Village signs is a series of caches based on the ornate signs that depict the heritage, history and culture of the villages that put them up (normally on the village green!). This cache is a short offset multicache, there is no container at the headline coordinates but you will need to visit to find the necessary information to find the cache. There is a small parking fee of 30p for 30 minutes or £1.10 for 9 hours!

Widecombe-in-the-moor

 The village of Widecombe lies within the beautiful valley of the East Webburn river. Its name is thought to derive from 'Withy-combe' which means Willow Valley. The village is world-famous for its fair, held annually in September, which gave rise to the well-known folk song 'Widecombe Fair' and the characters of Uncle Tom Cobley and All. The first verse of which is as follows :-

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare,
All along, down along, out along, lee,
For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy,
Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

The full poem describes the adventures of Tom Cobley and the fate of the poor borrowed grey mare. As you can see from the sign the grey mare and her riders take centre stage in the village featuring atop the Village Sign on the green. Please take time to also visit the church and find out more about the story.

  The original sign is pictured above, it originally sat opposite the current sign. It was the first village sign to be erected in Devon however during the WWII under threat of invasion the government decreed that all village signs, signposts and milestones were removed. This included Widecombe’s village sign which unfortunately whilst being dismantled was dropped and damaged beyond repair. After the war it was decided that a new village sign should be erected and the sign you see today was designed by Lady Sylvia Sayer and erected in it's current position.

Please note the Attributes and do not attempt this cache at night.

 On the village sign there is a plaque. The sign was presented to the parish by a local esquire, the number of letters in his first name gives you A

Also on this plaque look for the number if letter Gs, this will give you B

There is a distinctive bench nearby, the number of Es on the bench will give you C

Nearby there is a distinctive red phone box, the last number of the phone number gives you D

Opposite the sign there is a road sign. The road number will give you #EEFG

Now pop those numbers into this formula to find out the final coordinates of the geocache.

N50 34. (F-E)AB w003 48.CD(G-E)

You may find parking nearer to GZ but you can make a nice circular walk if walking from the village.

If anybody would like to expand this series please do. I would just ask that you let Smokeypugs know first so they can keep track of the Village Sign numbers and names to avoid duplication.