Old Stations of Surrey & Sussex-Ardingly Traditional Geocache

While walking and caching around Surrey and Sussex it struck me how many old stations there are, seeing we now have series based around Mills, Ponds and Churches I thought we should have one based around old stations. This is the first cache and in time I will set more.

Most of the actual station buildings are now in private ownership and access to them is limited, however most can still be seen from roads and public footpaths.

The London Brighton & South Coast Railway Company opened Ardingly Station in 1864 to serve the near by Ardingly College. A train service ran for 99 years until the station closed on 28th October 1963.

The Station is located just South of Ardingly College at N 51 01.956 W 0 05.447 and is now owned by ARC Aggregates who still run goods trains on the track to the West of the old station.

The track to the East is now derelict but is owned by the Bluebell Railway who have plans to restore it and re-open the station and line sometime in the future.

The cache is located about half a mile East of the station at the site of an old bridge. It can be reached using public footpaths or by walking along the old track bed which is a permissive footpath owned by the Bluebell Railway. If using this route you are asked to keep to the path and not to wander off it.

The GPS signal at the site is extremely poor so the hint may be required to find the cache. The cache however is not hidden on the old track bed so even if your GPS tells you to look there please don’t as it’s located at ground level.

The cache itself is a small clip top box which contains the usual trades and certificates for 1st 2nd and 3rd to find. The bonus cache for this series has now been archived so no need to collect the bonus numbers.