Bournemouth History: A338 Wessex Way [BONUS] Mystery Cache
Lost2011: It's time to archive this series, leaving the most popular 3 to continue as stand alone caches. Thanks for all the find and favourite points.
Bournemouth History: A338 Wessex Way [BONUS]
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is my town. I live here. I love it.
This series of 10 stand alone caches, with a bonus at the end, will take you on a journey through Bournemouth, visiting a mix of urban and residential areas, and hopefully learning a little bit of history along the way. For the most part I have tried to make the caches accessible to all.
To find this cache you would needed to have collected the bonus numbers from all the other caches in this series. Very well done and thank you for finding my caches if you are now at this point.
If you are interested, just a little background on my selections for this series… I knew there was enough history to create a second series, but selection was difficult. The Racecourse was a late addition, and one which has given me a lot of enjoyment, but it very nearly didn’t make the list. I also had a lot of history on the airfield at Ensbury, but decided to omit this as it was too similar to the racecourse, and also I had previously done Charles Rolls in series 1, which was based on the airfield at Wick. The most noticeable omission and one which was suggested many times to me, was that of the Westover Ice Rink. As this is in the same location (albeit the other side of the road) to the Typhoid Epidemic, there wasn’t the need for both, and I personally enjoyed the little known story of the epidemic, so I decided to share that instead. At one time I was going to go with The Animal Man to make the 11 caches, but the location stifled me, so I took to social media again and found a fantastic group that basks in the glory of all things historical in Bournemouth and Poole. I asked this group for suggestions, and they came up with a little gem about The Great Train Robbery, which is right on my doorstep!
If you enjoyed this series and haven’t completed the original "Bournemouth's Past" series, follow this link, which will take you to the most popular cache in the series, and you will be able to find the other caches in the series from there - Jon Egging
The A338 is a major trunk road in southern England, that runs from the junction with the A35 at Poole in Dorset to the junction with the A420at Besselsleigh in Oxfordshire, a distance of 84 miles.
The A338 “Wessex Way” starts at the “County Gates Gyratory” system, a huge roundabout with the large (and at the time very innovative) building, home of a large insurance company. This also used to be the boundary of Hampshire and Dorset, before Bournemouth was moved into Dorset in 1974.
The A338 immediately has a sharp right-hand bend and runs beside Bournemouth Traincare depot. This section of the road is built over the old Bournemouth West railway station and whilst wide enough for dual carriageway, starts off as single carriageway. After the first junction, with the B3066, the road becomes dual carriageway.
At the junction with the A3060 “Castle Lane”, the road is no longer the “Wessex Way”, and becomes the Bournemouth Link Road.
The section of the A338 south of the A31 to the west of the Avon consists mostly of a relatively newly built road. Part is constructed along the trackbed of the former Ringwood, Christchurch and Bournemouth Railway which closed in 1935. Originally, the A338 went from Ringwood to Christchurch on the east side of the valley. When the Bournemouth link road was built in the late 1960s, this took over the A338 designation and the old road was renumbered as the B3347.
This final cache is situated close to the Wessex Way, in an area I used to regularly cycle past when I was in my youth.
Source Source
FTF: Fudgeman
Bournemouth History series:
GC41YWV: Pier Bandstand (M)
GC4NTAN: Tucktonia (N)
GC4NTAP: The Shell House (P)
GC4NTAQ: Moordown Halifax Memorial (Q)
GC4NTAR: Racecourse (R)
GC4NTAT: Moordown Tram Depot (T)
GC4NTAV: Waterfront (V)
GC4NTAZ: A338 Wessex Way [BONUS] - N50 MN.PQR W001. TV.694
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onpx pbeare bs cynag jnyy, ba gur tebhaq, arnerfg plpyr fvta.