Daylight Robbery Mystery Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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The cache is not at the headline coordinates, but is somewhere else within the National Trust Shute Shelve reserve. Solve the puzzle to find the cache location. Access to the reserve can be made from waypoint SS, where there is also an information board. We recommend that you use the parking and picnic area at waypoint CP.
The lonely ‘pass’ below Shute Shelve Hill was a notorious spot for highwaymen who lay in wait for travellers making their way overland between Bristol and Bridgwater.
The most infamous of the highwaymen to frequent this area was Charles Kasche, better known as ‘The Phantom’. Riding his black steed and dressed in tall hat and jacket, he would roam the Mendip Hills in the early hours of the morning. His favourite haunts were on the slopes of Shute Shelve. Hiding at a high vantage point overlooking the narrow pass between Axbridge and Cross, he would watch for the lights of approaching travellers before galloping down the hill side with flintock pistol raised and crying “Stand and deliver!”. Having robbed the unfortunate traveller he would melt away into the morning mists rolling over the Somerset levels. Later he would return to the grassy slopes where it is said that he hid his ill-gotten gains in an old ammunition box.
However in 1653, having enraged the local villagers, an angry mob set out and eventually captured the Phantom. Although beaten and bleeding, he never did reveal the location of his secret treasure stash on Shute Shelve hill. So on a cold winter's morning, with arms tied and legs in shackles, he was taken to the hangman’s noose on top of nearby Crook’d Peak. As a last request he asked if a hastily scribbled note could be left attached to a tree by his grave in the hope that one day it would be found by his beloved wife, Anna, who was pregnant with their first child. His broken body was hauled back to Shute Shelve and buried in a shallow grave on the hillside. No gravestone was erected, but the grave was marked with a 'hangman symbol' laid in stones to ward off any other Highwaymen (the symbol can still be seen today at the headline co-ordinates on google maps).
Some months after his death, now destitute and dressed in rags, Anna and her newly born daughter, Theresa (affectionately known as Terri), came to visit the grave for the first and only time. There they found the note still exposed to the elements. Although it was tattered, wet and only part of it remained, when she read it Anna smiled, looked at her daughter bundled in her arms and said, “Let’s see if we can solve this, Miss Terri Kasche”.
Addendum.....
It is said that on some cold winter's mornings, if you listen carefully, you can still hear the sound of The Phantom's steed galloping across the hillside searching for his master's grave, and, for the lucky few, you may even catch a glimpse of a phantom horse roaming the hill top.
Thank you to the National Trust for granting permission to place this cache in their Shute Shelve reserve.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
[Puzzle:] Npebfgvp k gjb
[Cache:] Ntnvafg ebpx snpr