“So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” is a comedy science fiction book written by Douglas Adams and released in 1984. It is the fourth book in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 'trilogy'.
In an earlier book in the series, protagonist Arthur Dent spent some time living in a cave on prehistoric Earth. In the present day, he searches for the exact spot where the cave was, and discovers that it’s now a flat in Islington where his love interest Fenchurch, who knows the secret to how the world could be made a good and happy place, resides.
Fenchurch’s home is described as follows:
“Just after six he returned to Fenchurch's house in the alleyway, clutching a bottle of champagne. “Hold this,” she said, shoved a stout rope in his hand and disappeared inside through the large white wooden doors from which dangled a fat padlock off a black iron bar. The house was a small converted stable in a light industrial alleyway behind the derelict Royal Agricultural Hall of Islington. As well as its large stable doors it also had a normal-looking front door of smartly glazed panelled wood with a black dolphin door knocker. The one odd thing about this door was its doorstep, which was nine feet high, since the door was set into the upper of the two floors and presumably had been originally used to haul in hay for hungry horses.”
The derelict Royal Agricultural Hall of Islington is now the Business Design Centre, hence the location of this cache. I couldn’t find a building with a door in the upper floor (this detail is important, because Arthur later walks out of the door and begins to fly). Maybe Adams made that detail up, or there used to be one that has since been redeveloped.
Other relevant London locations:
- Fenchurch is named after Fenchurch Station (her parents claim it was because she was conceived while they were waiting in the ticket queue).
- Douglas Adams himself moved to Islington in 1981, so would have been living there when he wrote the novel.
- Douglas Adams is buried in Highgate Cemetery; fans leave pens on his grave.
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The cache is not at the published coords. To get the final coords, solve this puzzle.
If you have read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series you will know there is a particularly meaningful two digit number, let this be AB and use it in these calculations.
N 51° 32.(B-1)(A+B)(A+B+1)
W 0° 06.(A)(A-2B)(A-2B)
(You can also just follow the description in the text above, go there and guess where the cache might be. But it will be easier if you have the exact coords).
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This cache is part of my ‘Fictional London’ series – check this list to see them all (more to come).