One of a short series of traditional caches
loosely themed on "The Planets Suite" by Gustav Holst. If you're
fed up with Multis, Micros and Puzzle caches then these are for
you. There's no trickery, treachery, questions or puzzles....
Boring!!!
This cache, like Uranus, is set on the perimeter of a golf
course. In this case it's the course at Mentmore Towers, home of
the Rothschild family. So... What do 'winged messengers' have to do
with Mentmore and the Rothschilds, I can hear you ask. Actually, I
can't but I'll bet you are... so I'll tell you....
Once upon a time there was a gentleman named Mayer Amschel
Rothschild, the 'founder' of the dynasty. He had five sons, one of
them being Nathan. In 1798, at the age of 21, Nathan Mayer
Rothschild left the home of his father to set up in England, at
first in Manchester, where he established himself as a textile and
general merchant with a reputation for aggressive selling and
competitive pricing.
In 1809 Nathan shifted his base to the City of London. He took
premises at New Court in St Swithin's Lane - to this day the home
of the bank which bears his name. Here he developed banking
activities, dealing in bills of exchange and arranging foreign
loans. His 'best business' came in 1814 when he and his brothers
were commissioned by the British government to raise the funding to
help Britain and her allies defeat Napoleon.
In 1815, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, a carrier pigeon
brought news of this victory to Nathan Rothschild in London, fifty
hours before the British government knew about it. This was enough
time for him to buy a huge number of 'public options', very cheaply
because of the war and to make one of the biggest financial
killings of the nineteenth century.
So there you have it.... If it hadn't have been for a 'winged
messenger', in this case a carrier pigeon, the Rothschild family
might now be living on a council estate in Bradford.
On to the cache... Be prepared for a bit of a walk on this one,
it's about a mile each way. The cache is a .50 calibre ammunition
can hidden just off the public bridleway that skirts around the
golf course. There's room to park off road by the start of the
bridleway at
N51° 51.650' W000° 40.880'. You'll pass
a notice board, half hidden in the hedge, at
N51° 51.352' W000° 41.467'. As you
stare at it, I'll bet you can't help noticing that the word
'DANGER' occurs X times in the
text, that the letter 'O' occurs Y times in the text and the letter 'E' occurs
Z times in the text. Strange,
the things people notice.....
Please don't leave sharp, pointy things
or items of food or drink in this cache.
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