King Alfred's Athelney Mump Traditional Cache
King Alfred's Athelney Mump
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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A short walk along a riverbank through a field
Parking for a couple of cars is available at N51 03.424 W002 56.037– by the Environment Agency's Currymoor Pumping Station sign. There is a ‘no parking’ notice outside the bungalow on the opposite side of the road. From the parking area it is a short flat walk along a bank of the River Parrett. The cache is situated on a public footpath a few metres off the Parrett Trail and East Deane Way. It is possible to access the footpath from the A361 but I haven’t checked if there is any parking at that end and the walk isn’t much longer but is much more scenic from the Athelney side.
In 878 King Alfred sought refuge from the Danes in the marshes and constructed a stronghold at Athelney, from where he broke out and won a decisive victory at Edington, near Chippenham. Alfred managed to force the invading Danes out of Wessex and eventually out of the whole of southern England. Alfred returned to Athelney after these battles and constructed an abbey on the site to give thanks for his victory. The cache site is about 300 metres from Alfred’s Monument in a field above a farmhouse. There is a permissive path to the cache if you want to go and look at it. Athelney is also the place where Alfred is alleged to have been scolded by a peasant woman for letting her cakes burn when she had asked him to watch them.
From the cache site you can also see the ruined St Michael's church on top of Burrow Mump, a couple of miles to the east. Burrow Mump is a natural hill rising 24m above the surrounding levels. A Norman motte castle predates the church. During the Civil War, Royalist troops fleeing after the Battle of Langport in 1645 took refuge in the church and managed to hold out for three days as their colleagues in nearby Bridgwater surrendered to the Parliamentary troops. The ruins were carefully made to look more romantic in the nineteenth century. In 1946 the site was given to the National Trust by Alexander Gould Barrett for use as a war memorial.
When I placed the cache there was a herd of cows in the field but they took no notice of me. The cache is guarded by stinging nettles at this time of year.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Jurer gur srapr zrrgf gur urqtr