To mark the 1951 Festival of Britain, Bedfordshire County Council decided that each town and village in the county should have a new name sign created, its design to include the county’s coat of arms (itself designed in honour of the Festival) and the emblem of the Festival of Britain.
Over 70 years later, many of these signs still exist and this series of caches has been created in celebration of their continued existence. A cache exists for each of the nine ancient Hundreds of Bedfordshire (a convenient way of dividing the county, even though the Hundred divisions were no longer in use in 1951), and there is an additional cache which provides a trickier puzzle.
A bookmark list showing all 10 caches can be found here.
This cache is the trickier puzzle. Each of the signs below is from a location within one of Hundreds of Bedfordshire, as is the location for the final cache which is in the vicinity of Kempston Rural (the sign for which can be seen below).
The puzzle for each cache consists of a number of photos, in which a Festival of Britain sign (with the location name blank) is shown. In order to solve the puzzle, you must work out the name on each of the signs, using clues shown elsewhere in the photo. Maps, a search engine and Google Street View (or similar) are likely to be useful and you may well need to enlarge the photos.
The cache can be found at N52 (e-a-b)a.ce(b+e) W000 d(e-c).b(b+e)c where a, b, c, d and e are created from the names on the signs, as below, translating the letters in the names into numbers using A=1, B=2, …, Z=26.
The cache location is a spot which may be interesting to cachers for other reasons, offers the opportunity for nice views neaby, has parking close at hand and the chance for a bit of "Cache In Trash Out" activity.
a = 4th letter of name on sign in Photo 1
b = 5th letter of name on sign in Photo 2
c = 3rd letter of name on sign in Photo 3
d = 2nd letter of name on sign in Photo 4
e = 4th letter of name on sign in Photo 5
Photo 1:
Photo 2:
Photo 3:
Photo 4:
Photo 5: