BMTH PEOPLE🕺Gerald Durrell Traditional Cache

Born: 7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995

Known for: Gerald Durrell was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959.

Bournemouth Connection: Despite his birth in India, his travels in Africa and South America, and his final base in Jersey, it was Bournemouth that played the most consistent part in his life. The family first lived in a 'huge Victorian mansion', Berridge House on Spur Hill in Parkstone in 1931, before moving to a property on Wimborne Road, Bournemouth.

The family returned to Bournemouth after the war. Gerald worked on a farm at Longham. His sister Margo married her first husband Jack Breeze at St Andrew's Church, Charminster. Years later on a hired typewriter in a cramped attic of his sister's home in St Alban's Avenue, Charminster, Gerald wrote his hilarious account of their time in Corfu.

Gerald would turn up with hordes of animals from his expeditions and put them in Margo's garden and also kept a menagerie in the basement of JJ Allen department store. 

Gerald tried to open a zoo in Bournemouth, then Poole, and was all set to go with Upton House but it fell through.

Series Information: This series started in 2020, recognising the fine people of Bournemouth. For the first 4 years, cache series would be published at Christmas, or New Year, which replaced the "Lost Christmas Caches" at that time of year. A yearly series would consist of 9 traditional caches, with a bonus to find. In total, 40 caches were published until 2023. Now, all remaining caches are stand-alone caches, and from 2024, new ones will be added to the series.