Wet your wellies in Water Lane Traditional Cache
Wet your wellies in Water Lane
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Water Lane is a By-way that is known locally as a hollow lane (a road cut between steep chalk banks)and now forms a stream that runs in winter months and dry in the summer.
It can be slippery, wet and muddy.
It started out as the main road from Alton to Selborne before the current Selborne road came into being in the Victorian age. If you look carefully, close to the cache, you can see cartwheel tracks cut into the soft rock.
Sometime ago I found a musket ball washed out of the bank into the stream. The curator of the Curtis Museum in Alton identified it for me, and explained that parliamentarian forces (billeted in E & W Worldham) marched along Water Lane to the Battle of Alton in December 1643.
The stream bed is solid chalk much of the way, and is in a deep cutting through the fields. There is a footpath that runs parallel to it on top of the bank, through the golf course, but it's better fun in Water Lane and you have to access the cache from there anyway. In summer the stream usually dries up,so it's easier to get along,but there is more tree cover - so less GPS friendly.
You will need to scramble up the bank when you are there (clue),so not good for the faint hearted.
There is limited parking at N51 08.459 W000 57.553, 0.4mls from the cache. Or park in Alton or West Worldham.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre gur "qbzrq fgbar" ba gbc bs gur FJ onax.