The Flitwick Bug
The Flitwick Bug has been created to mark DJ:CD reaching 800 finds. The bug has been many months in the making but it is finally here!
The whole bug will consist of 185 mystery caches once they have all been published; of varying difficulty, but of fairly low terrain - as explained further below.
Since I started caching I have struggled to find many local series that I have been able to do with my children. You will notice that every cache in this series has the "Pushchair" attribute. There may be a requirement for children to leave the buggy in order to retrieve the cache, however be assured that every cache has been put in place by my 2 year-old daughter. If you find yourself swimming down a stream or climbing telegraph poles, then you've probably gone wrong somewhere!
In order to set 185 caches in our local area it may be possible that the distance between the co-ordinates for the puzzle and the actual cache is slightly greater than most cachers prefer. Once you have solved all the puzzles it will make your planning a lot easier.
Every puzzle has been set to be solved and every cache has been placed to be found. It is possible to solve & find each puzzle on its own - none of the puzzles rely on another being solved or found.
Please contact me via my profile if you require any assistance or feedback.
Most importantly, enjoy yourself!
Famous Wimbledon Residents
This cache has been set to celebrate Wimbledon’s most famous residents. If you are unsure who I am referring to, then have a look at the image at the bottom of this page!
The Wombles are “fictional” (this is still debated) pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appeared in a series of children's novels from 1968. They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.
The characters gained a higher national profile in the UK in the mid-1970s as a result of a BBC commissioned children's television show which used stop motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became hits in the British music charts. The Wombles pop group was the idea of British singer and composer Mike Batt.
The Womble motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". This environmentally friendly message was a reflection of the growing environmental movement of the 1970s.
Background
In 1968, Elisabeth Beresford took her young children for a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common, where her daughter Kate mispronounced it as "Wombledon Common", sparking the idea of the Wombles in her mother's mind. On getting home, Beresford wrote down the idea and started developing the characters and storylines. She developed most of her Womble characters around members of her family, and named them after places the family had associations with.
Physical characteristics
Wombles are essentially burrowing animals. They have retractable claws (like cats), but as they mostly live in long-established burrows, they rarely use these even for digging. Their size and physical appearance has changed somewhat over the years: in the original editions of the books, Wombles are pictured as bear-like and between 4 and 5 feet (about 1.5 metres) in height, making them only slightly smaller than adult humans. This changed with the TV series where they were portrayed as being about knee-high to humans, with pointy snouts like those of raccoons. In the book and movie Wombling Free they are described as "short, fat, and furry", roughly between three or four feet (about 1 metre) in height.
Wombles are herbivores and are very fond of mushrooms. They eat a variety of plants, fungi, and tree products that human beings cannot (or will not) eat, so daisy buns, acorn juice, fir-cone soufflé, elm bark casserole and grassbread sandwiches are part of the Womble menu - augmented by any food left behind on the Common by human beings. All Wombles are strong swimmers and can even survive for long periods in ice-cold water. Several sub-species of Womble are revealed throughout the books: the Loch Ness Monster is actually part of a clan of water Wombles and the yeti of the Himalayas are giant snow-white Wombles. Wombles have a sixth sense which allows them to sense green spaces and wildlife; this is first mentioned in the Wandering Wombles but developed to a keen long range telepathic sense by Dalai Gartok Womble in The Wombles Go Round The World.
Wombles are extremely long-lived. For example, in The Wombles Great Uncle Bulgaria recalls being "a young Womble" at the time of Queen Victoria's coronation in 1837 suggesting that he is somewhat - but not very much - older than 140. However the song Minuetto Allegretto begins with the words "Back in 1780 when Bulgaria was a Lad", indicating that he is at least 200. (However, as this was written by Mike Batt and not by Beresford it could be considered less canonical.) Other sources indicate the life expectancy of a Womble is over 200 years, with some reaching 300. In the feature-length special World Wide Womble Day Great Uncle Bulgaria's 300th birthday is celebrated - again probably not canonical, as the novels frequently feature Great Uncle Bulgaria complaining that he will never understand humans even if he lives to be three hundred, implying that this age is not common amongst Wombles.
The Cache
The cache is not at the published co-ordinates but can be found at:
N51 59.(D-A)CB W000 27.(B+E)(F-E)D
Where A-F can be found using the image below:
