The old saying “Gone for a Burton” means that something or someone has gone missing - which I hope does not happen to this cache.
The saying’s origins lie in the brewing industry based at Burton-on-Trent and not Burton Dassett, although this village does rather seem to have disappeared!!
In the 18th & 19th centuries most brewers preferred to produce their own malt in order to have some control over the type and quality. This was a very labour-intensive seasonal job that required great strength and stamina as ‘maltsters’ needed to be able to haul sacks weighing up to 50 kg and turn the “piece” (a patch of thinly spread moistened barley) by hand using a wooden malt shovel. As the germinating barley was being warmed from below to dry the grains and remove the rootlets this was oppressively hot and dusty work.
So it was that from 1870 until around 1930, young men from East Anglia would travel to Staffordshire in the winter months to provide the extra labour needed at the Burton breweries’ maltings. They were known to the locals as “Norkies”, “Suffolk Jims” or “Suffolk Punches” as they returned home in summer to work on the local farms harvesting the barley and other crops.
Only some of them didn’t return!
Many contracted the fungal disease known as “Farmers’ Chest” (or Lung) while working in the dusty maltings. Those who failed to return home were said to have ‘gone for a Burton’.
Similarly during the Second World War it was considered bad luck by airmen to say that their comrades had been killed. Burton ales were still the most popular beers at the time and the saying transferred so that RAF colleagues who did not return from their missions were said to have “gone for a Burton”.
The cache is a now a 35 mm film pot. The original container was placed during one of the Wednesday Walking Club (of Shirley, Solihull) walks that was being led by my wife.
We went from Northend via Fenny Compton to the pub at Avon Dassett and back to the Burton Dassett hills - a great walk of about 7 or 8 miles. Mrs Signyred rather disapproves of geocaching as a waste of time.
Go get this cache if you want to waste some more of yours!
First you’ll have to solve this little riddle:
"I am found on land and sea but cannot walk or swim.
I travel by foot but am toeless.
I am never far from home.
What am I?"
The answer is a 5 letter animal “JKLMN”
Substitute 1 for A, 2 for B, 26 for Z etc
The cache is at North 52 09. [K+L-M] [L] [M] West 001 25. [L] [N-M] [(J-M)/2]
The cache might take a bit of reaching if the weather has been unkind, when you might need the special equipment indicated.
Check digits: The sum of ALL north figues is 32 & the sum of all west figures is 17.