Effectively a very short multi which will show you this historic place. It should take less than ten minutes to reach the final cache from starting to play the cartrige.
Why choose a wherigo?:
- They are one of the least common cache types, so it will help to very easily get your numbers up
- Our biggest gripe with multis is that you often have to do fairly complicated (and open to wide interpretation) calculations to hopefully find GZ. With a wherigo, you immediately know if you have got the answer right
There is more information on wherigos, along with information on how to download the cartridge, at the bottom of this page.
The cache has room for small swaps and trackables. Please bring a pen to sign the log.
Construction on Mearnskirk Hospital began in the 1920s. Over the years it had a number of roles (Children's TB Hospital, Emergency Medical Services Hospital [during WW2], Naval Auxiliary Hospital, Polio unit and then Cardiothoracic service). Many stars of film and theatre came to Mearnskirk to entertain the patients amongst whom were Judy Garland, Roy Rogers, Danny Kaye, Terry Thomas, Eddie Calvert, Ann Shelton and Dorothy Lamour. With changing healthcare a decision was made to sell most of the land for development in the 1990s. Three buildings were maintained in the grounds. Your starting point is the nurses' home which has been converted into flats. Above is a picture of it (we presume) from the 1930s.
The Nursery (middle of the map above) is where all the Swoddler children attended many moons ago. Mrs ST insists that it was either the operating theatres or mortuary for the hospital (obviously local gossip) but more likely this was an administration building. We have placed the relevant zone across the road and there is no need to come close to the bulding. However, if you are visiting outside nursery hours it is well worth crossing the road. To the right of the front door is one of the beautiful plates that used to be attached to the plinth at the base of the Peter Pan statue. Peter Pan is part of the history of the hospital. The statue was originally erected in memory of Dr Wilson, the first superintendent of the hospital. Possibly Peter Pan, simply because it was a children's hospital. However, it's also believed that Dr Dale (a colleague of Dr Wilson) was the son in law of one of JM Barrie's childhood friends. The statue itself was sat in front of Mearnskirk House until that was demolished. You may have visited our previous multis that made you visit it. We hope it is in storage and will make a reappearance some day.
Now predominantly residential homes, the builders won awards for making the new builds so sympathetic to the original hospital buldings.
This cache is a Wherigo which is a particular kind of cache that requires separate software downloaded onto your smartphone. It may also be played on certain Garmin GPS devices, but we have never tried it and suspect it may not play all aspects of a modern Wherigo. Our own experiences are with Android phones and the WhereYouGo app. This integrates very nicely with c:geo to make for a very straightforward experience. We understand that the apple app for wherigos has also recently been fixed/updated. Click on the image below to download the cartridge:
