Bernard’s Stroll 5 – Cycle Track Traditional Cache
Hanoosh: As the owner has not responded to my previous log requesting that they check this cache I am archiving it.
Regards
Brenda
Hanoosh - Volunteer UK Reviewer www.geocaching.com
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Bernard’s Stroll 5 – Cycle Track
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is the fifth 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:
“You may well be wondering what this paved road is and were thinking that it was an old slip road for the A41. You’d be wrong. When I first moved to the area, the nearby A41 (or Watford By-Pass as we called it then) was newly opened and rarely used compared to today’s traffic volumes. Despite this, the forward thinking road builders decided to add a cycle track on each side of the new road. This wasn’t a narrow strip of green tarmac but something that looked to all intents and purposes to be a road in its own right.”
“The original cycle track here used to follow the line of the Watford By-Pass all the way and crossed over Berry Grove Lane (which then formed a diagonal junction with the Watford By-Pass) without meandering. In the late 1950s, the M1 was built and it terminated here, so a roundabout was added and the cycle track realigned to follow the curve. Seven years later they extended the M1 southwards and the much larger roundabout that you see today was put in place, cutting off Berrygrove Lane altogether and causing another realignment of the cycle track that is still in place.”
“I used to cycle a lot when I was young and the width of this track was much appreciated at a time when very few people had cars and most of us went around on bicycles. This was especially true at the ‘rush hour’ in the morning and evening when employees at the huge local print works and surrounding industry near what is now called the Dome Roundabout would be rushing three or four abreast to work. The cycle track on the north side of the A41 was built over when the road was widened but the south side one is still in place for most of the way down to Stanmore.”
You are looking for a camouflaged clip and lock box a couple of metres off the path. There is tree cover here, so cache co-ordinates may be slightly out.
To get to the next cache in the series:
Now continue down the cycle track, cross the single track road (it looks disused but the odd car can surprise you so be careful) and then up the other side to join the track beside the A41.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre n ubevmbagny jbbqra srapr cbfg.
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