Brow Well Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This is a simple cache which can be done as a drive by. It is situated close to Brow Well which is one of the many places in these parts to be associated with Robert Burns. However, it appears that if anything Brow Well hastened Burns' death, rather than curing him.
There is parking by the well itself, or in a newly constructed layby
The cache is a small magnetic tube.
Robert Burns worked in Annan as an Exciseman towards the end of his life and above the Cafe Royal in Annan there is a plaque to commemorate the writing of 'The Deil's Awa Wi' The Excise Man'. However Burns’ health became poorer and in April of 1796 he was unable to continue with his Excise duties. His wife Jean was pregnant again and Jessy Lewars, the sister of an Excise colleague, came to help in the house. His friend Dr Maxwell mistakenly diagnosed his illness as "flying gout" and prescribed sea bathing as a cure. On 3rd July, barely able to stand, Burns went to Brow Well, a hamlet on the shores of the Solway, nine miles to the south east of Dumfries, which had a reputation as a spa.
Each day he waded out shoulder deep into the cold sea water. This can only have made his physical condition worse. As his salary had been reduced because he could not work, he became obsessed with the fear of poverty and when a solicitor sent him a letter for non payment of a tailor’s account for his Volunteers uniform, a terror of dying in a debtor’s prison gripped him. In his depressed state he wrote to George Thomson for money:
"A cruel scoundrel of a Haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying has commenced a process and will infallibly put me into jail ... Do for God’s sake send me £5." He realised death was close and wrote to his wife’s father asking him to send Mrs Armour to Dumfries.
During the following week the Solway tides were not suitable for bathing so on 18th July he returned to Dumfries. As he got out of the cart at the foot of Mill Street "he seemed unable to stand upright ... those who saw him then expected never to see him in life again." To keep the house quiet his sons were sent to stay with a colleague. On the morning of Thursday 21st July he became delirious. His children were brought to see him for a last time and shortly afterwards he lapsed into unconsciousness and died. He was 37 years old.
If Brow Well had cured Burns, then it may have developed as a spa town, although I can't imagine a Bath, Buxton or Harrogate ever being built on the Solway!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ybbx orybj gur ynfg erfbeg.
Treasures
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