Templar's Firs Canal Ramble #1
This cache is situated on a stretch of restored of the Wilts & Berks Canal.
Over 200 years before it became a ‘Royal’ town, Wootton Bassett was firmly on the map of the planned Wilts & Berks Canal.
The first meeting took place in 1793 at the Town Hall in the High Street, and such was the importance of the market town that Wootton Bassett was in the centre of the canal map – and there was no sign of its smaller neighbour Swindon which was just a collection of houses. The map was changed a couple of times before the final route was settled from Semington in the west to Abingdon in the east, and Swindon finally got a mention.
The canal rose to its summit level just east of the town at Chaddington, and continued on the same level around what later became ‘Old Swindon’ and on to Stratton before descending through the locks of the Vale of the White Horse.
The Great Western Railway runs right next to the canal, half a mile south-east of the town centre. It was the railway that took traffic from the canal, and after it closed in 1914, the line of the canal gradually grew fainter. In 1940, the Air Ministry built 50 houses at Templar’s Firs ready for the new airfield at Lyneham, and the old canal was lost under their back gardens.
You are looking for a micro cache, slightly longer than a film canister.