Bernard’s Stroll 1 – Mill Way Traditional Cache
Bernard’s Stroll 1 – Mill Way
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This is the first in a nineteen cache series dedicated to our great friend and near neighbour Bernard Glovell-Raff who has lived in the area for well over 60 years and walks part of this route nearly every day. He has seen the area change over the decades and always has a story to tell when we accompany him. The route is a rough figure of eight and should take 2 hours or so to complete.
Bernard Says:
“If you have walked up from the bottom of Mill Way, you will have noticed that around a third of the way up the street, the houses change from an L-shaped footprint to a rectangular one and the designs and building styles are completely different. The first of the new styles on each side are numbers 85 and 82. This wasn’t an architectural whim but down to the fact that the L-shaped houses were built back in 1938/39 but before the road could be completed, war intervened and the rest of the houses went unbuilt. The same happened at the top end of Mill Way too. By the time the builders came back well after the war had ended, people’s requirements had changed which is why the newer houses are narrower to allow enough room for an own drive and garage on the same size plot.”
“In the late 1930s, just before my 20th birthday, my family were looking to move from central Watford and through my father’s work on the council, we found out that the Mill Way houses were struggling to shift because of the halt in building works and we were able to rent the property for a pound a week. My mother was still living there, paying the same rent, up until her death in 1990. It was strange to live on a road that wasn’t completely finished for so long and when the workmen finally returned to build, not only the rest of the road but most of North Bushey, it was a very noisy and messy time for us all.”
I would like to have placed a cache close to one of the houses which show the change between designs but the street is quiet and overlooked, so have placed it further up the road in an alleyway. Please replace exactly as found for others to enjoy. Best not to try to look for this around 9 am or 3.15 pm on a school day as the alleyway has a constant stream of children and parents.
To get to the next cache in the series:
Now either come out at the top of the alley and turn left up Mead Way and left again onto Bushey Mill Lane or double back on yourself and turn right onto Mill Way to the top.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Zntargvp Oruvaq
Treasures
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