Chester has been out
on many cache hunts with us and has rather got to enjoy this
pastime, so much so that he now recognises our GPSr and gets
excited on seeing it. Recently he has been asking if we could help
him create some caches of his own, so of course we agreed as he is
not too good at this internet thingy (and if the truth be known he
is only really any good at three things, walkeeees, spotting
squirrels and burying bones, but don't tell him I told you that).
He said that he would like them to be located in some of his
favourite types of places that his doggie friends would like and
suggested that one in each of the Oxford City Parks would be a good
place. Foolishly we agreed to this before checking out how many
parks Oxford actually has, and to our surprise their is eighteen of
them. I hope you all enjoy this series of eighteen caches, and do
post some picies for Chester, especially if you have one of his
canine friends with you.
Bury Knowle Park
It was developed as a
beautiful park after the City Council purchased Bury Knowle House
and its extensive grounds in 1930 from Henry Beaufoy the owner of
Henry Beaufoy & Co Vinegar Manufacturers of Lambeth. The house
was originally built in about 1800 for Sir Joseph Lock a well known
Oxford Goldsmith and Banker who was Lord Mayor of Oxford in 1813
and 1829. Bury Knowle House has been home to the Bury Knowle (now
Headington) Library since 1834.
The house and gardens were set out in the early part of the
nineteenth century and some of the original features still remain
today. Since its initial acquisition the park has developed further
with the introduction of a children's play area, tennis courts,
crazy golf, and a sensory garden for the visually impaired.
In recent years conservation projects have been undertaken as part
of the Forest of Oxford project (a city wide initiative to create
wildlife habitats). Under this scheme trees were planted in the
park by school children following donations from Comtel, Boots, The
Oxford Preservation Trust and other local businesses.
A nice well kept park
but with plenty of space to run about in and play fetch.
At the starting point
you will find a suitable and free place to park at the given
co-ords. This is only a small car park and I would imagine that it
fills up on nice days and weekends.
From here head off at a
bearing of 100° for 255ft (78m) to The Wheel of Hope
This art sculpture symbolises hope and peace for the future and
was made by eleven local schools involving over 3000 school
children. It symbolizes hope and peace for the future.
You should at the centre of this sculpture which consists of a
number of plaques on the ground in a circle.
One of them depicts AB people holding
hands on a globe.
Another depicts C pairs of
feet.
And another depicts DE
buildings.
Now head to The
Storybook tree on a bearing of 200° for 140ft (43m)
The trunk of a dead cedar tree in Bury Knowle Park has been turned
into a sculpture featuring characters from the books of the
Headington authors J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: the dragon
Smaug from The Hobbit, Aslan the lion from The Chronicles of
Narnia, and the horse from The Horse and His Boy.
Count the number of heads on this feature, this will give you
F
Now head of on a bearing
of 95° for 535ft (163m) to a Plaque on a wooden post
This Plaque is dedicating a tree to Alfred Hugh Munday. If you add
all the numbers together on this plaque you will get
GH.
And finaly head on a
bearing of 330° for 795ft (242m) to the Sensory Garden
The sensory garden for the visually impaired will make a nice
peaceful place to take a rest and work out the final co-ords.
The sensory garden has a water feature with
J rocks and a millstone as its centre
piece.
Now using the info you
have obtained during your walk around this gem of a park,
substitute the letters in the formula below to obtain the co-ords
for the cache.
N51° 4
(E+F) . (B+C) (J-E) (G+H)' W001° 1 (A+D) . (D+G) (C-F)
(E-H)'
Now go find that
cache!
This cache is not an
ordinary cache, it is a Letterbox Hybrid. Letterboxing
is a hobby very similar to Geocaching with its origins on Dartmoor
way back in 1854. A Letterbox traditionally contains a rubber stamp
and logbook, which is used by the finder to stamp there logbook and
then stamp the Letterboxes logbook with there own stamp. This
hybrid cache also contains a stamp and inkpad (please do not
remove) for you to use in the same way, and it also contains swaps
as per a normal Geocache. We hope you enjoy finding this cache with
a bit of a difference.
As my employer has decided that it would be a good idea to
move the whole organisation to Bristol, the Phillimore's (Mad H@ter
and Muddy Legs) will be moving on to pastures new and some fresh
caches. Unfortunately this will mean that it will become difficult
for us to maintain our Oxfordshire caches, so we will therefore be
gradually archiving the majority of them. We shall start our
program of collecting the caches and archiving them in the new
year, but as we have one or two caches out there this will not be a
five minute program! If you would particularly like to find this
cache before it is archived please get in touch and we will try and
hold off archiving it.