MilestoneSocietySEVEN

I’m MilestoneSocietySEVEN  and I'd like to explore more of my old home county, the West Riding of Yorkshire before getting back home to my dad, the 1/2 Milestone in Elland, Yorkshire, GC4B900 !! I'd like to visit as many milestone, boundary marker and tollhouse caches as possible on the way. 
 
Let me tell you something about my family!
 
The Romans set up milestones along their military roads in the 1st century AD. After Roman times, roads developed to meet local community needs - churches, markets, abbey landlords, the packhorse carriers – but in the early 1700s travel was very slow and  difficult; the sunken lanes became quagmires in winter and occasionally both horse and rider were drowned! It took 16 days to cover the 400 miles from London to Edinburgh. So as commercial interests increased, Turnpike Trusts were set up by Acts of Parliament from 1706 to the 1840s. Groups of local worthies raised money to repair or build stretches of highway and users were charged tolls to pay for it, just like the “M6 Toll" today. Although pedestrians did not have to pay, the poor resented the tolls on their horses, donkeys, wagons and cattle and there were riots.
 
From 1767, mileposts were compulsory on all turnpike roads, not only to inform travellers of direction and distances but to help coaches keep to schedule and for charging for changes of horses at the coaching inns. The distances were also used to calculate postal charges before the uniform postal rate was introduced in 1840. You can find out more by looking on www.MilestoneSociety.co.uk where  you can see loads of different types of milestones and boundary markers shown on Google Earth mapping.
 
My home cache is on the Dewsbury to Elland Turnpike of 1780; my parent was one of the 200 milestones set up by the new West Riding County Council in the 1890s, so it’s been there a long time. It’s in the ownership of Calderdale Council now and looks very unloved! 

Please will you help me? I'm starting out from the cache at Blind Jack's milestone, on the Wakefield to Austerlands Turnpike Road. I’d like to visit as many other milestones, boundary markers or tollhouses as possible on my travels around the West Riding and there’s a list on flipflopnick’s Bookmarks –
 
http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?guid=ccc5d062-8a4c-47b0-af44-38c1387a2b2c  

Please could you take a photo of any milestones you pass while you are carrying me, and upload those to my website? Then I will have a lovely record of my travels to show my friends in the Milestone Society and my dad!