Smite have a go at that Traditional Cache
Pinfold: Clearing the area to allow others to leave fresh hides
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This is a nice walk which should take no more than an hour regardless of how it’s approached.
The cache lies near to the River Smite or at least one of its many small tributaries. This tributary rises in the hills near Kinoulton. Ultimately the Smite meanders its way to Newark where it joins the River Trent which in turn joins the Humber and flows into the North Sea.
The walk is a very pleasant stroll and can be approached in one of two ways. You can either walk from Kinoulton or approach it from Colston Bassett, the cache is about half way between either village.
If you opt to walk from Kinoulton you’re best to park in Hall Lane at:
N52 52.414 W0 59.267
....where there’s a small layby. There used to be a shop and Post Office here, hence the parking spot but it closed in June 2008.
The area from the village green to a few hundred yards beyond the parking spot is thought to be the site of the lost village of Newbold. There is a scheduled ancient monument on Hall Lane, it’s in the first field on the left as you walk up the lane. You wont see anything from ground level but you can make out ‘something rectangular’ if you have a peek in Google Earth. In the era of the Domesday Book, Colston and Newbold were very closely linked commercially and administratively; the Smite was the boundary between the parishes. These days Kinoulton is better linked with Hickling and the path between Kinoulton and Colston is still trodden but mainly by those seeking a half decent walk. If you walk this old path, you're travelling in the footsteps of the Saxons.
If you travel from Colston Bassett you can park anywhere on School Lane. Quite where you travel from is up to you, both villages have good pubs. The Neville Arms is good for a nice (very nice actually) pint of Abbott ale and a reasonably priced pub lunch. The Martins Arms in Colston Bassett has charm aplenty and real ales, but you’d probably be able to buy a new GPS for the price of a meal for two. Colston Bassett also has a very exclusive deli-cum-tea-shopee, which sells rather exquisite posh food type comestibles, not cheap, but very nice. A walk around the corner brings you to the Colston Bassett dairy where you can buy Stilton Cheese fresh from the sheep that laid it that very morning.....or something like that. You can also take in the two caches, ‘Bassett's ruin revisited’ and ‘8 Maids a milking’ whilst you’re in the locality.
The cache can be accessed by mountain bike, it's not the smoothest journey but I coped well on my bike without suspension. It's a nice ride in June but may get a bit muddy in the winter months.
The cache is a small lock’n’lock style container that holds the usual log book, pencil and a few trinkets for the kids. It’s by the River Smite and near a wooden bridge. Local tradition has it that it’s good luck to pee off the downstream side of the bridge into the water below, whilst uttering the phrase ‘May the Lord and Saints preserve us!’. I guess it’s sort of comforting to know that Newark gets the diluted benefit of the tradition a few days later.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ng gur onfr bs na byq tngr cbfg.
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