The Cateran Hole Traditional Geocache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
The cache is a 550ml “Lock & Lock” plastic container in a camouflage bag. The container has the usual log book and a few trinkets and should be able to hold small trackables.
The cache co-ordinates should bring you to a depression in the moor, in the centre of which are some steps down into the mouth of a cave. Great care needs to be taken with the final approach to the cache location as, depending upon the direction of the approach, there can be severe drops. This is not a cache to be attempted in the dark and care should be taken with children and pets. The cache has been placed within the cave and a torch will be needed to find it. A map would suggest that the shortest route to the location is probably from the north, from the unclassified road between Chillingham and North Charlton, however, when this cache was placed the approach was by an approximately two mile walk, from the south, and the description and grading is based on this approach. A limited amount of parking may be found at the end of the unclassified road heading north at the west end of the village of Eglingham. After this past winter the road is badly potholed in places but it is quite passable with care. Park at the gate and walk the public bridleway signposted for Quarry House. After about half a mile, just after passing over a cattle grid, take the footpath left and follow it over Cateran Hill. The path can be a bit indistinct, and wet and muddy, in places but you should be able to see the cairn on Cateran Hill as a direction marker. The cache location is on the north-west side of the hill. Fell Sandstone forms an arc of outcrops from south east Scotland, through Northumberland and into Cumbria. It forms many of the distinctive craggy moorland hills around the Cheviot Hills with gentle dips to the east, south-east and south. The Fell Sandstone is high fissured and has, in the geological past, been prone to mass movement. The Cateran Hole is a rift passage formed by such movement. The entrance to the Cateran Hole is in a depression in the moorland on the north-west side of Cateran Hill. There are six steps down into a passage which slopes down for 37.8 m to a depth of 8.8 m. From the entrance, after about 25 metres, the passage levels and may be partially flooded. After this point, apparently, there is a wet and muddy crawl before entering a final chamber which is about 2 m high and 1 m wide. There is no need to go this far to find the cache which is only a few feet beyond the bottom of the stone steps. Popular tradition asserts that the passage is connected to the Henhole on the north side of Cheviot, some 17 km distant, passing under the Hurle Stone. Locals also claim that, at one time, it linked Chillingham with Hepburn. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the meanings of the word “cateran” is, brigand, freebooter or marauder, and it seems that a much more likely explanation of the steps into this cave is that it was once a smugglers’ hiding place. Whilst looking for a suitable place to deposit the cache, I came across a previous cache box which was in a poor state and filled with water. I have since learned that this has been the location of two previous caches which have been archived. The log in the cache box was “mush” and it is difficult to clearly identify which of the previous caches it is that I have found. Hopefully, this one will be more successful! If you are interested in reading the history of the two previous caches at this location, see my note(s) of 25 July 2011.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N srj srrg vagb gur cnffntr sebz gur obggbz bs gur fgrcf. Hc uvtu!