Double-Barrelled Gun Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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A test-tube style micro-cache. You'll need to bring your own pen, a torch, and a sense of adventure! Take care in and around the bunkers and cliff edges, you could have a bad accident otherwise! Thanks to Casimer for volunteering to maintain this for us :-).
This location brings together two things Alderney is famous for - Nature, and Military history. The sea stacks just offshore are 'Les Etacs' AKA 'The Garden Rocks', home of 6000 breeding pairs of Northern Gannets. Between February and October the stacks are a hive of activity as the gannets nest and bring up their young. The stacks soon become white with Guano, and if the wind is in a certain direction you will smell them before you see them! The Gannets range all over the western and central English channel, travelling up to 340km a day in search of fish such as mackerel, sprats, pilchard, herring and sandeel which they catch by diving into the sea from as high up as 14metres. Bring a telescope or binoculars to see these majestic birds closer up. As they virtually never fly over land this is one of the best places in Britain to see them.
The large number of German bunkers in the area comprised the naval artillery battery 'Annes'. This was equipped with 4x 15cm (6") modern guns in steel turrets firing a 45kg (100lb) shell up to 22km (13miles). Battleships 'Scharnhorst' and 'Gneisenau' were equipped with identical guns. The four gun pits have ammunition storage below and hoists around the edge to bring the shells up to the surface. Each bunker had a personnel shelter for 27 men adjacent to it to protect the crew, 2 large bunkers stored reserve ammunition, and a generator bunker supplied electricity to the battery. Local defence was provided by 9x 20mm anti-aircraft guns, 5 mortars, 8 flamethrowers, 10x machine guns, 1x 3.7cm anti-tank gun, barbed wire entanglements and 3500+ landmines! The battery is the only surviving example of the three of it's type in the Channel Isles and is generally in good condition, the only major damage is the huge hole in the roof of the command post on the edge of the cliff 200m to the north caused by the removal of it's steel observation domes for scrap after the war.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur jnlcbvag vf qverpgyl bire gur pnpur, ubjrire gur pnpur vf va gur ohaxre orybj!