The cache is a hybrid of a puzzle and a two stage multi-cache.
The final is not at the coordinates listed above but is within
about 3 miles.
Caravanning:
My father was scared about the threat of
nuclear attack and bought our first caravan so we could flee to the
hills when it all went wrong. How we would manage it with only 5
minutes warning I never quite knew. Our first caravan was a
Cheltenham. It had hardboard sides painted pale green. My youngest
sister, Mary, christened it ‘Greensleeves Lamb’ because’ “It’s
green and it follows on behind”.
In those days, our car was a black Vauxhall
12. It had chrome flashes on the sides of the bonnet. I will always
remember the registration number, JAF 67. Dad told me he had been
very lucky to get a new car. As the country was on a war footing he
had to drive it back from Luton, on trade plates, to the garage in
Truro. He was alone, most of the journey was in the dark, he wasn’t
allowed to exceed 30 mph because of the new engine, and there was a
vile burning paint smell. If you knew my dad you would know how
well he coped with that!
On our first holiday to
visit my grandparents in Dover, my mother agreed to drive for a
while. We were going up a steep hill on the ‘Hog’s Back’ and she
missed the crash change into 1st gear. The four of us children
didn’t realize the danger as the car couldn’t make the restart and
the handbrake wouldn’t hold in reverse. My mother sat with her foot
hard down on the footbrake getting redder and redder while my
father hailed all the passing traffic until a kind trucker stopped
and towed us to the top.
Soon after that, I think it was 1953, my
father was lucky again and the garage in Truro rang to say there
was a new Standard Vanguard he could have if he wanted. OTL 816 was
our family car for around 12 years. Unlike modern cars its bench
seat and column change meant there was room for the whole family of
6.
Our big adventure was a drive to the South
of France in 1959. We stayed at Frejus a few months before the
terrible flood of 2 December; and got to Monte Carlo; but it was
‘Bust’ for us on the way home. Somewhere near Vichy, as we slowed
for a bend, we suddenly saw a caravan wheel rolling past us. As we
grasped what had happened there was a sickening crash and the
family was stuck. The next day was a French National holiday
(la quatorze juillet) and repair looked impossible but
somehow we were on the move again after a week. So we said
‘goodbye’ to Greensleeves Lamb and bought a Fairholme. The family
had several holidays on the South Coast. I remember we quite often
used to eat peaches in syrup with tinned cream from green plastic
dishes.
The Fairholme has been restored and lives in
17150 Charente Maritime with Mary who emigrated there. Sometimes I
sleep in it if she has other visitors when I go to stay.
About five years ago I got back into
caravanning. I now have a continental caravan with a door on the
offside. A 1983 model, its gross laden weight is 3472lbs and the
serial number is 830294.
This year I went to rallies at Little
Budworth and Metherington. I shall be helping to organize a rally
at Pixley End near Ledbury in September.
When my sister proof read this draft article for a caravan
magazine she noticed I had made some factual errors. She wrote a
list of the correct alpha and numeric characters she had needed to
substitute and converted the letters to numbers, using a grid. She
then had nine numbers that she labelled ABCDEFGHI. If there are
other errors we both missed I am afraid they are decoys. The
grid pattern dropped into: GC1WPPN BPJC Portbury Road Layby M5 J19,
which is my 'easy' entry for this competition. If you cannot find
that I'm afraid you will have to guess the pattern!
Rearrange these characters N 51 degrees CC.(A+B)(D-1)G W 003
degrees E.HIF to find the coordinates of stage 1. This is about 10
-15 miles from the final. You can use Geocheck to confirm you have
the correct coordinates.
There is no physical cache to find at this point, but you will
see two structures in line in an approximately south-westerly
direction, beyond a fence that you do not cross. The nearer one is
about 10 metres away. What is the word for this structure? Convert
the characters to numbers, as before, and label these
JKLMNOPQRS.
The final coordinates are N 51 degrees (P-O)L.(K+M)O(N-M) W 002
degrees RJ.(S+J)KQ – which should be an easy find.
I only knew about this competition one week before the
closing date so I hope you will bear with the clunky nature of my
entries. I acknowledge a debt to one or two other competitors whose
ideas I have adapted, I hope that, in the unusual conditions of
this competition - anything goes- they will not take
offence.