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Size: 
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A short, flat walk from the Fish Hotel at Buttermere to Sourmilk Gill below Red Pike on Buttermere Lake. There is NT parking near the Hotel and free parking close to the church.
The Fish Hotel, Buttermere, must now be regarded as one of the oldest Inns in the Lake District, situated between Buttermere and Crummock Water, a good centre for char and trout fishing. By the last decade of the 18th Century, the Lake District had begun to attract many tourists, this process undoubtedly helped along by the attention given to its great natural beauty by the poets and writers of the time.
Although most of the roads were rough and sometimes dangerous, the Cumbrian statesmen and farmers saw it in their interest to improve transport to the different beauty spots. So it was that Buttermere, a small village, reached only by the difficult passes of Newlands and Honister or through a detour of many miles via Cockermouth, came to the tourists' attention.
For a short period in it's history, the Fish Hotel, Buttermere, achieved national fame (and possibly notoriety) during the Robinson's tenancy. The innkeeper's daughter, Mary, was about 15 years old when she was first noticed by a visitor, one Joseph Palmer, who stayed at the inn in 1792, and later wrote in one of the very first guide books, "A Fortnight's Ramble in the Lake District", of his encounter with the fair maid of Buttermere. The publication of this book brought many tourists to see this paragon of beauty and she is mentioned in many of the travellers' diaries of the time. In 'The Prelude', Wordsworth’s description of her reveals why she became so famous among advocates of the Romantic Movement - The “artless daughter of the hills” represented a woman shaped by nature, living “without contamination” in the “spot where she was born and reared”. She is “unspoiled”, a product of the natural environment, free from artificial influence.
By the turn of the century Mary became the innocent pawn in a melodramatic episode, which brought her to the notice of a public far beyond Buttermere and ensured her place in Lake District history and legend. Ultimately, her ‘discovery’ by the Laker tourists led to her becoming a victim at the hands of a dishonourable fraudster who, in 1802, arrived at the inn posing as "Colonel Alexander Hope", and set about wooing Mary - they were married on 2nd October 1802.
The event got into the London papers, through the Keswick correspondent, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, no less, who obviously deemed the marriage of 'The Beauty of Buttermere' a newsworthy item. Within a month the London "Sun" had discovered that the real Colonel Hope was actually abroad at the time and that Mary's 'husband' was John Hatfield, an undischarged bankrupt, who was also married to a lady in Tiverton, Devon. Hatfield went underground and after leading the authorities a merry dance across the country he was finally arrested near Swansea and taken to London where he was examined before magistrates, who sent him up to Carlisle to be tried at the local Court of Assize. His trial lasted 8 hours and after a consultation lasting about ten minutes, the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty of Forgery" (then a capital offence) and he was sentenced to death by hanging.
For a while Mary became a national figure, which, if nothing else, would certainly help trade at the inn. She later married Richard Harrison of Caldbeck who helped her to run the inn and subsequently moved to Caldbeck with him, where she died on 7th February, 1837. She is buried in St Kentigern’s Churchyard in Caldbeck.
Irony underlines the story of Mary Robinson. Her simplicity was the catalyst for the fame which ultimately destroyed that simplicity. Discovered and included as part of the well-trodden Lakes tourist trail, the Maid of Buttermere was prevented from living the kind of life for which she was famed. It is particularly ironic that those who celebrated her natural, simple way of life were actually responsible for destroying it.
The cache is hidden up the bank to the right of Sour Milk Gill.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ng gur onfr bs n ynetr obhyqre haqre n fgbar.