Brock Traditional Cache
geoartcache: Cache gone missing - needs archiving.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Printmaker, Hester Cox has created a series of geo art caches that take the seeker on a journey through Hackfall Wood with each cache illustrating a story of one of the many creatures that live there and leaving the visitor with a book of impressions from their day.
Brock is the folk name for the badger and it is still a name widely used by people living in the countryside today. It is an ancient word that dates from pre Roman times.
Lots of folklore surrounds badgers. For many years it was believed that their legs were shorter on one side than the other because they spent so much time on hills. Throughout history, seeing a badger was thought to be a sign of good or bad fortune. If a badger crossed the path that you had just walked along (i.e. behind you) this would mean that you would have good luck but if the badger was to cross the path in front of you and then stop and scrape at the ground, you would soon be choosing a coffin! Badgers were also believed to help ward off witches. The advice was to take some badger hair and put it in a bag made from the skin of a black cat(!) then tie it around your neck seven days after a new moon when Jupiter is in mid-heaven and you will be protected from witches.
Hackfall:
There are a number of badger setts in Hackfall woods. Badgers like to live underground together and they build tunnels and chambers called setts. These have sleeping areas, toilets and several entrances. The young badgers inherit their setts from their parents and they will rebuild sections and improve them so that some badger setts in Britain are actually over one hundred years old. Badgers are nocturnal and will eat several hundred earthworms in a night. They are omnivorous so besides earthworms they will eat beetles, small birds and animals, seeds, nuts, fungi, berries and honey.
This geocache is part of a series of caches hidden in Hackfall as part of North Yorkshire Open Studios - http://www.nyos.org.uk
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Jurer n gerr unf snyyra npebff gur cngu naq gur zbff-pbirerq jnyy vf gb lbhe yrsg. Ybbx oruvaq gur jnyy arkg gb gur flpnzber gerr.