UKRDOUG Castle Tours - Kankiv Fortress Traditional Cache
UKRDOUG: Cache is inaccessible due to private land issues. I will find new location.
UKRDOUG Castle Tours - Kankiv Fortress
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Kankiv Fortress in Vynogradov
Some have asked why we hid the cache where we did. First, someone already hid a cache at the castle. So we had to choose a location at least 150 meters from the castle. So we decided to bring the cacher to see the monastery and tomb to St. John of Capistrano. But even those two sites were too close, so we had to go even a little farther beyond. This was the closest we could get to the castle.
Directions to Cache. From the parking lot walk up to the castle entrance. Continue on the road to the Tomb of St. John of Capistrano. Just past his tomb turn left and walk alongside the monastery ruins to the ancient stairs (see waypoint). You will walk briefly through a private vineyard so hug the monastery wall as close as possible. Walk down the stairs and immediately turn left and search along the wall for the cache.
The castle on Chorna Hora (Black Mountain) was built over the ancient settlement of the Stanovo Culture (14th – 12th Century B.C.) When the Magyars, the predecessors to the Hungarian nation, first arrived in the Tisa and Danube River basin in the 9th Century AD they recorded a fort on this spot by the local Slavic chieftain. Eventually the Hungarian Arpad Dynasty gained control of the land and left it in the hands of the feudal lords.
In the early 14th Century a struggle for the Hungarian crown resulted in much damage to the castle as it sided against the eventual winner Charles Robert (Charles I of Hungary).
After securing the crown of Hungary, Charles I restored the castle and gave it as a gift to his wife Maria who died shortly after in 1315. The castle eventually became in the possession of the influential Pereni family in the 15th century who would keep control for the next four centuries. The fortress defended the strategic Salt Road.
The Pereni family built a royal palace nearby and invited the Franciscan Order to turn the fortress into a monastery where the castle derived its name. The outer woolen clothing of the monks was called “canco”.
St. John of Capistrano, the namesake of the California and Texas towns San Juan Capistrano, is buried in the ruins of the monastery next to the castle. St. John, the patron saint of jurists, was called the Soldier Saint after leading a crusade in 1456 against the Ottoman Empire at the Siege of Belgrade at the age of 70. This battle is another of the great battles that saved Europe from Islam. The Ottomans had just taken Constantinople (Istanbul) and were now moving to take Hungary before they were stopped at Belgrade.
As the Reformation Movement was spreading through the region it claimed as one of its important converts F. Pereni who forced the monks out of the castle in 1556 and turned it into a knight’s stronghold. The monks left after placing a formal curse on the fortress. The fortress was shortly afterwards destroyed by Austrian Emperor Ferdinand when Pereni joined the other Transylvanian lords in their failed rebellion against the Habsburg Empire.
The cache is hidden east of the church ruins. There is another cache hidden in the Northern Tower of the Fortress (GC2H9MD) and another nearby at the Pereni palace (GC2QWFX).
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Whfg orybj zvqqyr ebpx va Fcbvyre Cvpgher 2
Treasures
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