed though, the clue should help.
The original contents were:
Logbook, pencil & sharpener, pen and stash card (all in a ziploc bag).
The swaps/swag were:
Mini FM Scan radio
Tin of playing cards
Pack of Carex wipes
Fake parking ticket
Packet of mini highlighters
Pen-type eraser
2 Geocaching button badges
2 RSPB Pin Badges
Plastic yo-yo
Co-ords for "Alva Glen" Car Park:
N56º 09.420 W003º 47.848
Co-ords for "Ochil Hills Woodland Park" Car Park:
N56º 09.441 W003º 46.507
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Nf lbh jnyx nybat gur cngu gung tbrf cnfg gur pnpur lbh jvyy frr n ynetr, fbyvgnel, cnegyl zbff-pbirerq ebpx gb lbhe yrsg unaq fvqr. Gur pnpur vf qverpgyl bccbfvgr guvf, ybbx hcjneqf bire gb lbhe evtug sbe n gevnathyne funcrq ebpxl ubyybj va gur uvyyfvqr, (vg'f nobhg 40 sg HC sebz gur cngu, be nobhg 50 srrg gb gur evtug bs gur nobir zragvbarq ebpx).
Treasures
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