Cumbernauld House sits on the site where Cumbernauld Castle once stood. The castle played host to the royalty of Scotland, including Mary, Queen of Scots. While she was staying there in 1561 she planted a sweet chestnut tree, and it's still here and going strong more than 450 years later. In 2014 it was shortlisted for Scottish Tree of the Year, organised by The Woodland Trust Scotland.
Sadly, when she returned the following year, the whole great hall of the castle collapsed while she was there on 26 January 1562, and 7 or 8 men were killed. Most of the queen's party were out hunting. Mary was not hurt and visited the relatives of those who were injured or killed in the village below.
The published co-ordinates take you to Queen Mary's Tree. It's not signed or noted in any other way, so we thought it deserved some recognition by having its own cache. And so that it gets more visitors, you're going to have to team up with fellow cachers to form a Geo-Mob! Here's how it works:
- Go to the published co-ordinates and admire the tree.
- Open https://www.geotrailsw.com/mob/ on your smart phone. See below for how to check (in advance) that it will work on your phone.
- Verify that the accuracy displayed is reasonable (hopefully less than 30 metres or so).
- "Which mob are you attending?" When prompted with this question, enter the number 3591.
- This will open a screen that will navigate you to the "geo-mob" coordinates if you're not already there.
- Once the website verifies you are at the location, the counter bumps up.
- Get your friends to do the same and meet you at this location. There needs to be at least 3 of you there.
- Once you're all there and have all gone to the website, the counter will reach 3 and the co-ordinates of the cache will be revealed.
- Then you need to go to those co-ordinates, find the cache, and sign the log.
Here's how to check that it will work on your phone. You can do this at home so that you can head to the published coordinates in confidence.
iPhones:
- Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Make sure that Location Services is on.
- Scroll down to find Safari and tap it. Select the option "While Using the App".
- Close and restart Safari.
- Go to https://www.geotrailsw.com/mob/ on your phone.
- In the "Verify your phone is compatible" section, "Current location" should show your current location. If it shows "N 0 00.000, E 0 00.000" then something is wrong. Redo the above steps.
Android:
- Chrome will not work for this and so you'll need to use a different browser. We've checked it works with Firefox, Opera and the Samsung browser that comes pre-installed on Samsung phones.
- Go to Settings > Apps and scroll down to find the browser you want to use. Tap on it.
- Select Permissions. Enable Location.
- Close and restart your browser.
- Go to https://www.geotrailsw.com/mob/. If asked if you want to share your location with www.geoswtrail.com, say that you do.
- In the "Verify your phone is compatible" section, "Current location" should show your current location. If it shows "N 0 00.000, E 0 00.000" then something is wrong. Redo the above steps.
If you still can't get it to work, let me know and I;ll do my best to help.
Please preserve the spirit of this Geo-Mob by not disclosing the coordinates of the Final location to those who do not meet as a group as intended. Thanks.
BYOP. Good luck!