Spike Island: The Cat & The Mastiff Traditional Cache
Royal Oak: As the owner has not responded to my previous log requesting that they check this cache I am archiving it.
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Spike Island: The Cat & The Mastiff
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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BYOP, the cache is easily accessible, close to the bus stop and on road parking is available locally.
This a busy area of Tebay so stealth is advisable.
It's smaller than a film canister containing a log to sign and please return as found.
There isn't enough room for trackables or trading items. (FTF will find a small metal fish charm.)
The Tebay Witch
There once lived a Mary Baynes, who lived locally it is said she was not a good-looking woman and it wasn't long before she was known as “The Tebay Witch”. Was Mary a witch or was it just superstition, and where is she buried?
Neil Sissions of the Cross Keys Inn had a mastiff which worried and killed Mary's cat. Mary decided to bury the cat in her garden and had a grave dug for it. Mary handed an open book and pointed to something that Neil Sissons was to read, but he did not think it worth while to read anything over the cat so took it by the leg and said:
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
Here's a hole and in thou must."
Mary grew angry and warned him he would fare no better than his levity. Soon afterwards he was ploughing his field when the plough suddenly bound up, the handle struck one of his eyes causing blindness and Mary was credited with having bewitched his plough."
Mary was a farmer's daughter, born on an isolated farm on the fellside near Tebay in 1721. She was a spinster and stayed at home to look after her parents. When they died she was forced to take a cottage in Tebay (now Old Tebay). She had grown more and more eccentric as she had grown older and the villagers treated her with fear and hatred and if children teased Mary she would threaten them. Mary became the terror of Tebay and anything strange that happened was thought to be her fault and some believed she had magic powers to help her in her malicious deeds.
Mary did not like cruelty to animals and when the fox hunt was in Tebay one day she was said to have turned herself into a hare to lead the hunt down into Tebay Gorge. When she reached Carlingill she then ran up the fell above Low Carlingill. The hounds followed her but they couldn't keep up with her and they returned to Tebay completely exhausted. Of course by this time the hare had turned back into Mary.
She died in 1811 at the age of 90 and is reputed to have prophesied that ‘fiery, horseless carriages’ would speed over the nearby Loups Fell. She was not to see this but her predictions about the ‘fiery, horseless carriages’, came true when the London & Glasgow Railway came to Tebay 50 years later.
Witches Stones
Westmorland folk were superstitious and took precautions to keep witches away from their homes. Various houses in Tebay are noted for their witches or Fairy Stones. They were not originally for ornamentation as they were believed to keep spiritual invaders, and in particular witches, at bay. They believed these stones were lucky especially, if they had a hole through them.
This form part of a series of caches being placed out around the village & parish that can be done individually or combined for a walk around the village.
+++ Congratulations to slateman as FTF +++
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gurer vf ab arrq gb tb bagb cevingr ynaq.
Treasures
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