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Me Old Fossil Traditional Cache

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Tiggerwilde: Location has significantly changed and cache is no longer there

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Hidden : 8/7/2010
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:



Cache is in a lovely location down by Kilve beach. Its a small click lock container; room for swaps and TB's. Be sure to go fossil hunting on the beach and if you dont find more than 10 it would be surprising!! Afterwards be sure to have a snack in the chantry tea gardens (the snack and ice creams are lush!) and a look round the 14th Century church.



Kilve is a village in West Somerset, England, within the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the first AONB to be established, in 1957.
It lies on the A39 almost exactly equidistant from Bridgwater to the east and Minehead to the west. The village includes a 17th-century coaching inn and a post office and stores.
At the far end of the road to Kilve beach is a car park and the remains of a red brick retort, built in 1924, when it was discovered that the shale found in the cliffs was rich in oil. Along this coast the cliffs are layered with compressed strata of oil-bearing shale and blue, yellow and brown lias embedded with fossils. In 1924 Dr Forbes-Leslie founded the Shaline Company to exploit them. This retort house is thought to be the first structure erected here for the conversion of shale to oil but the company was unable to raise sufficient capital and this is now all that remains of the anticipated Somerset oil boom.
The village actually consists of three settlements. One of these is up Pardlestone Lane, which meanders steeply southwards through mossy cottages, and a few more modern bungalows nestle into the hillside. Berta Lawrence, in her book Quantock Country, suggests that the name Pardlestone derives from the old alternative 'Parleston', where a tiny settlement here belonged to a Saxon called Parlo. "But," she writes, "there are local inhabitants who tell of a mythical Frenchman called Pardel and an equally mythical Pardel's Stone stuck somewhere up this lane."
A further settlement lies along the ridge to the east of the village, with a steep and narrow lane running down to join Sea Lane at Meadow House, which was once the Rectory. From half way down this lane there is a panoramic view of the coastline as far as North Hill in Minehead and across the channel to South Wales and the Brecon Beacons. In the foreground lie the Church of St Mary, the ruins of a medieval chantry and one old barn still standing, though dilapidated, with traditional round stone pillars. Alongside the chantry are two houses and a tea-garden. Lane End was built in traditional cob construction by the distinguished Arts and Crafts architect Norman Jewson as a summer house for himself.
A path leads down from the chantry through fields now used as a car-park to the beach which William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet, who lived for a brief period with his sister Dorothy at Alfoxton House, described as "Kilve's delightful shore". The beach is on the West Somerset Coast Path.
Kilve Pill, where the stream from Holford runs into the sea, was once a tiny port, used for importing culm, an inferior type of coal which was used in the limeburning process. It was also the site for "glatting" which was the hunting of conger eels by dogs. On the shore a Saint Keyne serpent can be seen, which a local legend says is a snake turned to stone, but is in reality an ammonite.
It is just possible to make out the remains of a stone jetty and the ruins of a lime kiln nearby. Here the limestone was burnt to provide farmers with the lime to spread on their fields. The limestone carrier Laurina was wrecked at Kilve in 1876. The Pill was long associated with smuggling and legend has it that barrels of spirits hidden in the chantry were deliberately set fire to as the revenue men appeared on the scene. Legend also has it that the smugglers' ponies were taught to respond to the commands "whoa" and "gee up" in the reverse sense of the words.
Along the whole length of the stream from Holford to the shore at Kilve there were a number of working mills. Farmers appear to have used water-power in the same way as modern ones use the power from engines. The old mill in the village, now a private house, still retains its overshot wheel, but the others have long since vanished.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Hc ba gur zbhaq, zvqqyr bs VPG

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)